Hello all,
I’m so excited to be writing my blog, and to be overseas, for the second time this year.
Unfortunately, Japan are still firmly shut to international visitors
even two years on with vaccines etc in place, so attempt three to travel
there these holidays was cancelled. Mum and I decided on a pretty epic
plan B though - Sri Lanka. I was first meant to visit in July 2019, but
had to cancel due to the Easter bombings that occurred in Colombo in
April of that year.
Like any trip in these “living with Covid” times, there was a fair bit
of uncertainty as to whether we would actually make it. Firstly, would
we somehow dodge Covid during term one? Somehow, I did. I’m not quite
sure how, seeing as I’ve been to eight AFL games, shows, pubs,
basketball and not to mention school with active cases in my classroom
for ten weeks. Then in the last week or so I’ve had a huge flare up in
my right hip that’s been excruciating, and a case of strep throat.
Nothing like cutting it fine. I’ve got a pharmacy in my hand luggage to
try and mask the pain enough to forget about it!
But sadly the biggest uncertainty was the situation in Sri Lanka itself.
Since the 2019 Easter bombings, tourism has sharply declined in Sri
Lanka. Then the pandemic hit and destroyed the tourism that remained.
From what I understand so far and what we are likely to find out more
about in the coming fortnight, the president here has also made some
poor financial decisions in the last few years, and made up a fair
amount of his cabinet with family members. All of this combined
currently sees Sri Lanka facing its largest economic crisis since
becoming independent from the UK in 1948. There have been power outages,
petrol, medicine and food shortages, inflation issues and more recently
a lot of protests.
We started to wonder if we should come, but I’ve realised that the media
are pretty evil when it comes to situations like this. From what I can
tell from a friend here and a travel group I’m part of, the protests are
peaceful and involve every day people who are frustrated that their
cost of living has more than doubled in a few months, and that there is
no solution being put forward to rectify significant power and petrol
outages. I started to realise that it was similar to when I went to
Egypt - the news making a place look violent and volatile, when in fact
that very place and its everyday people need tourists and the dollars
that come with them now more than ever.
So here we are. Mum and Dad picked me up from work on the last day of
term. Quick note by the way - first full in person term since term four
2019 - wahoo! We drove to the airport and Dad dropped us off. It was
pleasing to see more life at the airport than when we flew to Singapore
and it was a ghost town in January. Not back to normal quite yet, but
slowly getting there.
Unfortunately our flight was delayed by two hours, but what can you do.
We had a good flight overall with Sri Lankan Airlines. The food was
nice, the staff very friendly - we bonded with one hostie as she noticed
us watching ‘Bridgerton’ season two - and we had a two seat row to
ourselves.
I’ve definitely lost my flight stamina though, but I suppose the hip
pain didn’t help. By the five hour mark I was so restless and
uncomfortable, and then realised we still had five or six hours left.
Going to be funny one day when we do a long haul one again!! Mum slept a
bit, but due to being uncomfortable and a chorus of screaming children,
I was not so lucky.
We landed at 11.30pm Colombo time, which is 4am in Melbourne. From here
the delays continued. Immigration had a bit of a queue, and we got a
passport stamp which was exciting! It was very different to Singapore
here though - no Covid related documents checked at all. Then our bags
took so long that I've just typed this blog post in the hour we have been waiting. They are likely short staffed like everyone else at the moment. Now we have a one hour taxi ride into Colombo. Hope we can sleep - by the time we get to the hotel it will be 7am Melbourne time.
While Singapore in January was wonderful, I’m particularly excited about
our adventure in Sri Lanka because it’s somewhere new. I had visited
Singapore before so while I had an amazing time, I didn’t have the
feeling I have so dearly missed - landing somewhere unfamiliar and
finding your way, learning the history and the culture, trying the food
etc for the first time. It’s one of my favourite feelings in the world,
and god how I’ve missed it. I should add too - two years on, landing
here means I have now officially ticked over to 80 countries as I was
meant to in Japan in April 2020. I’m pretty damn proud of that, it
started to feel like it would never happen for a while. Here’s to
exploring the world - get stuffed, Covid! I’m really looking forward to
showing you how incredible Sri Lanka and its people are over the next
fortnight.
Love to all,
Claire
Xoxox
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