Grounded in Colombo


 

As I mentioned in the earlier blog, we took a wee trip to Thailand. After work last Thursday, we rode a small air conditioned bus from Nuwara Eliya to Colombo (7 hours). We stayed overnight in Colombo at a little guest house and got up at 4 am the next morning. We cabbed 45 minutes to the airport and for a 5:30 am check in time with Sri Lankan Airways. The flight scheduled to Bangkok had a 7:25 am departure time.


 

The flight was delayed until 10:30 am. The flight was delayed until 11:30am. The flight was delayed until 12:30 pm. The flight was delayed until 3 pm. The flight was cancelled. With much rigmarole and confusion, the airline finally organized the passengers onto a bus and trucked us to a hotel in Nagombo, a suburb of Colombo, nearer to the airport.


 

Now, as you can imagine, with a delay such as this, you form bonds with fellow stranded passengers. We met one woman, Sarah, a Canadian living in Colombo with her husband and children. We hit it off and it was so nice for us to have a Canadian to converse and bitch with. She sounded like us and she "got" us. We didn't have to speak broken English or broken Sinhala. Words flowed out of our mouths and she instantly understood. She got our sense of humour. We got hers. It was lovely. She was off to a wedding in Thailand. We grumbled about the delays and the separation from our friends and being robbed of a day's vacation. We had further delays the following morning, but finally, we all arrived in Bangkok.


 

Anyway, this delay turned fortuitous. Due to this delay, Bill and I received an invitation to our first (adult) social engagement since arriving in Sri Lanka! Sarah emailed us to come for dinner when we got back into Colombo from our trip. So, last night, Sarah's driver picked up us at our guest house and drove us to a residential area near the parliament buildings. We entered Sarah and her husband's lovely home. This home was designed by a famous Sri Lankan architect and featured an open air atrium, fish pond and huge outdoor patio. Two cooks prepared and served a delicious dinner of western fare. We met other NGO workers and ex-pats. Our conversations over good wine were stimulating and meandered as good conversation will: human rights, books, life away from home, what you can get for a rupee and what you can't buy in Sri Lanka, language, discrimination issues, ethical issues and kids. Bill dozed at the table.

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