The Downside of Travel in Sri Lanka: Flamingo Balancing Acts, Jewel Scams, and the Fall of Lonely Planet
- Rand Blimes
- May 4
- 9 min read
We had spent a wonderful seven months in Southeast Asia, starting in Singapore, working our way north through Malaysia, spending three months with me leading a semester abroad trip in Bangkok and northern Thailand, almost a month in Laos, and then another month split between northern and southern Thailand. But our visa for Thailand was almost up.
We managed to stick around in Thailand just long enough to catch the premier of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (since the daughters and I are Star Wars fans, and we didn’t know what the movie theaters would be like in Sri Lanka—but they are great in Bangkok).
Expectations: Curry, Surf, and a Gentle Landing
I was really excited to visit Sri Lanka for a couple of reasons. The first was Sri Lanka itself. I looked forward to wandering through the walled coastal city of Galle, surfing the breaks near Mirissa, looking for spouting blue whales, and (maybe above all) being able to eat curry for breakfast. (Curry is a traditional breakfast food in Sri Lanka, which seemed like a brilliant cultural choice to me.)
Other travelers I had met loved Sri Lanka, and it was certainly a favorite with many of the travel blogs I read.
But I was also excited because Sri Lanka would make a nice transition from Southeast Asia to India. We had spent a lot of time in Thailand, and while it is still a developing country, the travel and tourism infrastructure there is razor sharp. Getting around Thailand is easy, even with the language barrier.
Anyone could show up in Thailand and, with a bit of tenacity and patience, find food, shelter, and all varieties of entertainment just fine.
But India . . . I expected India to be a challenge. Opaque bureaucracy. Maximum chaos. Supersized poverty.
Sri Lanka, we read, had some of that—but it was easier to navigate and less overwhelming than India. It would be our training wheels for the subcontinent.
Perfect.
Spoiler alert: it didn’t turn out that way.
A Month of Monotony (Cause Even Good Curry Gets Tiresome)
At first, the food was a great. We did have curry for breakfast, and it was good curry.
We discovered kottu—day-old roti chopped up and fried with vegetables, chilies, and whatever else was lying around. What fried rice is to leftover rice, kottu is to leftover roti. Genius.
Then there was deviled, a sweet and spicy dish made with pork or fish.
And of course, the backpacker favorite: hoppers. Bowl-shaped pancakes paired with curry or sambals.
For a while, it was glorious.
Until it wasn’t.
These were pretty much the only good dishes we found. Grilled seafood? Overcooked and overpriced. International food? A sad, soggy disappointment. Eventually, even the once-glorious kottu became culinary Groundhog Day. We had stumbled into that rarest of travel dilemmas: the monotony of great food.
Over-Promise, Under-Deliver: A National Motto?
Every hotel promised hot water. They didn’t have it.
Every guesthouse promised fast internet. It was more like fossilized internet.
The excuse? Always the same:
"Oh, the previous guests used up all the hot water/internet/breathable oxygen."
We heard some form of this excuse from every last hotel we stayed at.
Every. Last. Hotel.
Scam Nostalgia: The Jewel Con Returns
When I started reading about travel in the 1980s, the old “jewels scam” was already a classic—practically enshrined in the sacred texts of backpacker lore. It went something like this: a friendly, conspiratorial stranger would sidle up to you in the street (because of course he would—where else do great cons begin?). He’d lean in with the air of someone about to reveal a great universal truth and explain in hushed tones that he had in his possession a set of precious jewels worth thousands of dollars. He needed to get them to his uncle, or cousin, or lover—or some other obliging family member whose relationships seemed flexible depending on the con artist’s mood—in the U.S. (or wherever you were from).
But alas! [sniffle, sniffle] There was a hitch in the plan. The poor man—who until recently had seemed like the kind of fellow you’d entrust with your deepest secrets—did not possess an export license for the jewels.
Then, as if you could almost see the lightbulb spring to life over his head (Edison would have been proud), he’d say:
"Hey! I have an idea! Why don’t you buy these jewels from me for . . . oh, let’s say . . . $500? You take them back home in your backpack, and my uncle/cousin/lover will come to you and pay you $2,000 for the jewels. Look at that! You’ll make $1,500 just by carrying a few shiny rocks through customs! Lucky you!"
If you were silly—or delightfully naïve—enough to hand over the money, no uncle/cousin/lover would ever appear. And if you took the jewels to an appraiser, he would frown gently and tell you that your newly acquired treasure was about as valuable as aquarium gravel.
And you’d be out $500.
That was the scam.
I thought everyone knew about this scam by now. I thought it had gone the way of fanny packs, travelers cheques, and Lonely Planet guidebooks written by people who actually went to the places they wrote about. Surely, the jewel scam had died out—been given a dignified burial.
But as I stood on the streets of Galle, a man approached me. He was chatty. Friendly. Disarmingly pleasant. I engaged him because I have a weakness for these things—the sort of weakness that usually ends in either a good story or a lost wallet.
Slowly. Subtly. Skillfully. He began weaving into the conversation the fact that he was in possession of some precious jewels he wished to export to the U.S.
Wait... was this man trying to work the jewel scam on me?
He started to make his pitch.
Yes! He was.
I was giddy. Absolutely giddy. It was like a birdwatcher stumbling upon the last living dodo. A piece of history, still alive in the wild!
Naturally, I played along. I went to his shop. I examined his jewels with a discerning eye (which is to say, I looked at them while trying not to burst out laughing). I told him they were very nice indeed, and that I would be thrilled to help him out.
He gave me a price.
I nodded gravely and told him that the price sounded perfectly reasonable. But alas, I would need to go to my bank to get the cash.
He told me that he liked me—which I had now learned was the universal signal that a scammer is sure he’s about to close the deal. Because he liked me, he would hold the jewels just for me. Other tourists, he explained, were likely to beat down his door, desperate to seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But he would tell them no. Because he liked me.
I shook his hand. I told him I would return.
Then I got on a train and left Galle.
Feeling immensely lucky to have witnessed such a magnificent relic of the travel scam museum come to life before my very eyes.
The Stress of Getting Around Sri Lanka
The tuk tuk driver who whisked us from the train station to our very first hotel in Sri Lanka greeted us warmly and then, without a trace of irony, issued a solemn warning:"The people of Sri Lanka are great . . . except for tuk tuk drivers."
Wait. Aren’t you a tuk tuk driver?
"Well, you should be wary of other tuk tuk drivers. I like you."
Of course.
Now, I am no stranger to the world’s slightly sketchy tuk tuk drivers. I’ve danced that dance in Bangkok, Siem Reap, Delhi, and a dozen other places where meters are mere decorations and price agreements are more of a starting suggestion.
But Sri Lanka? Sri Lanka took it to a new level.
Frankly, I should have expected it. This was, after all, a land where the jewel scam still roamed the streets like some Jurassic-era predator. Why not add tuk tuk shenanigans to the list?
Every single tuk tuk driver we used attempted the same ritual of trying to renegotiate the fare halfway to the destination.
Every. Single. Driver.
(Even that first one—the one who "liked me." Though, to his credit, his efforts were only mildly aggressive.)
We never got into a tuk tuk without agreeing firmly, solemnly, and repeatedly on a price. Yet, like clockwork, halfway through the journey, the driver would glance back with that well-practiced look of sorrow and say that the fare we’d agreed upon was, tragically, insufficient. He wanted more.
I am generally tolerant of low-wage earners trying to hustle a little extra. Travel, after all, is partly about encountering the informal economies of the world. But the Sri Lankan tuk tuk drivers had elevated the mid-ride renegotiation to an art form that went well past acceptable and into the realm of intimidation.
Some shouted.
One, in a particularly inspired display of theatrics, threatened to stop the tuk tuk in the middle of nowhere and eject us into the dusty abyss.
At that moment, we were lucky that we had genetics on our side.
I happen to be a large male, with a good eight inches of height advantage over our would-be extortionist. He attempted to physically intimidate us, but I’m not prone to backing down when the safety of my family is at stake. I made it clear—politely, but with unmistakable firmness—that if he followed through on his physical threats, I would defend myself and my family. Vigorously.
The driver grumbled for the rest of the ride, fuming like a teakettle just shy of boiling, and sped away the moment he dropped us off.
That was the worst driver. But make no mistake: all of them tried to renegotiate halfway through the ride. All of them.
It got tiresome. Deeply tiresome.
And yet, the tuk tuks—those sputtering, unreliable chariots of Sri Lanka—still caused us less suffering than the trains.
The Sri Lankan Express: A Masterclass in Human Origami
I have never, in all my travels, encountered trains as crowded as some of those in Sri Lanka.
The train to Ella was the pinnacle—or perhaps the nadir—of this experience. This journey had been billed as a beautifully scenic ride, the kind of pastoral glide through emerald hills that fills Instagram feeds and tourism brochures.
Instead, it redefined my understanding of the word “crowded.”
We were packed in so tightly that at no point was I touching fewer than eight people. Eight! I counted.
At some point—because my knee was staging a small but determined rebellion—I lifted one foot off the floor to flex it, thinking I’d give it a merciful moment’s reprieve. Just a second or two. But in those fleeting seconds, the seething, heaving mass of humanity shifted.
When I tried to put my foot back down, the floor had vanished. Not literally, of course. But where once there had been a modest patch of floor beneath my toes, there was now only a tightly packed mosaic of strangers’ shoes, ankles, and wayward flip-flops.
And so, for what felt like an eternity—but was probably only about five minutes—I balanced like a flamingo amid the sweltering crush of the Sri Lankan express. One foot aloft, dignity entirely abandoned, clinging to the overhead rail not as a convenience, but as a desperate lifeline.
Lonely Planet Lied to Me
“Sometimes there’s no way to get a seat on the slow but oh-so-popular train to Ella, but with a prime standing-room-only spot looking out at the rolling carpet of tea, who cares?”
-Lonely Planet Sri Lanka Travel Guide
Now, Lonely Planet had assured me—promised me!—that even if I were stuck standing on the train to Ella, the breathtaking views out the window would more than compensate for any discomfort.
Nope. Not at all.
The windows were positioned low enough that anyone over about four feet tall could see nothing but the gravel and scrub immediately beside the tracks.
It was the moment when the fall of Lonely Planet became personal. I realized, with creeping certainty, that the person who had written about the train to Ella had not, in fact, ridden the train to Ella. Or at least they had not been relegated to the packed standing area. If they had, they would have known better.
A Final Note
While we struggled in Sri Lanka, I want to make it very clear that we seem to be in the minority. Most people I know who have visited the country loved it. Please don't let this post deter you from visiting if you wish to go.
Go see for yourself. Maybe there is just something about me that attracted the scammers. We were in Sri Lanka for Christmas, and maybe the trains would be less crowded at other times of year.
And even if your experience ends up just like mine, it will still be a growing, learning experience.
Epilogue: Because Travel
For my part, I learned—yet again—that my adventures are not always fun stories. Because travel, I lost just a little bit of trust in Lonely Planet, tuk tuk drivers, and a wide assortment of uncles, cousins, and lovers.
On the other hand, I did gain the ability to balance stoically on one foot amid a tsunami of humanity, which seems like a worthwhile life skill.
Comentários