On Friday, December 27th we checked out early from our hotel to catch a ride on the shuttlebus to KL Sentral station in order to catch the train back to the airport. The shuttle went ahead and took us to the station directly, apparently the driver didn’t expect anyone else crazy enough to check out at 4:30 in the morning. We used a different terminal at Kuala Lumpur International Airport this time, and discovered there was a Din Tai Fung restaurant just outside of security. Taiwan’s most famous restaurant chain (according to me), we went for the no-pork xiao long bao (in Malaysia only they are made with chicken instead of the usual pork). They also had mini salted egg custard buns, so we ordered four of those. They were the best custard buns ever – I’ve tried them wherever I find them and these were so good. We couldn’t forget how good they were and later it led to an interesting story on our return to Malaysia.
Our flight was on Sri Lankan airlines, and it was only three and a half hours to Colombo. Even so they served an in-flight meal that was quite good – satay and rice. The Sri Lankan airline meals were some of the best we’ve ever had on a plane… certainly not boring and sometimes quite spicy and exotic.
Once we arrived at Colombo airport we lined up to get our free (for a limited time only) visa on arrival, and then lined up again for immigration. The lines were not very organized, and some people were pushing to get a better position – patience was wearing a little thin at Colombo airport. Once we cleared immigration and customs I changed some money, ordered up an Uber using the free airport WiFi, and followed the application’s instructions to meet our driver out front. However, once we left the airport and arrived at the front of the arrivals area the free WiFi was out of range. Our driver didn’t show up, and unfortunately armed soldiers were posted to make sure that nobody went back inside the airport. One nice soldier let me walk a little ways into the airport garden to catch the edge of the WiFi envelope, and with that connection I could follow up with the driver and expedite his arrival. He arrived in a tiny Suzuki Alto, and the little car barely made it into town carrying the three of us plus our suitcase.
It was a little far to get into the center of Colombo, and we could tell immediately that the driving and traffic was much closer to India than Malaysia. It was everyone for themselves out there, driving in the center of two lanes, squeezing into tight spaces and the almost constant use of the horn. I’m glad I wasn’t driving! Eventually the driver found our hotel, and Uber turned out to be a very cost effective way to get from the airport to the city. We stayed at the Fairway Colombo hotel, and it was a smaller hotel in a great location right near a restaurant that we wanted to try in the Old Dutch Hospital area. The hotel was clean, although it did have a fresh paint kind of chemical smell on our floor. The area around the hotel was sort of a tourist zone, so the prices were higher and the touts were kept away (somehow) at a certain distance. Once we left the invisible envelope we were targeted as fair game by taxi and tuk-tuk drivers.
Eager to explore, we started walking around the hotel area and soon discovered that it was way too hot in the sun to do any real walking. We always prefer walking but the scale of the city and the distances were just too great to manage in the middle of the hot, humid weather. So we took the first of many tuk-tuks to get from the hotel area to the south along the very busy Galle Street. We picked a shopping mall as a destination, and the driver offered to stay and wait for us free of charge. We said we didn’t need him and went inside to do some shopping.
Sri Lanka’s economy depends a lot on tourism, and they certainly took a hit after the terror attacks on Easter. There were far fewer tourists in town and that meant that extra attention was paid to us and people quoted exorbitant rates to try to rip us off. In the stores and restaurants prices were clearly posted, but each tuk-tuk ride was another negotiation, and only later did we discover that the Uber application lets you hail tuk-tuks as well as cars (thereby avoiding price haggling). Still, each tuk-tuk ride was extremely cheap, and even the most outlandish price quoted worked out to about a $5 ride.
At the shopping mall we found a good supermarket with plenty of unique things. For example, I bought a bottle of woodapple (a local fruit that has a very mysterious taste) nectar. We stocked up on other goods – local teas, snacks and candies that we wanted to try. Downstairs was a food court, looking like a scene from the seventies with the brown and yellow color scheme.
Eventually we wrapped up our shopping and caught a tuk-tuk back towards our hotel. The driver had a hard time understanding my pronunciation of our hotel area name, and quoted a price that was about half what we paid to get to the shopping center. It turned out that he had thought we’d go somewhere closer but was so nice he was ready to eat the difference in cost. I paid him the full amount, though – why haggle over a price that amounts to a bottle of soda back in Japan?
We had a couple of Lion beers (not Tiger) at a bar near our hotel, and a small snack to tide us over until our dinner reservation. Purposely we were trying to build up our appetite for our restaurant reservation at Ministry of Crab. I had heard that they served great chilli crab and since we both love crab we thought it would be interesting to get Sri Lanka’s take on it. They were just steps away from our hotel so we were really looking forward to it.
When we arrived in the evening they led us to our table inside the stylish restaurant, and we ordered some drinks, a giant shrimp and a large crab. You order the shellfish by size, and you can also choose the sauce. We had garlic chilli sauce for the shrimp and then the traditional chilli sauce only for the crab. I had some coconut water to drink, Kuniko had lime juice served with two test tubes of sugar on the side to adjust the flavor. Our appetizers weren’t so special – the avocado crab salad was just a half an avocado with some crab salad spooned into it – but the crab itself was worth the visit. Although it was a bit overpriced, we enjoyed cracking open the pieces and sucking out all the meat, and we used a plate of bread chunks to soak up the spicy chilli sauce and oil – it was a messy good time.
After dinner the sun was safely down, so we walked to the beach to see what that area was like. Even though it was dark it was still hot and humid. The beach was pretty quiet and fairly dark, so we decided to play it safe and head back to the hotel. We were pretty tired from the early wake up that morning, so we crashed out but were soon awoken by the floor above us, which was the hotel night club. Every chair scraping on the floor was right above our heads, and the thumping dance music kept us from dropping deeply into sleep. They didn’t stop until around 3 am (which I think is pretty standard for nightclubs, after all) and then we could finally get some rest.
