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First Impressions COLOMBO, SRI LANKA 🇱🇰

· 33 min · Watch on YouTube

Play: First Impressions COLOMBO, SRI LANKA 🇱🇰

First Impressions COLOMBO, SRI LANKA 🇱🇰

Harry’s first proper day in Colombo, with Ali, spent almost entirely in one tuk-tuk. He arrived in the country through the capital three weeks earlier and never stopped, so this is the city he has skipped seeing.

Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles. The driver’s booking details are published in the video description, so under the bundle’s rule on advertising he is described but not named here.

Hiring a tuk-tuk for the day

The most practical thing in the video, and the shape of it is worth copying.

  • A point-to-point ride was quoted at 500 rupees.
  • A full day around the city’s main sights: 3,000 rupees — 1,500 each. Offered by the driver after they’d been talking, and taken because the sights are spread out and hard to link up on your own.
  • The roof comes off. It is a convertible, and the driver only does it on day tours; they paid 1,000 instead of 500 on the first leg specifically to have it open.
  • Top speed, per the driver: 84 km/h, and he sticks a kilometre under the limit.

What a day covers

  • A city beach, straight off the main road and across two live railway lines, small because the city is right on it. He is told the better one — Galle Face — is about ten minutes further.
  • Pettah market: enormous, and busier than anywhere else in the series. Standing up through the roof of a tuk-tuk going through it draws a crowd.
  • The Red Mosque, red and white striped, the market’s landmark. They can’t go in: shorts, and the entrance they reach is for worshippers at prayer time.
  • The old Parliament, the Town Hall — opened 1928 and, in his phrase, a building that looks like the White House — and Victoria Park.
  • The observation tower, closed for the month.
  • A memorial hall with a large Buddha, which he assumes is stone and is corrected: it is cement. He is corrected again on the trees — coconut, not palm.
  • A Buddhist temple complex at 400 rupees each — about $2 — and the ticket covers a second temple. Green water, gold statues, prayer flags in the trees, a bell, a museum of ornaments including Chinese pieces, and a sacred tree.
  • A Hindu temple, tall and densely carved with peacocks and figures, which they reach after 5pm and find shut.

Opening hours, by religion

A small, genuinely useful thing he is told and would not have guessed: Buddhist temples here are open 24 hours; Muslim and Hindu ones are not, and have set visiting times. The Hindu temple closes at five.

The elephant

An elephant is being washed at the temple, lying down while a man scrubs it with a coconut husk. Harry films it at length — the size, the hair, the ears — and it is plainly a working animal in the middle of a city.

He applies what he was told at Pinnawala: that chains on an elephant are not in themselves a sign of mistreatment and are there to prevent aggression. That is the sanctuary’s explanation being carried forward, not an independent finding, and he doesn’t test it here either.

Religion, and what he likes about the country

He states it directly and calls it one of his favourite things about Sri Lanka: Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and Christianity in the same short stretch of one city, living alongside each other peacefully. He and Ali put the Hindu share of the population at about 11% (from video – unverified).

Two smaller things

  • He still hasn’t played cricket with locals, and says it is top of his list — he keeps passing games while carrying bags.
  • He left his shoes at the first temple and the driver went back for them.

The hotel

Named on camera as Ellen’s Place, where the room is a clean twin and the router is in the room: 66 down, 46 up — the best connection of the entire trip, beating the Ella restaurant. He says he could move in, and then catches himself: wi-fi shouldn’t be the only reason to like somewhere. See book for the wi-fi when you work on the road.

Key moments

  • [00:31] Why he skipped Colombo the first time.
  • [01:31] Armed, friendly security.
  • [02:33] The city beach, and the two railway lines to cross.
  • [03:34] 500 rupees quoted; the convertible roof.
  • [07:29] Range Rovers, and the visible wealth of the modern districts.
  • [08:32] Through Pettah market standing up.
  • [09:35] 3,000 rupees for the day tour.
  • [10:35] The Red Mosque, and why they can’t go in.
  • [15:44] The Town Hall, opened 1928.
  • [20:04] 400 rupees each, two temples.
  • [23:38] The elephant, and the Pinnawala explanation carried forward.
  • [28:13] Four religions in one afternoon.
  • [29:52] Buddhist temples 24 hours; Hindu and Muslim ones not.
  • [31:26] 66 down, 46 up.

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