Now that the civil war between the Sinhalese government and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka has come to an end, I was encouraged to revisit my travel diaries from my visit to Sri Lanka in October 2003.
After Colombo I headed down to Bentota on the coast. It was difficult to tell when we’d left Colombo though, not only because there are no road signs, but because there are shops and houses along the entire length of the road. Imagine driving from Birmingham to Manchester and all along the side of the roads are shops, schoolchildren, dogs, litter. All the towns and villages merging into one long stream of urbanisation. I was surprised later in my travels to discover that Japan is similarly urbanised within an inch of it's shoreline... though with sanitation.
I can see why the Sri Lankan coast is popular – it has lovely white sand beaches and nice hotels with huge swimming pools. I love swimming in the sea, but there are a lot of strong tides in the Indian Ocean along that part of the coast, so it wasn’t advisable.
The towns behind the hotels are not terribly smart though. There seems to be no system of regular litter collection for example as there are drifts of refuse and rubble everywhere along the road. This has been the case alongside all the roads I’ve driven along here.
There was also little in the way of local business to support. No restaurants to eat out in for example. I can see how people who were in such a hotel for longer than a couple of nights might feel trapped in their compound with little else on offer but the pool.
I got to spend some time with friends who were also staying along the same stretch of coast at the same time. They were pleased to have someone to talk to as they were in a hotel with a lot of Germans, so all the staff spoke German as their second language. With the language barrier, making friends was difficult. I shot a few games of snooker and lost all 6 of them. It reinforced the fact that cue games are not my forte... or that my mate simply had had too much time on his hands and found little else to do but practise his potting!
And this is picture-less because believe it or not, I didn't take a single picture of the coast at all!
After Colombo I headed down to Bentota on the coast. It was difficult to tell when we’d left Colombo though, not only because there are no road signs, but because there are shops and houses along the entire length of the road. Imagine driving from Birmingham to Manchester and all along the side of the roads are shops, schoolchildren, dogs, litter. All the towns and villages merging into one long stream of urbanisation. I was surprised later in my travels to discover that Japan is similarly urbanised within an inch of it's shoreline... though with sanitation.
I can see why the Sri Lankan coast is popular – it has lovely white sand beaches and nice hotels with huge swimming pools. I love swimming in the sea, but there are a lot of strong tides in the Indian Ocean along that part of the coast, so it wasn’t advisable.
The towns behind the hotels are not terribly smart though. There seems to be no system of regular litter collection for example as there are drifts of refuse and rubble everywhere along the road. This has been the case alongside all the roads I’ve driven along here.
There was also little in the way of local business to support. No restaurants to eat out in for example. I can see how people who were in such a hotel for longer than a couple of nights might feel trapped in their compound with little else on offer but the pool.
I got to spend some time with friends who were also staying along the same stretch of coast at the same time. They were pleased to have someone to talk to as they were in a hotel with a lot of Germans, so all the staff spoke German as their second language. With the language barrier, making friends was difficult. I shot a few games of snooker and lost all 6 of them. It reinforced the fact that cue games are not my forte... or that my mate simply had had too much time on his hands and found little else to do but practise his potting!
And this is picture-less because believe it or not, I didn't take a single picture of the coast at all!
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