“Hello sir! Where you from? Where you going?”

I had a few too many bottles of Lion beer last night, so when I woke up this morning I was both hungover and very confused. I thought I was still in Europe, and stumbled outside to grab myself something delicious from a bakery. I didn’t take long for my confusion to subside.
“Hello sir! Where you from? Where you going?” yelled a fat bloke in a tuk-tuk, and I brushed him off and kept walking down the street, already soaking in sweat as I did my best to avoid the open holes that litter the roads of Negombo.

“Hey bro! You want tuk-tuk?” came another voice, this time from a shirtless dude.
“You go to city? I take you!” squeeled an old man with one arm.
“You handsome! I take you in tuk-tuk for special priced!” minced a middle-aged fella dressed in the full outfit of the Sri Lankan national cricket team.
“Sir! I’m going to Colombo! You want ride with me?” asked a young bloke who wibble-wobbled his head so much I thought it was going to fall off.
“I take you to airport tomorrow!” sang some dunce wearing a paper hat.

Negombo isn’t a hectic place, but it can be tiring. Right now I’m one of about six tourists in the whole place on account of it being monsoon season, so every tout and shop owner sees me coming. They all want to drive me somewhere or sell me some crap nicknack made out of wood and faeces, which can make a simple stroll down the street a more difficult task than it has any right to be. Yes, this place is exotic and charming, but it’s also tough, with every motherfucker I meet wanting to get money out of me.

Even my hotel isn’t a palace of solitude. The good who runs it, Rowan, waits at the front desk for me to come in and out of room, so he can try to sell me something. This morning he was trying to sell me a lobster dinner for $35 (I’d expect a blowjob for dessert for that price) and this afternoon he was trying to book me into another place he owns in the mountains. It doesn’t have water or electricity, it’s 15kn out of town, the only way to get there is by paying him to drive me there, and it has what he calls a ‘nature toilet’ but looks more like a tree – he even showed me a photo of a young lady using the ‘nature toilet’, and it didn’t appear that she was happy about the photo being taken. Sorry, Rowan, but you can shove your hut up your blurter.

There’s not much to do in Negombo other than ignoring tuk-tuk drivers, so tomorrow I’m going to head off to Kandy for a few days, before spending a fortnight or so on the beaches of Sri Lanka’s east coast. They should bring better weather with them, but they’re also apparently poorer and less-developed than where I’m currently at – so I might end up shitting on a tree after all. If I do, there’ll be photos. As for now, I’m going to close my eyes and dream that I’m back in Europe again, with the European food, the efficient European transportation, and the big-titted European women…