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For my Columbo stay I ‘ve booked myself five nights at an air B&B. A good price and the chance to cook myself breakfast. some dinners. Like a most of Air B&Bs Ive had in Asia it’s really a small privatly owned hotel but the rudeimentary kitchen is available plus a nice roof top patio and the WiFi is nice and fast. Lots of Myanmar trip planning, accomplished, Check!
Shopping was succesful for the bluetooth keyboard, Hurray again! Next on the list was refills on my two BP meds. I was down to a week left on one and about two for the other. My guess was finding and buying those common but specific drugs would be easier here than Yangoon Myanmar. English was (maybe sort of still) the official language. Some more about that in a bit. Prscricption durg aquisition successful, Of course cheaper than in the good old USA.
So a certaing amount of wandering around the city, shopping. A thouogh immersion in the worst / smogiest / hot / humid / sweatiest, traffick choked, city streets since Bangkok.
While on the Air B&B site booking lodging I tapped the “what to do in Columbo” button. Not interested in most of the $75 & up sight seeing bus tours, but there was one “the taste of Columbo” only $23 promising small group, multiple stop eating tour. I like to eat. And some culinary background on what I’ve been eating sounded good so tap book it. This turns out to be the highlight of the Columbo visit. I make my way via tuk tuk to the pickup spot tem minutes early, in front of the Seyland bank in the swanky part of town. Cameile , a sweet young French girl just arrived in Columbo for an internship, shows up and that’s it we are the group. Jonathan arrives on time, a toyota sedan, and we’re off.
Jonathan speaks perfect english, I’m imagining Oxford, we cruise about to most of the more significant goverment, and cultural buildings in the city center. After 7:00 and downtown the traffic is more like LA, with a lot of tuk tuks, not bad. Or host keeps up a running expanlation of the sights, and includes back ground economics & politics. Not to give you his whole tour but about the English as official language there’s this.
If you listened to international news in the 90’s and early 2000’s there was repeated news about the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigres, and the bloody civil war. There is a complex ethnic mix here, not surprising being an Island smak on the Indian Ocean trade route. From Jonathan I learned, a majority are Buddist, Singhalese but within that religious group there are three cast. The Kandyans who as the bigest, badest and longest lasting (resisting colonialism) are tops. Then the people that work the land, farmers, they are next in rank. finally at the bottom are fisher folk. Of course I personally feel that’s wrong! Also there are the Portugese, the Burhgers (Dutch), even a few English stayed. In the North indiginous (or at least from centuries before Europeans, Hindu Tamils, roots in southern India. Geneticly nearly the same as the Singalese but different religion and language. Also the British brought a lot of Tamils to the highlands to work the tea plantations, also mostly Hindu. there’s also Malay, and Arabs.
OK back to official langauge. There was this Politician, the PM facing a tough election back early ’90’s Scince the British left post WW2 the official language, legale doc’s, School exams, goverment stuff was English. This PM facing election declares that Singhlese is gonna be the official langauge. So all the Tamil speakers, teachers, goverment workers, lawyers etc. etc. are suddenly out of a job! Which lights a pretty big spark in the Tamil comunity, they protest, resist, the Singhalese Gov retailiate. Back and forth & pretty soon there are truck bombs going off in front of the tempel of the tooth, and all over Columbo, Jonathan’s final coment on that was “The politicians are who screws things up!”
OK enough socio political thought for the night. Today I went to the old town “fort” (although unlike Galle there is no fort left there) but the National museum is there, and the teaming petah market. So some pics, of Columbo. The market looked just like the Redmond farmers market, if a bit more crowded 4 and went on for a long ways. the Museum ad a seperate Natural history building, mostly pretty sad dioramas but there must have been a good bone guy there because they did have some nice skelatal exihbits. Elephants crocodials birds etc and this impressivvvvvvve Blue whale hung from the cieling just like the Homer Prat Museum but bigger! That’s Jonathan in the food shot at one the three different spots for food.
Kay that’s it for Columbo, tomorrow I have a redeye to Mayanmar via Bangkok’s smaller airport, looking forward to SE Asia, more different food!
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