Travel diaries for Saturday, March 29 through Monday, March 31; written Tuesday, April 1
Saturday, March 29:
Daniel and I drove five hours to Atlanta from Tennessee and parked at a hotel near the airport before Ubering to the International Terminal. Since this trip has been on our bucket list for thirteen years, we’d decided to splurge on business class tickets on Qatar Airways. After grabbing a quick drink at the airport bar, we boarded the fanciest flight of our lives. A thirteen hour plane ride has never flown by (har har) so fast. We were immediately treated to welcome beverages, lounge sets branded with the Qatar Airways logo, and bags of Diptique cosmetic products. We changed into the lounge sets right away and proceeded to order delicious meals and more drinks from an unlimited complimentary menu. After dinner, the flight attendants “made our beds” (changed our seats to lie flat and added mattress cover things over them) and we pretty much went straight to sleep. We were in a Q Suite, exclusive to Qatar Airways, which is a pod-like seating arrangement where we got to be side-by-side and essentially had one large shared bed. We awoke about 8 or 9 hours later, had a gourmet breakfast, and then landed in Doha around 5pm local time on Sunday.
Sunday, March 30:
During our 8-hour layover in Doha, we wandered around shopping for a bit (the airport is basically a giant luxury mall). I bought a dress from Ralph Lauren and Daniel got a tamarind cologne from a French brand called Memo in Duty Free. After shopping, we had a couple of showers and a couple glasses of wine in a lounge where I had Priority Pass access (our business class flights did not include business class lounge access, as we’d opted to pay for the economy tier of the business fare… the airline class system is getting out of hand). Around 1am local time, we boarded the flight to Colombo, which was a little less fancy but still very nice. We again had delicious dinners and the seats did lie flat, but there wasn’t quite such an elaborate bed-pod situation. The flight lasted about 5 hours.
Monday, March 31:
We touched down in Colombo around 9am local time after managing a couple hours of sleep on the flight from Doha. We felt very fancy and elite to be able to go through the Crew / First Class / Business Class passport control line, but this turned out to be a mistake: crew was given preference, and every time we were about to get our passports checked, another surge of crew members appeared and went in front of us. After we finally made it out of passport control, we grabbed a couple bottles of tequila from duty free (at the request of Etosha), got our bags, breezed through the barely-existent customs, and emerged into Sri Lanka. Immediately, we spotted Etosha and his wife Aparna, and Etosha lifted up Daniel in a big bear hug. It was a joyous reunion after thirteen years.
Etosha (who we call Tosh – rhymes with “gauche” – but who Aparna calls Eto – rhymes with “veto”) and Daniel went to high school together in Charlottesville, where they played football (and were state champions!). Tosh was Daniel’s coolest friend, always knowing the best parties and people and adventures. Aparna and Daniel both claim Tosh has a habit of “kidnapping” his friends and taking them on whatever fun quest he has concocted. Daniel and I are pretty much experiencing this Tosh-napping over the next two weeks, as he has fully planned our itinerary and will be driving the four of us on a trek around the island.
On the drive from the airport into Colombo, Tosh and Aparna filled us in on recent Sri Lankan political history. Sri Lanka was ruled by (in Tosh and Aparna’s words) a “dictator” called Mahinda Rajapaska until 2022 when the people of Sri Lanka rose up to overthrow the government. You may have heard about it in the news – people storming the personal residences of the President and Prime Minister, a pair of brothers, forcing the dynastic family to flee the country (at the time, Tosh sent Daniel a photo of himself chillin in the prime minister’s hot tub).
When the dictator was in power, his crony sons were notorious in the Colombo nightlife scene – apparently, if you were a woman out at a club and one of the sons pointed at you, you had to go with them or risk you or your boyfriend being shot. Tosh himself had a run-in once with one of the sons: Aparna has a fashion degree, and early on in their relationship, she introduced Tosh to a fashion model she knew. A few days later, Tosh saw the model out and about and waved at her. Immediately, one of the sons grabs his neck and starts choking him, and when he raised his arms to fight back, two of the son’s goons grabbed his arms. Being a universally beloved person, though, the bouncers knew and liked Tosh and helped him escape unharmed.
So we are glad that family is out of power. Since the exile of the dictator and his family, though, the newly elected government has had its own problems. Tosh and Aparna complain that the police these days are corrupt and aggressive and bad to women. We plan not to give the police any reason to talk to us while we’re here.
We stopped briefly at one of Tosh & Aparna’s fabric suppliers in Colombo. Tosh and Aparna founded and own a company called Apihappi – some of you probably know the bean bags, beach chairs, and bags we have bought from them over the years. Tosh has actually been recently appointed President of the Chamber of Ethical Lifestyle Commerce of Sri Lanka – apparently, he came to the chamber with some ideas, and they were like “how about you just be president.” The Chamber’s focus is basically on all Sri Lankan exports other than the big three: tea, rum, and coconuts. Tosh’s focus will be on enhancing business relationships with the EU.
After the fabric supplier, we went to a Japanese café, where we met up with their friend Sarah, a former diplomat from England who recently quit her diplomat job and moved to Sri Lanka with her Sri Lankan husband, a pretty renowned artist named Raki. She was nice, and we’ll probably see her again tonight (Tuesday). I had some watermelon juice and some salmon and rice, and Daniel had some pork belly and a latte.
From there, Tosh and Aparna dropped us at our hotel, a pretty famous resort called The Galle Face Hotel where celebrities such as Mark Twain, Indira Gandhi, Richard Nixon, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Anton Chekov, and Arthur C. Clarke have all stayed. Daniel and I had a shower and a nap, then watched the sun set from the iconic Galle Face Green, which is basically a seafront park overlooking the Indian Ocean. Our hotel has cabanas and tables on the Green, and I got a daiquiri and Daniel got a Tom Collins while we watched the sun set with other hotel guests.
Tosh and Aparna joined us, and we heard the story of how they met. Tosh saw Aparna at a bar and tried to ask her name, but he couldn’t hear her over the noise of the crowd, and she left. He was out again another night, wondering to himself if he’d ever see that girl again, when moments later Aparna walks through the door. He took her out on a date, but another girl he’d been on a few dates with saw them and threw a drink in his face. This was only a few months after Tosh had moved back to Sri Lanka, and he wasn’t aware that in Sri Lankan culture, going on a few dates basically made a relationship very serious. The drink-throwing delighted Aparna, who found the whole situation to be romantic and exciting, like in a movie. Tosh friended Aparna on Facebook – and that’s where things got interesting.
As a little backstory: Tosh is from Sri Lanka originally, and his parents moved him and his sister to the South Africa during the war, and eventually to the United States. (Apparently, we’ll hear more of that story later.) He went to high school with Daniel for two years before transferring to Baltimore to finish high school and start college. Before moving to Baltimore, he started dating a girl named Leandra from a nearby public high school in Charlottesville. They dated for several years, and in college, Tosh proposed and they got engaged. Leandra’s mom did not approve of the match and took Leandra on a cruise to try to change her mind. While on the cruise, Leandra met a guy in an 5-boy acapella group called The Exchange, fell in love with him, and called off the wedding. Etosha’s US residency status depended on two things: either maintaining a high GPA in college, or marrying a citizen. Leandra broke up with him, he got a D in biology, and thus he was deported back to Sri Lanka, never able to return to the States again.
Around the time of Tosh & Leandra’s engagement, Aparna took an internship with a music festival that hosted artists from around the world. During this internship, she met a guy from Georgia and they had a brief fling. He went back to the US but stayed in touch with her on Facebook. She saw that he and his bandmates went on a cruise, taking their acapella act to the sea.
When Tosh friended Aparna on Facebook, Leandra was Facebook-stalking Tosh and noticed that he added a Sri Lankan girl who had five mutual friends – the five members of a boyband The Exchange.
Isn’t that crazy??
Anyway, we left the hotel and got an Uber to a “sports club,” which was basically an open-air multilevel bar and restaurant. We had delicious pork and rice and fried cuttlefish, and we drank a lot of the local liquor called Arrack (which kinda tastes like weak whiskey) mixed with soda water. More of their friends showed up: Jonas, who is French and lives here because he works for a travel agency of some kind; Ricardo (“Ricky”) who is Spanish and works for a children’s nonprofit – his ex-girlfriend used to live here and was friends with Tosh and Aparna, and when she left, he moved into her house in Colombo and she gave him her Sri Lankan phone number and her friend group; and Prabul, who came late and seemed nice and left early because of a tummy ache (his words).
We ended the night by taking a Tuk (rhymes with “Luke,” basically a motorized rickshaw) to Tosh & Aparna’s house, which Tosh’s dad (an architect) designed. It was a really interesting house with slats in the ceiling to let in air (and rain!) and multiple indoor fish ponds and trees growing inside the house. They have three friendly dogs, including the Apihappi namesake, Happi, and one or two antisocial cats. We drank and chatted more, then Daniel and I took a Tuk back to our hotel where we passed out and slept very soundly.
Go to next: Sri Lanka Days 4-5
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