I spent several days in Colombo.
The most pressing reason was that I needed to renew my visa (you get 30 days when you arrive, and have to buy an extension after that). Unfortunately, because I arrived at 3 am on Sunday morning, I had some waiting to do. I basically slept and then wandered around Pettah trying to find an open Pharmacy on that day. Not too exciting.
The second day, I went shopping. I bought all sorts of inane crap I don't need--like bangles, earrings, McDonald's, and all the little things I get deprived of when I'm away from so-called civilization. I also scoured the city for necessities, like hair-loss creme, hair oil, vitamins, and other things I really did need (long backstory to that one).
I think the highlight of the day was eating a Sri Lankan Egg McMuffin. The lowlight was that I basically bled about $100.
The next day was the visa renewal. Now here's what I don't understand:
You come to Sri Lanka, and you give the man behind the counter $30 and a card with basic information about you. He gives you a receipt, then you go to the passport control area, and the controller will give you a small stamp with an expiration date on it. It takes like 15 minutes max.
When you get it renewed, you have to fill out a massive form, including a picture of yourself (which is completely inane given that the government already has my name, nationality, and passport number). If you don't have the photo, they unceremoniously kick you out. Come back tomorrow, kid (which is precisely what happened to me on Tuesday).
You give your information to the controller, photo included, and they send it back to a panel of bureaucrats in the back room. Then you wait an hour for them to issue your bill. When your number is finally called, you have to go wait in line to actually pay the visa across the room. If you have US nationality, too bad--you apparently have to pay $105 to get it renewed, despite the fact that other nationalities pay $40 or less (some pay only a few dollars).
After you've paid, they take your passport into the back room again, and you're stuck waiting another 1.5 hours for them to give you a stamp saying you can stay for another month.
Now what the hell kind of sense does that make? Why is it so easy to come through the airport and so difficult and expensive to just have someone alter a number in a database and put a stamp in your passport? What the hell? And it's so prohibitively expensive, I may as well have just dashed over to India for a night and had a better experience there. Wouldn't have cost much more just to extend my time here for 3 weeks.
Is that not the most ridiculous thing ever? Travellers be warned--show up early, bring photos and lots of cash.
And as soon as they gave me my passport back that Wednesday morning, I got the hell away from Colombo.
The most pressing reason was that I needed to renew my visa (you get 30 days when you arrive, and have to buy an extension after that). Unfortunately, because I arrived at 3 am on Sunday morning, I had some waiting to do. I basically slept and then wandered around Pettah trying to find an open Pharmacy on that day. Not too exciting.
The second day, I went shopping. I bought all sorts of inane crap I don't need--like bangles, earrings, McDonald's, and all the little things I get deprived of when I'm away from so-called civilization. I also scoured the city for necessities, like hair-loss creme, hair oil, vitamins, and other things I really did need (long backstory to that one).
I think the highlight of the day was eating a Sri Lankan Egg McMuffin. The lowlight was that I basically bled about $100.
The next day was the visa renewal. Now here's what I don't understand:
You come to Sri Lanka, and you give the man behind the counter $30 and a card with basic information about you. He gives you a receipt, then you go to the passport control area, and the controller will give you a small stamp with an expiration date on it. It takes like 15 minutes max.
When you get it renewed, you have to fill out a massive form, including a picture of yourself (which is completely inane given that the government already has my name, nationality, and passport number). If you don't have the photo, they unceremoniously kick you out. Come back tomorrow, kid (which is precisely what happened to me on Tuesday).
You give your information to the controller, photo included, and they send it back to a panel of bureaucrats in the back room. Then you wait an hour for them to issue your bill. When your number is finally called, you have to go wait in line to actually pay the visa across the room. If you have US nationality, too bad--you apparently have to pay $105 to get it renewed, despite the fact that other nationalities pay $40 or less (some pay only a few dollars).
After you've paid, they take your passport into the back room again, and you're stuck waiting another 1.5 hours for them to give you a stamp saying you can stay for another month.
Now what the hell kind of sense does that make? Why is it so easy to come through the airport and so difficult and expensive to just have someone alter a number in a database and put a stamp in your passport? What the hell? And it's so prohibitively expensive, I may as well have just dashed over to India for a night and had a better experience there. Wouldn't have cost much more just to extend my time here for 3 weeks.
Is that not the most ridiculous thing ever? Travellers be warned--show up early, bring photos and lots of cash.
And as soon as they gave me my passport back that Wednesday morning, I got the hell away from Colombo.
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