sasri2016 – Travelling back to Finland from Colombo

Had an alarm waking me up today at 00:01. It was a darn hard to get up, after only 4 hours of sleep. Though yesterday's dinner was totally worth it, that wake up did eat some from my sleeping time. Have to tell you about it... I wanted a restaurant from as close to hotel as possible. From reception found out that there is a restaurant at the rooftop of hotel building. Nice! No need to go dancing in the rain, to get to the restaurant... ehh, well I did need to go a little bit in rain, because rooftop restaurant is not covered. Security officer of hotel escorted me to restaurant and a waiter of restaurant then helped with umbrella for me to get to buffet room to see their list. Chef came to introduce foods and to reply to my questions (which I had quite many). I found food that I wanted, even though prices were quite expensive, but I still had rupies left and not many places to use them anymore, so it was fine. I didn't want to take dinner to my room (which would have been the obvious choice, while having a rooftop restaurant and thunderstorms right among us (I don't say above, because clouds were really low and thunder was straight over Colombo). Chef and waiter agreed to my suggestion, to bring a table and chair under one corridor roof, which was only place in restaurant's serving area, where it didn't rain. So I ended up being only customer in rooftop restaurant, having great food and amazing lightning show all around me. It was kinda better show than many movies are! And I had the pleasure of enjoying a great Spicy Vegetable Broth with buns as an appetizer and Indian Biriyani with chicken (raita and Chutney included, of course). Though I didn't get my pineapple fruit juice, until they had already brought the main course to the table, I really enjoyed this fantastic event.

Back to wake up. This hotel was surprisingly good. This was first hotel to actually make the wake up call. I had ordered it in two other hotels during my stay, but never got the wake up call. That is really lousy work from reception. I had ordered a taxi from hotel to take me to the Bandaranaike airport. It's about an hour drive, so I ordered it for 01:00 o'clock. Driver was there ready, when I made my checkout and we got to the airport just fine (it took pretty much that 1 hour, even as there was almost none traffic, so during the day, it would have needed more time for travelling to airport).

Other option for my layover in Colombo, would have been airport hotels (there seems to be some) or staying in Negombo, which is much closer to airport, than Colombo. But because I founded a good sale price for this hotel “Supun Arcade”, I thought it's better to go there. Another reason to go there was that I knew that I could use PickMe to easily get to places I already knew about, if I wouldn't take so much sleep. Sale price of that room would have been 57 €, but I had collected hotel.com's rewards and used them, so I paid only something like 12 € for that stay.

Now I am at the airport, already checked into flight and waiting in lobby to get into plane. It's going to be rough way back home:

1. 4h 40 min flight to Abu Dhabi, then 1h 25 min layover in that airport
2. 5h 30 minutes flight from Abu Dhabi to Berlin Tegel airport, with 2h 25 minutes layover in Berlin airport
3. 1h 55 minutes flight from Berlin to Helsinki airport
4. then taking a bus from Helsinki airport to railway station
5. next to take a Onnibus from Helsinki to Turku
6. and about at the beginning of night, I should be arriving at Turku and then to take a local bus to my home and to finally meet my sweetheart.

sasri2016 – In Colombo

I stayed in The Ocean Colombo. It was okay hotel. Room was okay, not bad. Service was okay.

Colombo itself as a destination.

It's not that bad city. There are higher prices (see my comments below about the prices) and traffic is what it is. Moving wasn't that hard, if you use PickMe and get to travel hassle free (hassle free as no-negotiation for tuk-tuk price - getting bad english speaking drivers to drive you to hotel, that they don't know - is not hassle free ;) ).

There is a poshier part of Colombo (at the northern part of city, close to Pettah) and then southern part of the city (this is my limited vision, based only on two nights visit there – so more experienced travelers probably have a say to this – but this was all I needed for my visit). My hotel was in quite good position (crossroad of melbourne avenue and marine drive). Of course those poshier and more expensive hotels are in better suited location for many things, but I appreciated the close proximity of Majestic City (walking distance or short tuk-tuk drive in middle of the day).

I really loved the Sugar bistro at the poshier part, for having a happy hour (buy one, get one for free) and a totally awesome Kofta for dinner.

Mid-day in Sri Lanka is very hot (for me as Scandinavian). Temperature of 33 C is at the top of my “comfort” zone (well comfort is somewhere under 28 C, so maybe I call it “survival” zone). If you are going to walk around the city in mid-day, think twice. It's good way to see the city, but the amount of sweating when walking in that temperature is compared to tuk-tuk “airconditioning” - for me ordering tuk-tuk with PickMe was easy and cheap enough way to travel around the city.

Pettah market is kind of the worst market scenes I have been. It has bad sides of Thailand markets, with hassle and it probably has a lot of robbers around tourists (heard, not seen). I ended up buying one piece of shorts, but they were not that cheap, after the bargaining. Starting prices were crazy (my 300 LKR – theirs 2400 LKR), but I wasn't as comfortable bargaining harder at the late night (almost closing time) in Pettah, as I am in Thailand, so ended up paying almost double of my target price. Well, less than 7 euros for brand shorts, that even fit my big size, wasn't that bad deal (though haven't tried them on yet :).

Majestic City is a shopping mall, with a lot of watches, jewellery and clothing shops. It also has food court at the bottom floor and a grocery store “Gargill's Food city”. I ended up buying two shirts and a couple of teas from a tea shop there. Otherwise I used food court for fresh juice (from desk called “Roots” and couple times lunch food from other desks).

Note! If you own a DinersClub -credit card, you should be aware that the only locations where DinersClub -credit card works in Sri Lanka, are in Colombo. There are 5 ATMs, that you can use to withdrawn money from DC credit and one of them is inside Majestic City (only one I found). Those are Commercial Bank's ATMs.

Massage.

I always try to get a massage in the beginning of the trip and at the end at least. On this trip, my plan is to get one massage per week. So I called the reservation of the hotel, where I could get a massage. They transferred the call to the third floor and a guy with very poor english answered. I though they transferred the call to kitchen or something. So I called again and this time he explained that there is a massage on the third floor of this hotel. So I went there and the price for one hour Thai massage was quite high (my opinion, again), 4500 LKR (about 31 €).

Massage room was simple and a bit shady by lighting, but the lady who did the massage was very authentic and as I recognize and remember the moves that belong to Thai massage, she did about all the common moves of normal (non-dirty) Thai massage. It took about 50 minutes, so not true 1 hour, but comes with the territory.

Prices in Colombo: It's a capital (though not the official one) of Sri Lanka, so you should expect higher prices, than most of the other places.

Tuk-tuk drivers are asking way too high prices from foreigners, for a budget traveler. That's why PickMe service comes so handy. You just need an internet connection and that app installed to your mobile device (you can probably do it also on a computer, but app is very handy). With this app, you say where from you are going to be picked up, what kind of a car you want (default is tuk-tuk, there is also a mini car and normal car options). Then you specify if you pay by cash and app gives a rough estimate about the price of the trip. Prices always come by meter and you can actually check the progress of your travell in app's map, while you are in the vehicle. After the trip, it also asks you to give driver stars and a comment (it's not necessary). Sound quite like Uber, doesn't it? And I did love it all the way. Would want to have this in Finland too and especially with the same prices. ;) Travelling from melbourne avenue to Fort Railway Station (Pettah), costed about 460 LKR with a normal car. Driver was very helpful and guided me how to get to the train and correct platform, for my train trip to Mirissa... which is the next episode.

Couple notes about The Ocean Colombo -hotel:

• Breakfast price is steep, about 1300 LKR
• Travel agent was blaming me later, that I didn't reserve a car from them, to get to Mirissa or something like this. People had written this kind of stuff in TripAdvisor, so it was to be expected; if you don't like pushy salesmen, then you will not like this guy (well he is not that pushy, but blaming for not ordering is bad enough)
• Laundry service was normal priced (IMHO) and worked well, except they lost my sock and then blamed that it wasn't ever in the laundry bag (which I of course had checked before giving the laundry bag); but I would use that again
• I never got to get to the roof top bar, but it might have been really nice; later I did regret that I couldn't make it there to take some photos and to enjoy later evening breeze there.