Sri Lanka Madness

26-11-2013

We've just left Sri Lanka and checked into our hotel in Bangkok which is, in a word, bloody awesome. Not least because it seems to have a stable enough wifi for us to reconnect with things Internet based. While I plan on doing a proper write up about the Sri Lanka trip upon returning home, I wanted to just throw up a few littles notes of the trip here. Not particularly important ones and definitely a few will fall under the "rant" category.

Tipping: We were warned about the tipping culture before we went to Sri Lanka by none or that H and her great husband who had spent some of their honeymoon in Sri Lanka as well. The problem is neither of us were really prepared for just how much tipping had to be done. While it is true that the average wage of a person there is tiny compared to what we earn in Ireland and something like three hundred Sri Lankan rupees (which sounds like a lot) converts to about two euro and change that really meant very little with the whole tipping thing. Sure throwing a guy a few hundred rupees for carrying your suitcase up to your room is chump change in the First World scale of things, but when whores are attacking you the moment you step outside the airport things get uncomfortable. We had a guide hired for most of our time in the country and he went off to get the car. With the car parked in front of us these two bastards just came over and lifted out cases into the car for us, then started demanding tips. Not only that but they wanted either Euro, Dollar or Sterling. One even stuck his head in the car after the lady wife had gotten in while I was tipping his buddy.

That would have earned a swift punch to the throat under normal circumstances.

This was just the tip of the tipping iceberg (pun intended?) and it never let up. Waiters needed to be tipped, tray collectors tipped. You order a drink, tip. You get the drink brought to you, more tip. After a while you start to just carry around a bundle of notes purely for tipping people. Regardless of whether they did a good job or not. It was just expected. When we had gone on a day tour and used the washrooms before leaving the guy mopping the floor put his hand out in front of me and rubbed his fingers together for a tip. My tip was that I politely walked past him.

Least he could have done was shook my lad if he wanted a tip for doing sweet fuck all.

Manners: Despite the tipping thing grating on me, mainly for those that I would never tip in normal circumstances and not the lads that genuinely deserved a tip, there was another aspect of the trip that we both found unsettling: being waited on constantly. The people, as a whole, had fantastic manners with only a few exceptions. It was all "Please, sir" this and "Thank you madam" that for the entire trip. Which would be fine, I guess, if you had a house slave. But for us it was a little too much. Just stacking up our dirty dishes and handing them to the waiters seemed to brighten up their day. It was like we were the first white folk to ever come to the island and try to help make their job a little easier. But given that our last hotel had an insane amount of Russians staying at it, who argued over everything on a bill to try get something for free and left without tipping constantly, we most likely were the first white people that came and tried to make things easier for the hard working folk.

Tuc Tuc Guys: If ever I wanted to kill somebody by beating them to death with their own skull it was the tuc tuc (being a little three wheeled death trap on the roads) drivers in our last hotel. Now the lady wife will probably say that I am being too hard on them. They do, after all, have to try and earn a crust. Which is fine. But they are some pushy bastards who just don't take no for an answer. The last hotel had a private beach area out the back, which was great for just chilling in and readying a book under the shade. The tuc tuc guys were not allowed beyond a little stone wall that separated pool area from sand.

A wall that they marched along constantly in an attempt to rope you in.

Our guide had warned us to not have any dealings with them at all in the final hotel, saying that they sometimes did things that you usually see in a Harrison Ford movie were he is pretty Frantic about his missing wife. We had decided that this last hotel was going to be a restful stay anyway, never leaving the pool area, and figured we would heed the guide and just ignore the tuc tuc guys. I told herself that when they were in ear shot we would only speak in Irish, even if it was bad and actually made no sense. Ten minutes after sitting down we had our first attack. Up he comes like some snake in the sand and starts calling to us. Straight away I just said, in Irish, that we didn't speak English and thanks very much. Twenty minutes later after trying to sell us everything he could think of and being called a "a stupid fox with a jumper in the sky" he gave up.

Only to try again an hour later, this time with German. Again we used Irish to tell him we weren't bothered and this worked a little faster this time.

That is until he got clever. Without me spotting he slipped a few rupees to a hotel staff member, who came over to us both and checked if everything was okay and could he get us anything. We both had no need of anything, told him everything was great, and off he went. Which meant that the tuc tuc twat now knew that we spoke English, so in he went for the kill.

Again we just didn't give him an inch as he tried to get us to buy a massage trip off him for the following day. He finally decided to play his trump card and declared that "How can you be staying in this hotel, nobody speaks the language you are using here. You must speak something else".

Ah Mister Tuc Tuc driver, when they invented bastards I was the one they used as the template. I told him thanks for the milk and we left to go for dinner.

The Great Tea Conspiracy: This last one could almost be an entry in itself. We visited a tea plantation and had a tour of the processing plant and got to taste some of the different blends. It was actually really interesting stuff, which I didn't think it would be if I am being honest. During one part of the tour the woman explained how they sell their leaves to all major brands and started listing them off. What myself and the lady wife noticed was that Barry's and Lyons were mentioned. So we asked what type of tea each buys.

"Oh we don't sell specific tea to one or the other," the nice lady said. "Many companies buy from us in bulk. They put into boxes and bags and then put their branding on it."

That's right, the age old debate had by tea drinkers for years about which brand was better. The stupid crap you have to listen to when somebody says "Oh I'd love a cup of tea, but only if you have Barry's!". The -insert other tea debate here- that goes on around the country. Is all bullshit. The tea in the Barry's box comes from the exact same bushes as the one in the Lyons box.

So be warned. Any whore who tries that shit with me from this day forth will be force fed the tea until it is just brewing straight in their stomach.

Blue_jester

<--end of instaGram Feed-->