Jim and Queenie Sri Lanka visit

Monday 19 January

Have been in Sri Lanka one day. Rewind to Kuala Lumpur. KL airport very flash. When we got off plane usual travel novice malarkey ensued… “It’s this way” “No its that way,” “Um, we haven’t even been through customs yet”… any way after much tooing and throing, and walking the wrong way, we worked out we needed to get a mini train from one part of airport to main part where all the business – immigration, etc is done. That out of the way, we sat to wait for transit van to hotel.

A Vietnamese woman was also waiting; she had been living in Auckland. We talked as people waiting for a ride do, a travellers variation on the weather – where are you from, etc. The conversation faded off. Shortly, later, a police woman, with bhurka scarf thing, and gun… god acts in mysterious ways – came up to her, checked her passport, seemed nonchalant then wandered off. I asked the woman what that was all about. She did not know. Neither did I. Another police officer wanders, strolls, by, machinegun in hand. In the cab the driver tells me badminton is one of their national sports.

Hotel, early start, write first blog, next morning.

Out hotel is in Serankam (spelling?), not in KL city, we get a one-hour bus ride into town. When I ask the woman at the desk in the hotel where the bus station is, she tells us we must get a cab, it is too far. We walk to the bus station; it is about ten minutes away…

The ride into the city, palm trees, millions of palm trees, where are all the houses, last night’s cab driver said five million people lived here… I think he was exaggerating, there are a lot palm trees. I read in the local paper that the head of the main palm oil company has a lot of political clout.

The palm trees segue apartment buildings with air condition boxes splattered on the sides of them with glue gun proficiency.

It is a very clean city. People are cleaning, everywhere. We pass the old airport; I think it is the air force base. People in rice paddy hats are cleaning the side of the runway; others look like they are cleaning the barbwire on the fence.Even more are cleaning, are those people cleaning those palms, or are they reading them.

In the Kuala Lumpur tourist market we luckily avoid having our palms read because the reader lady is having a lunch break, we get our feet massaged by skin eating little fish instead. And into less touristy Chinatown market. I buy a five-dollar fake Rolex; it is not working as I write this. Oh no, wait it is again.

On the plane to Sri Lanka later that day, a heavily scarfed woman folds up her airplane issue blanket in the same way she would fold her best linen, I muse on the dream like quality of travel.

It is after midnight when we arrive at Colombo airport. It is a lot dirtier, but somehow more satisfying than the international sheen of KL airport. Did I mention we stopped in the Maldives on the way, well we did, but we did not get off the plane, so that is why I did not mention it.

We are picked up by my bother David and his wife Sria. They have hired a van and a driver; David says they had been stopped at three road blocks on the way. Soldiers wander around the airport, a young soldier smiles at Queenie who is pushing the luggage trolley and asks in Singalse if she has a license. I smile back and ask, stupidly, white goofy, but I don’t think he speaks English, if he has a license for his gun. There are loads of soldiers with guns. We are stopped only twice on the way to Mount Lavinia. My brother says often they will just ask the driver something, and all they are doing is checking to see how they speak, ie if they are Tamil or not.

A week or so before we arrived Lasantha Wickrematunge the editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper here was shot down and killed by four armed motorcyclists. He was an outspoken opponent of the Sri Lankan government’s war on the Tamils, and a champion for equal rights and freedom for all. He knew he was going to be killed at some stage and had pre written his post mortem editorial.

The government are calling Wickrematunge’s death a foul and despicable act and a full(police) inquiry is under way.

A few weeks earlier an independent and outspoken TV stations was ransacked in what was described as ‘military precision”.

Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse, who incidentally has more than a passing resemblance to Billy T James, had apparently been a friends of Wickrematunge’s for over twenty years. There are giant posters of him everywhere. I keep thinking Billy T is back and performing tonight.

Wickrematunge in his final editorial, his “letter from the grave”, points the finger at his old mate and says “”I have reason to believe the attacks [earlier attempts on his life] were inspired by the government. When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me”.

Sri Lanka is hot, very hot.

We are in Mt Lavinia, a southern beach suburb of Colombo. Spent our first day here at pool in the hotel my mother, Mary, is staying in. It is by the sea and just along the beach from David and Sria’s house in Mount Lavinia. You cross over the railway line to get to the hotel, we pay 500 rupee to swim in the pool. There is wedding going on in the dining room, the children look spectacular in their golden beige, red, orang, etc sari outfits.

Some local young men invade the pool and play a shallow version of water polo- none of them can swim, Queenie gets the ball for them when it gets too deep. A couple of German guys – fatty and skinny, late fifties – join in and look like they are having fun, but are inevitably a constant comedic absurdity.

The hotel is semi rundown, I have visions of 1958 Havana, without the facade of cool.

It seems lost in a time zone. This whole place is lost in a time zone, I am lost in a time zone. It’s fantastic.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 11:56 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.