TRIP TO COLOMBO

As a temporary resident of Sri Lanka I must make the pilgrimage to the Immigration Office to renew my visa. This is a path well trodden and complained about by those here from other countries. This is due to the fact that you must attend in person to the office in Colombo, and it is not something that can be completed in a lunchbreak. If you are lucky you will not need overnight accomodation.



Colombo is 30km away and I need to get there by 9:00am. We set out at 7:00am, and no, I'm not walking. The last trip we made was on a Sunday and the road was reasonably clear. This time, however, about 15km out the traffic starts to close in around us. The public busses use their size and continual blasts of their horn to bully their way through. The tuk- tuks and motor bikes just dive into any opening possible. Not that it seems like any one is making any progress. So we inch forward, punctuated by spells where the magic traffic genie has opened up space while the traffic police in the centre wave us on. Then somewhere close by comes the sound of a siren and somehow an ambulance is able to push its way through the traffic and races on, followed by motorbikes intent on using this to their advantage to gain some more ground.



As security is high, especially around military bases and government offices, numerous check points are in place. The man working for us (Prince) tells me that because I am with him we won't get stopped as much- still we were stopped 3 times. All this involved was a check of his national ID card and then they wave us on. The government has also made it so that the high security areas are only accesible from one end. This means we have to travel past where we want to go, so that we can get in via the one way street. Even with four lanes instead of two the congestion is quite bad.



Finally we make it to the lawyers office, 20 mins late and he tells me that it won't be necessary to go into immigration because we should make the most of our tourist visa. All we need do is give him the passport numbers and come back in two weeks. So we get to turn around and head back to Negombo and look forward to doing it all again in two weeks time.