I’m in Sri Lanka right now and I’ve been here for five full weeks. iIn this Blog I’m going to show you my first impressions of Sri Lanka from my first day here and my first impressions of Colombo
guys I just arrived in Sri Lanka and I got out of the airport that's close to Colombo like 20 minutes ago and this was the smoothest immigration process I’ve ever been to. They barely looked at my passport. there were so many forms and stuff that I had to fill out to come here for covid and they didn't even check like any of them almost after getting out I also got a sim card from the airport that was a pretty good price. it was like two thousand rupees or 10 US
dollars for a month and 20 gigabytes and I also got some cash out of the atm because apparently there's a good atm here I didn't want to exchange my money at the airport because you get terrible rates for that. so now I’m outside. right in front of the airport is this Buddhist temple and I was going to take a train to Colombo because it's still like 30 kilometers out from here but it looks like the next train's in like three hours so I’m just gonna try to catch a bus
so I’m getting a tuk-tuk to the bus station for 200 rupees. this is so hot okay so I’m on a bus with ac which is a really nice change from the heat and humidity outside and the bus ticket to Colombo was like 200 but I had to pay an extra 200 for my big ass backpack okay so that bus took like 45 minutes and dropped me off right in the middle of Colombo
next to this floating market actually that's pretty popular. So the three most commonly spoken languages in Sri Lanka are Sinhalese Tamil and English so it's funny whenever you see a sign you see the name of the place or whatever in all three languages. I think I’m going to have to get a tuktuk to go to my hostel getting in a tuk-tuk with these bags are kind of tricky
so I arrived at my hostel this hostel is really really nice and it costs like ten dollars per night and I got bottom bunk because there's no one else in this room yet except for me and this French woman over there okay and there's a super sick rooftop so I definitely want to see Colombo a bit more but first things first I need to exchange some dollars and get some money are you open yeah how much is the rate for dollars US dollars. 203. 203? okay I’ll get 200 US dollars in Sri Lankan rupees
so thank you is ibo Sri Lanka. Okay. it's always important to learn basic words like thank you in a language in a country I mean but I guess I don't really know if that was Tamil or Sinhalese so I just exchanged like 200 for cash and usually I prefer to like not travel with cash but I had to in this case because I was coming from Bangladesh and as you might know it's kind of tricky to move money in and out of Bangladesh at times. By the way if you're a Bangladeshi who's living abroad and are going through hassles just to send money back home to family I highly recommend trying out this app called tap tap send. Tap tap send is a very simple app that allows you to send
money easily from the US UK Canada or Europe to Bangladesh. there's a lot of good reasons to use tap tap send. The first one is that there's like no transaction fees zero transaction fees for transferring any amount. The second is that they have great exchange rates they also have quick delivery times. Another ridiculous one is that you can transfer your money directly to your bank account back home in Bangladesh or directly to a bkash account and last but not least,
I’ve been talking to the guys there and they have offered a promo code “otg” for me (on the go). if you use that promo code you get like a 10 credit bonus on your first transaction. so if you're in the us you'll get a 10 credit if you're in the if you're in Canada you get a 10 Canadian dollar credit if you're in Britain you get a 10 pound credit and in Europe you get 10 euros if you happen to need to send money back home and you haven't used tap tap sent yet make sure you check that out and use this promo code. it's starting to get dark
but I finally have some money which means I can go and get some Sri Lankan food behind me that's the very famous clock tower. I read about this place earlier before I came to Sri Lanka but I didn't know I was going to walk right past it.
Something really interesting is that everywhere else I’ve been in south Asia like India and Bangladesh the police are kind of very iffy about letting people film in a lot of places and so far from like the two or three cops I’ve seen or met it feels like it's the exact opposite here. The cops are actually welcoming me and like pulling me aside and telling me like oh yeah film here film here which is uh I guess how it is in a lot of countries but not usually in south Asia from my experience but this is good for travel vloggers at least also there's like a ridiculous number of really tall buildings here and skyscrapers.
Feels like I’m in Kuala Lampur again. okay so yesterday was a bit uh interesting. I set out looking for Sri Lankan food and then I realized I’m in this very fancy neighborhood that doesn't have any local Sri Lankan food that I like and I ate burger king and it was terrible and expensive and I don't know why I did that so today I’m gonna try out again and find some good food but first let me tell you a little bit about the history of this place and the neighborhood. This place has been a big trading post for like more than 2000 years and for the longest time starting from like around the eighth century
Colombo was ruled by.. or Colombo was controlled by Arab merchants. Then in the 15th century the Portuguese came and colonized the place and they built a fort here which is no longer here but that's why this whole neighborhood is called the Fort district then the Dutch came and sort of recolonized the place and replaced the Portuguese and then they built their own fort and they tore down the fort that the Portuguese had and then the British came and they also tore down the
Dutch fort and built their own military barracks and then after that like in the 1970s the people of Sri Lanka tore down their military barracks and they built the world trade center behind me right here and this is the financial center of Colombo so this is a very fancy place so don't come out here if you're trying to find cheap local or street food.
it's so hot right now that it's literally painful to be wearing jeans with my outfit but I have to because I need my pockets to carry all this stuff. right now I’m walking to this building which is probably the most interesting looking building at least to me in Colombo so a lot of these little shops on the streets that look like they're selling almost souvenir like elephant paintings and all but I don't think this is for tourists because this is not like a touristy area shop if you know what I mean. I’m in this neighborhood where it looks like every shop is a flower shop. okay right behind me that's the famous Jami Ul-Alfar Mosque with the infamous candy cane architecture on the pillars and everything else I’m gonna try to go and see if
I can get inside. This is not that old not that historic it's less than 100 years old but it's definitely one of a kind I’ve never seen a mosque that looks like this there's usually an entrance for visitors to go in and film and do whatever but it looks like it's closed right now for covid so I can't really go in I don't want to like sneak in and film a mosque when I’m not supposed to and I’m going to try to go to another important religious building now but first I just want to try to get some food that is not burger king I'll get one samosa one egg roll and one lassi. no lassi? what do you have? mango juice? yeah okay. Found this cute little fast food store on the side we got the samosa, the egg roll and the juice and all this combined costs like
250 Sri Lankan rupees which is 1.25 cents this is really good Egg roll is great too and this costs like 20 cents on the US dollar. Two more egg rolls. Thank you so people usually say that Sri Lanka is not as crowded as India and Bangladesh and that might be true but this is still pretty damn crowded
so I’m in front of the Ganga Ramayana mandir which is probably the most famous temple in Colombo and a huge and gorgeous temple complex. this is a Buddhist temple. There's some sort of hymn playing in the background on a loud speaker so I’m guessing this has something to do with the prayer though I’m not entirely sure. In case you're wondering Sri Lanka and
Colombo are both like 70 % Buddhist and the rest is a mix of Hindus Christians and Muslims. this temple is interesting because it's got a mix of Indian Thai Sri Lankan and Chinese architecture this is so cool. Really glad I’m able to film this and show you all this
right now I’m in the second wooden building ,so for the last stop for today I think I’m in this place called Galle Beach Green .which is this really pretty walkway right next to the ocean that's to the left of me and has got a lot of palm trees lined up right next to it. See a lot of people come to just chill here or go on a date it seems like. I’m going to take a closer look at the ocean here
finally, I am at the Indian ocean and I see a lot of waves which is the main reason that I’m here it's been 13 months since I’ve surfed and I cannot wait to get back into it right that's it for this blog Going to Mirissa if I can catch the train
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