TROPICAL TOPICS, Sunday 5 February 2012
Greetings to readers everywhere. It’s my birthday on Friday 10 February and I shall be celebrating it away from home in a bungalow in the chilly hill country of Haputale.
Art Fair
Colombo’s annual Kala Pola (Art Fair) was held last Sunday with paintings and some sculptures exhibited on both sides of one of the city’s main thoroughfares. Although the road wasn’t closed to traffic, pedestrians had right of way and made the most of it, happily strolling up one side of the road and down the other, enjoying the sunshine, the street snacks, and the art.
This year there were 300 mini-marquees erected so the exhibitors had shade for showing their paintings. More people than in previous years turned up, not just Sri Lankans (including many resident overseas) but lots of foreigners too, evidence of the changing character of Colombo.
It was gratifying to see the number of people proudly bearing paintings they had purchased, again a change from other years when sales seemed sluggish. Prices for good work, however, surprised me.
The young artist who painted these two pictures that attracted me, one of the inside courtyard of an old house, the other a bar scene, asked for Rs25,000 (£ 143; US$ 227) each.
The high standard of art was pleasing. While some paintings were amateurish daubs, unimaginative copies, and student exercises, there was some charming and impressive work, including this rural scene
and a stunning still life.
This amusing sculpture was not for sale but was created by the staff of the Cinnamon Grand temporary streetside café.
Changing Colombo
After the art fair I took John, a friend of mine for 50 years who was visiting from England (he’s in the background in this photo), to the newly opened (see Newsletter 87) old Dutch Hospital complex in Colombo for lunch.
Instead of lunching in the restaurant proudly run by Sri Lankan Airlines catering service offering airline food (a curious concept), we tried a trendy-looking new café off the courtyard. Here we encountered a situation typical of new cafés, restaurants, guest houses and hotels in Sri Lanka. While the infrastructure, design, décor and cooking were top notch, the service was so inexperienced, by people pretending to know what they were doing and clearly didn’t, it was beyond a joke.
John told me he has encountered clueless service everywhere in Sri Lanka. Is it because of the boom in people eating out, resulting in not enough properly trained staff to meet the demand?
Interesting was the pricing. At the café in the Dutch Hospital complex a glass of Chilean wine cost Rs750 (£ 4.28; US$ 6.81) tax and service charge an extra 24% ; whereas a glass of the same wine at the Barefoot Garden Café on Galle Road was Rs450 (£ 2.57; $4.09) including tax and service. There was a jazz band playing in the sunshine there the whole afternoon too — and we had strawberries and cream for tea! (Rs500.)
Colombo has changed not just because of the number of new buildings going up and the foreigners strolling the streets, but in traffic too: it’s not only heavy, it’s also affluent. We were astonished to see two new beautiful Porsche cars steering carefully through the stream of reconditioned Japanese vehicles.
Scrabble in Sri Lanka
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From my friend Yasmin, who did much in her career to add sparkle and charm to the city’s five-star hotels where she worked in public relations and management, comes news of an intriguing event: Colombo’s Scrabble Bash. It’s being held on Saturday 25 February from 9.30am at the Lanka Alzheimer’s Foundation (110 Ketawalamulla Mawatha, Colombo 10) in support of Yasmin’s favourite charity, for which she works tirelessly.
Holiday Budget
A Press Association report reveals that a basket of typical holiday items, including drinks and suntan lotion, was less than £ 28 (Rs 4,900; US$ 42.24) in Sri Lanka according to a survey by the British Post Office Travel Money. The same eight items, including a three-course evening meal for two, were as much as £113 in Barbados.
Without knowing just what were the eight items, it’s impossible to say if that holiday budget is wishful thinking. Sri Lanka, new visitors be warned, is NOT cheap. I wonder where it is possible in Sri Lanka to get a tourist-standard three course meal for two for £28 (including the tax & service of 24%), let alone a further seven items?
Bar Report
One amenity lacking on the west coast of Sri Lanka where I live, between Colombo and Galle, is a decent cocktail bar, or even an indecent one. Not like Negombo, on the west coast north of the airport, where there are several lively cocktail bars with counters and bar stools for dedicated drinkers, and a lively promise of fun.
Even Hikkaduwa, supposed to be a happening resort (it began life in the 1970s as a hangout for hippies) has not surfed into a contemporary world with a bar offering thirsty holiday makers who aren’t confined to package hotels, a merry evening. The best is Refresh, where – although cocktails are available at Rs890 (£5.08, US$8.09) each, plus 10 service charge — drinkers have to sit at tables in the restaurant instead of congregating around a jolly bar counter.
Even so, Neel and I enjoyed Blue Margaritas. (But we could only have afforded one between the two of us if we were trying to live within that Post Office budget!)
For more on Sri Lanka, see my Bradt guidebook, available through http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sri-Lanka-Bradt-Travel-Guides/dp/1841623466/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325554345&sr=8-1 or direct from http://www.bradtguides.com/Book/198/Sri-Lanka.
Beat regards
Royston Ellis
