Sri Lanka
This is the story of how I replied to a LinkedIn message and, two months later, was praying for my life in a tuk-tuk on the streets of Colombo.
The LinkedIn message went something like, “Hello ma’am, I am contacting you on behalf of the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing, and we would like to invite you to present a workshop”.
Naturally, this already sounded somewhat suspicious. If you have ever worked for yourself you’ll know you get approached for all kinds of stuff and most of them are utter bullshit. A few messages later, I find myself on one end of a WhatsApp call; on the other end, someone is lighting a cigarette, inhaling deeply, and exhaling audibly before our conversation begins.
We talk budgets, objectives and the content for this potential workshop that I will be presenting. In the back of my mind, I’m sceptical, but so far, it sounds mostly legitimate. That’s when I ask what platform they typically use to host their online workshops. Silence.
No, ma’am, this is in-person training we want you to do.
But I live in Europe…
Yes, ma’am, we’ll take care of the flights and your accommodation.
More silence. This time, it’s me who’s gone mute.
The Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing will pay £1000 worth of flights to get me to Colombo so I can deliver a workshop?! What was next? The prince of Nigeria calls to ask if I wanna marry him?!
I promised Ash, the smoker from the WhatsApp call, to think about his offer. After a few moments of deliberation, I decided that the least I could do was a proper due diligence before politely declining the offer.
I turned to my parents’ neighbour who knows the Italian ambassador of Sri Lanka. Surprisingly, he confirmed that SLIM (The Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing) is completely legit. I also got in touch with my friend Helen, who moved to Colombo after leaving Hoi An (where I met her) and had been staying there for the past four months. She also reassured me.
There wasn’t much else to do other than say yes to the seminar, say a prayer and pack my bags.
Colombo
Five weeks, one flight to Dubai, four hours at the world’s stupidest airport and a flight to Sri Lanka later, I was in the back of a taxi headed towards Colombo. As I was politely chit-chatting with the driver, the reality of the situation suddenly hit. I had arrived.
When we finally made our way to the location, I knew the 8.5 rating for the hotel room I had reserved was looking doubtful.
If I have to be politically correct, I would tell you that I was in the middle of a neighbourhood that is currently developing. But I’m not, and I’ll tell you I was in what can only be described as a third-world country nightmare. For my Sofia friends, imagine a mix between Fakulteta and Lulin 9. My international friends, I hope you have a vivid imagination because I don’t know what reference would ever do this area justice.
After Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia, I genuinely wasn’t expecting much of a culture shock. I was so wrong. Minutes later, I was being ushered through an unmarked door after the hotel manager had come out to unlock the gate for me.
After a quick nap, a call with a client, and a massage, I met my friend Helen for dinner. She definitely didn’t reassure me about my safety. I suggested we take a six-minute walk to a nearby supermarket. Helen was terrified of the idea. She insisted we Uber, and I insisted that I wanna go home now (please).
Sigiriya
After a night of well-deserved rest in Colombo, I headed towards the bus station to make my way to the next destination - Sigiriya.
I boarded a bus that was probably manufactured when they first invented buses, and the wait to depart began. The single seats on the left were soon full. The double seats on the right were slowly filling; surely, we would go soon. Right? Wrong.
Two hours late,r we were still at the bus stop in Colombo. Ten street vendors had come on the bus to ask us if we wanted to buy drinks and snacks for the journey. Only one of them was selling loose olives in plastic bags - clearly the only true entrepreneur out of the bunch.
Two and a half hours later, the driver started opening extra seats that occupied the aisle. In case you are wondering, I didn’t ask about health and safety.
Sigiriya is the size of a small village. One main road makes its way through the entire length of the place with small, makeshift bungalows on each side of the road. It is mostly a quiet place with incredible nature surrounding it. That is, until nature is in your backyard.
The house next to my hotel had to evacuate in the middle of my first night there. A wild white elephant had come inside their garden, and the family of five was worried he might go crazy and destroy their home. How’s that for a second wave of culture shock (and my second night in Sri Lanka)?
This is when I started to realise that the life Sri Lankan people lead was nothing like anything I had experienced before.
Places:
Pidurangala Rock - the rock opposite the lion’s rock. Literally, what *everyone* told me was that there’s no reason to pay £30 to go up the Lion’s rock when you can pay £3, climb the one opposite and then actually take photos of the Lion rock, which looks way better. Fair enough, that’s exactly what I did. At 4am. To see the sunrise. Manic? yes. Worth it? yes.
Cappuccino - having decent coffee in Sigiriya is hard. Having good coffee + stable internet is harder. This is the best place I found for when you need to open your laptop.
Little Hut Sigiriya - a small, cosy place with cheap, authentic food and lovely people.
Kandy
After the bus experience from Colombo to Sigiriya, I wasn’t necessarily exhilarated at the idea of another inter-city bus journey. I decided to call for an Uber to Kandy. Little did I know that the local taxi drivers were boycotting Uber, and half an hour of waiting on the app gave absolutely no results. That’s when I remembered I had saved the number of a local taxi driver. 20 minutes later, a random German couple I had met at breakfast and I were on our way to the old capital city of Sri Lanka.
The 89km journey took nearly five hours to complete. How? I promise you, I don’t know. Rules of physics just don’t apply in Sri Lanka, I guess.
The speed of travel, however, wasn’t the most shocking thing that day. No, it was the scene that unfolded in front of our eyes as soon as we entered the city.
*A little backstory here*
The city of Kandy used to be the capital of Sri Lanka. It’s a gorgeous city with old colonial buildings and a temple that houses Buddha’s tooth. Yes, his tooth. Legend has it that when the Buddha died, his body was cremated, and his left canine tooth was retrieved from the funeral pyre. Why are they saving it? Unsure. But once a year, there is a big festival that parades the tooth across the streets of Kandy.
Locals believe that if they arrive in the city, stay there for the entire duration of the ten-day festival and make sure they see the tooth on each day, they’ll have good fortune for the rest of the year. For reference, Sri Lanka is home to 22+ million people. Not all of them had made their way to the city centre of Kandy… but it was more than enough people.
As a result, the sidewalks were completely unusable. I often found myself walking on the pavement surrounded by people, buses, cars, mopeds, elephants and tuk-tuk rickshas. Needless to say, getting anywhere was a nightmare.
The festival itself was a magical experience that I’m grateful to have experienced. My aforementioned friend Helen and her boyfriend had arrived in Kandy and together we sat on a balcony where you could pay to have a better view of the show. The four-hour-long spectacle featured music, fire dancing, elephants in fancy dress, more dancing, more elephants and about five women who were allowed to take part (patriarchy is alive and well in Sri Lanka, I guess).
Places in Kandy:
Hideout Lounge for lunch/ dinner
Department of Coffee - to rest, recharge & grab a cuppa
Royal Botanical Gardens (yes, it’s really worth it)
Colombo #2
After Kandy, I headed back to Colombo for the seminar I was going to present. I got back to where I started effortlessly and ordered an Uber. I was headed towards the hotel that the kind organisers from SLIM had booked for me and, to put it politely, was managing my expectations. The views from the car, however, went beyond anything I had anticipated.
Complete contrast to my first day in Colombo.
We first went past the neighbourhood that houses all the embassies and (presumably) a lot of the people with money who live in Colombo. You could really tell the Brits had been here because this felt remarkably close to South Kensington, with beautiful white buildings and well-maintained green parks.
Once we stepped out of that part of the city, we entered what genuinely looked like London’s Holborn area. Tall office buildings made entirely of glass and steel would hit the skies and leave you dizzy. Perfect roads, busy shopping centres and trendy restaurants create the feeling that you are in the capital of a developed country.
Did the people here know about their fellow Sri Lankans who wait for the wild elephant to leave their garden? Were they aware that people sleep on the streets of Kandy for ten days in a row? Or are they too busy buying the latest iPhone, eating at Asian fusion restaurants and attending workshops about the future of Generative AI?
Speaking of this last crowd, this is exactly who came to the workshop. 160+ people came to attend a four-hour seminar followed by a panel discussion. They wanted to learn how to use GenAI to propel their business forward, achieve more at work and ensure they are optimising their time efficiently.
It was a genuine pleasure to speak at the event. At the end of it, I felt like I had learned at least as much as I had tried to teach.
Places in Colombo:
Gangaramaya Temple (temple with the smallest Buddha)
Beach
Department of Coffee (again!)
Please forgive the typos.
Yours & delightfully dyslexic,
Dimana ✌️