Monday 5th August
One of the sites many blogs will tell you to visit in Colombo is the Red Mosque. Although I had survived my first day of driving in Colombo the previous day, we decided to park the car somewhere in the city, then catch tuk-tuks wherever we needed to go.
We got dropped off outside the Red Mosque, and paid our entry fee. This was a major letdown, to be honest. As a tourist, you are restricted to viewing only a small courtyard of approximately 8 m x 12 m. The rest of the mosque is only for Muslims who are there to do their thing.
As is typical of that faith, I was fine to walk in, in shorts, while Cath who was similarly-dressed was required to wear a head-to-toe robe over her clothes. Which was quite hot. You could be forgiven for thinking that they don’t want women there at all.
After 5 minutes, we decided we would check out a Hindu temple that was not too far away.
We were accosted by a tuk-tuk driver who didn’t want to take us to the temple we wanted to go to, but rather, wanted us to hire him to be our guide for the day.
So animated was the conversation, that a father and son from a nearby shop interceded on our behalf.
We finally got rid of the tuk-tuk driver by simply walking away and leaving him to climb back in his vehicle and drive off.
We then found another tuk-tuk driver who initially seemed to be willing to take us to where we wanted to go.
But once we had started moving, he was on his phone talking to someone. Presumably, the guy who then jumped on board 2 blocks later. Seemed that this new guy was the one who knew the way to the Hindu temple we wished to visit. I immediately suspected that this was not going to be a straight-forward “take us to x and drop us off” kind of trip.
And sure enough, when we arrived at the temple, the driver didn’t want to take my money. No, he wanted to keep a rolling tab whie he ferried us all over town.
At one point, I actually managed to get him to take the previously-agreed-to 200 rupees from my hand. And that was it. When he tried to give it back to me, I held up my hands, said “Nope, we’re done”, and walked away.
Later in the day, we visited another Buddhist temple which was related to the Seema Malakaya floating temple we’d been to the previous evening.
Just across the road from the temple was this fascinating open-air museum of old machinery.
In the evening, we found a great little paved street full of restaurants and bars.
We grabbed a couple of cocktails, and Cath sat on the selfie seat for a portrait.
