Waiting in the lounge in Singapore over the course of time I'd heard the calls for flights coming and going to places in the World: Melbourne, Ho Chi Min City, Suribaya, Kuala Lampur, Christ Church, Beijing, Namking, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Barcelona, Brunei, Bangkok, Aukland, Zurich, Sydney, Phukat, Manila, Phenom Phen, San Francisco, but the call for Suribaya would move me to wondering. The day seems long, I've been up since midnight and now it's 2:00 PM. I had a massage two hours ago hoping to unlock the pain in my middle back on the right side which has been bothering me for weeks and now going critical. It hurts even when I walk especially when I reach with either arm or twist in some way. Shiatsu. My thinking was that older folks should have Shiatsu once a week to keep the joints and ligaments pliable. No cure for me. I did feel a lot mellower though. It was $60 well spent.
I'm sitting in the lounge sipping a glass of Johnny Walker and a very nice cognac, a bottle of Sprudel Water, cheese and sweet bits of almond cake, while reading a two part article in the New Yorker about a journey across Russia and Siberia, very apropos I think. I'm getting known by the young women that run the lounge. It's hard to guess what they think of my enjoyment of the plentiful and delicious food; I'm trying not to become a boor, I think that being a government run airline allows them to run a very pleasing joint. I appreciated the following: Fruit plates with three choices of yogurt, hot dishes throughout the day, full bar, pastries, salad makings, three choices of dressing, showers, razor, tooth paste and tooth brush, cologne, combs, news papers, computers, fish in thanks and service that won't let you have a used dish sit on your table for a second use.
I still have a lot of time left before my flight. I'm losing patience and I'm getting tired, there is no place to lie down. I have to sit up in a chair. I get to pick my chair around the lounge. I decide that I will leave at 9:30 for the 10:40 flight. I am a little surprised when I got to the gate I found all dark people gathered waiting. Up to now, it was mixed peoples going and coming, now shaken out of the mix were these people, dark skinned in flowing skirts and robes, of various levels of economic levels; it caused me pause. It took me some time to shift my thinking to the reality of what lay before me. It wasn't to be an international mix of races and peoples, but a uniculture, simple in it's make-up. I didn't know what to think about this, I was apprehensive and I had been hanging in an airconditoned building with musak playing for 22 hours and I was about to move on to this new experience. I slept most of the three hour flight to Sri Lanka.
On landing and exiting the plane, I began the labyrithian journey following the baggage symbol, with more and more armed soldiers and attendants guiding the flow inward to the center. The first stop was Health Control, then immigration and then more passageways. I kept expecting to see Steve at every turn. Finally I entered a large room which was cordoned in a "L" shape, the outside of the ell was open space, the inside filled with people sitting, waiting and in the air was Steve's hand waving and his white head bobbing back and forth. He was Joy to see. He came out behind the cordon and we embraced and laughed and said "We're here!" He introduced me to Wolley, our driver for the next three weeks and off we went to our hotel, a fifteen minute drive to the town of Negombo.
Negombo looked familiar, quite like a town in Bali, Indonesia or any small East Asian town. The town was all rolled up, being mid-night my now. The Ice Bear Hotel was owned by Swiss, out the back of it, the Indian Ocean lapped against the sands and retreated.
The next morning we walked to the beach to watch the fisherman and their families ply their skills to make their living. They had already returned with their catch, their boat careened on the beach. The men were gathered at the bow of the boat sitting in the sand in a group talking, the women were gutting and washing the fish and placing them species order on long by narrow sheets of black plastic to dry in the sun. It was very picturesque, smaller whole fish side by side, end to end filling the rectangle like silver-jeweled icons. They looked like "Art" textiles. The gutted fish, the larger species were splayed open and arranged in rows similarly. There were about five or six different kinds of fish. A near-by covered shelter marked the end of the working beach where children gathered and tubs for washing were kept. The women on their knees or on their haunches arranged the fishes on the sheets, having gutted and washed the catch. A Japanese film crew were gathered at one of the fish layouts. An older Japanese man was interviewing the women it seemed, I am not sure what they were doing. The fisher people were receptive and smiling and they seemed relaxed to our interest. Our first contact made and it was vivid. We returned to the hotel for breakfast, coffee + tea, eggs, bacon, buffalo yogurt, mango, papaya, melon, tomatoes, and an orange juice Julius that took me back. We were beginning the experience and it was good.
10:30 AM, we checked out.The three young men of the hotel were attentive and talkative and were hoping we would return on our tour end, but Steve didn't humor them, he said very curtly that we would not be returning. We both tipped them and closed the doors on the van and headed North along the West Coast of Sri Lanka.
Joe James
Joe James
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