Adventures in Fort
August 20th – 23rd
Day 7-10

I had scheduled this post for writing about the cricket match between Sri Lanka and India but decided I need to finish up on a few thoughts and some experiences otherwise… actually for no real reason other than to see myself write?... there doesn’t seem to be an appropriate parallel to hear oneself talk, oh well. Anyway a few things that took place in the same time period as the previous posts.

I was offered a position teaching spoken English to students, was quite surprised to learn that there is a overwhelming demand for teachers here and there are quite a few quacks that offer comprehensive English courses that don’t really teach anything practical (basically like the mandatory French language programs in Alberta – c’est merde). Even among the more illustrious institutes like Royal Academy, there is more of an interest in making money than in a students education… do I really need to add a quip here?

My first class teaching is Wednesday August 27th, well 2 classes one 10-2pm and the other at 5pm, most of the students are in their 20’s and want to practice spoken English for employment purposes, honestly it’s pretty easy work but I’m going to try to challenge them a little… an evil part of me briefly considered talking with a Newfie accent but I was able to suppress that instinct. It doesn’t exactly pay much by Canadian standards but for this location it will serve well for getting groceries, travel and various knick knacks (I’ve always wondered at the history of that phrase). Starting with one day a week then depends on my popularity as a teacher… I should start handing out candy in class, or maybe cell phone minutes would be more popular – oh, in reference to my previous post I have to add one more thing that is awesome about the Sri Lanka cell services, you can send people extra minutes! That’s right if your friend is about to run out of minutes and you have some to spare you can basically SMS (some sort of txt system on steroids) them some of your extra minutes.

Okay, so the teaching thing is interesting and we’ll see how that turns out. Now I would like to expand a bit on my first adventure touring around the main city Colombo by myself on the local transit and how I avoided pick pockets, shills, and characters of dubious repute and interactions with the friendly people with machine guns, or as they are known the Sri Lankan Military security (whose checkpoints sport all sorts of advertising – fortunately nothing too out of taste).
When I had taken the bus (for the first time) to the heart of Colombo called the Fort area, my goal was to see the ocean and head to an area called Galle Face Green, a well known park by the seaside. The place I got down was about 1km or so away and I thought it would be fairly easy to just walk down to where I wanted to go. I was quite mistaken. Firstly when one gets off the bus in Fort it seems like utter chaos busses are haphazardly moving in and out of the area, people are milling hurriedly in all directions and various street hawkers are yelling either something about what they’re selling or ancient Klingon poems (I’ll try to keep future geek references to a minimum).
I easily got disoriented as there are few – make that no street signs to speak of and most of the sidewalk space is occupied by the peddlers of things ranging from pirated DVD’s to fake designer bags. While I was tempted to try shopping a bit, my main goal was to see the beach and so I just picked a direction and kept walking. To make a long story short, I chose incorrectly. Fortunately I had a street map of the area and was able to discover my error after only about 45 minutes of walking under the hot sun. So heading back the way I came looked around for alternative routes, as well by this time my shirt was soaking with sweat not so much from physical exhaustion but uncomfortable heat and humidity. With that I really looked out of place and was approached by quite a few ‘helpful’ people that wanted to take me where I wanted to go, and one persistent fellow walked with me for a few blocks saying he was a person not ‘from Colombo’ and didn’t want any money but wanted me to follow him to his place. It seems he also collected stamps from various countries… yeah, and I was born under a Bo tree. Eventually plotted a route to take me to the long anticipated beach but was puzzled by these “High Security Zone” notices as I approached the street, then I was politely stopped by some security officers wearing very crisp green uniforms and although seeming quite well used, serviceable machine guns. After an initial language confusion was able to convey my intentions and they were actually quite helpful (if a bit hard to understand) and pointed me in the direction I had to go in.

Unfortunately this began… the term ‘rat in a maze’ comes to mind. It’s not that I didn’t know where to go but every other street or area I needed to get to was blocked by HSZ’s (aforementioned High Security Zones). I probably spent about 3 hours wandering around the center of the city at times I even smelt a cool sea breeze… and finally I found the right street to take, but at that time I needed to head back home.

That technically ended my first adventure to the area I would later learn is called Pettah, the infamous street market district. The area itself is quite overwhelming aside from the street hawkers there are several side streets that seem to be dedicated to various goods, down one street there are gold smiths and jewelry shops (mostly owned by Muslims), down another is household electronics, and down one is textiles so on and so forth. I definitely plan to do a bit of shopping there in the future but it is extremely crowded and also a bit dangerous to the unwary. Pickpockets are abound so you have to keep a close watch on your valuables – which one should really keep to a minimum in the first place. As well the shop keepers will try and charge you as much as possible so one has to be knowledgeable about local prices or fairly good at bargaining. So while it is easy to get ripped off one can find a variety of clothing and other items for around Rs. 500/ ($5 CAD) that may cost you around $20- $90 CAD back home. Eventually I did return to Pettah for a little shopping and picked up a pair of pants for Rs. 150/ and a nice shirt for Rs. 475/ probably overpaid for the shirt but even by local standards the pants were a steal… hey, where’s my wallet?


(Oh there it is, under the pile of pirated DVD’s I got for Rs. 100/ ($1 CAD) a pop - MPAA eat your heart out)