Day 3: Yapahuwa and Anuradhapura (planned) Negombo (it became) Home | Travel page | Info Sri Lanka | Map Sri Lanka | Previous day | Next day

At 7 o'clock we jump out of our bed. We're sure our driver will be at the hotel at 8 o'clock to start the big tour!
8 'clock no driver to see. The Andrews Travel agent Soma of the local travel agency assures us that everything will be OK. He talked to Mister Andrews himself, so...  
One by one drivers come and pick up one of the other couples. At 9 o'clock no more driver... But Mr. Soma is convinced: "The driver will come at 9 o'clock!". We give him 5 more minutes. Mr. Soma leaves with the French speaking group. There we stand without driver. 

9.., .9h30..., 10 o'clock: still no driver to see and no representative of our tour operator either. Besides it's Sunday! We try to reach Mr. Mahen, chief of Andrews Travel: "He's  in Singapore!". We try several other telephone numbers, but without result. Around 11 o'clock I try again Andrews Travel in Colombo. We are lucky(?): there's somebody answering the phone (don't forget, it's Sunday!). First they don't understand me, but suddenly: "Oh yes, in 20 minutes there will be a driver" (then he must be on his way, because from Colombo to Negombo it's one and a half hour).

12 o'clock: still no driver... Some Indonesian person at the reception wants to help us. he knows Mr. Mahen. He calls Andrews Travel. He can speak to some Mr. Shan, the transport manager. Now it seems they're still looking for a driver! Mr. Shan promises to call back in 10 minutes. 
At 12½ o'clock I call back by myself and I get a lot of excuses: we booked for a Dutch speaking group (there wasn't any Dutch speaking group, only a French speaking group). Mr. Shan wants that we travel after the French speaking group to join them, but we booked an individual trip, what costs more. We refused.  
The reception which seems to understand our troubles offer us a lunch for free. So there are gentle Singhalese people! An other driver want to make the planned tour with us for 400$. We thank him for his offer, but we say we want to wait a little bit more. We'll see...

Around 14h30 Mr. Shan calls back: "Tomorrow around 7 A.M. a driver named  Caldera will be present at the hotel". Nevertheless we will loosing already 1 day. We will have to forget about Yapahuwa and how much time will remain for Anuradhapura? AFTER ALL IT SEEMS TO BE A SURPRISE TOUR!

We make a virtue of necessity and about 16 P.M. we hire a 'three wheeler' for Negombo. A normal trip costs 100 rupees, a Negombo tour costs us 400 Rps for 1 hour.

Successively we visit: 

• the Negombo Lagoon: a good place to see the Karawa fishermen at work. The  lagoon itself is 12 km long and extends from Katanuyake (the airport) until Negombo.
  The most important boat is the oruva. The fisher folk brings daily lobsters, crabs, all kind of fish and in particular prawns to the local fish market. Fisher men are mostly catholic.   
  

  Fisher folk with oruva		Fisher boats on the lake

    

• a park where people play cricket (not so interesting when you don't know the rules of the cricket game). Everywhere in Sri Lanka one can see the English influence.

• a batik-factory (we would see a lot more of batik factories, but at the present time we didn't know).
    

  Batik factory

  The batik manufactures between Marawila (30 km from Negombo) and Mahawewa are famous. In case you don't know about the process of making batik, then a visit to a batik "factory" is a must. There you will see and get explanation from the beginning of drawing on cotton or silk, through the application of wax, the dye bath, and washing of the cloth in hot water. My wife bought a  beautiful sari for about 300 rps.  
    
      
          

• a  (rather strange) temple: donation 200 Rupee  (4US$ / 3GB£!), guide = 100 Rupee.
• local fish market, more smelling than this in Bangkok. And there we couldn't stand it!

Back at the hotel the driver asked 500 Rupee (instead of the deal of 400): the trip, he said, took a half hour more. We explained him that we didn't ask him to drive us to a batik factory! So the discussion went on and on and after the discussion we had in the morning with Andrew Travels we decided to give him 450 Rupee. And that was a very good price.