After around a 4 hour flight of so from Dubai, we reached Colombo at 3 am. Thankfully, I had arranged before hand with our hostel to pick us up. So, upon our sleepy arrival, a man named Ali was waiting for us to take us to our guest-house for the night. I had listened to all the advice colomns on Sri Lanka and decided that we would forgoe staying in Colombo, opting to move straight onto Negombo. By around 4 am, we had offically arrived at Fire Dragon Guest House, where the friendly owner Hassan kindly awoke from his sleep to welcome us and show us to our room and a few of the ammenities. After traveling for like 2 days (because of our cheap flights), we ended up sleeping pretty late. But, we did get up in time to still go see Negombo. With the excitement of our new adventure at shore, we rented bikes and headed out for a day tour- seeing for ourselves what Negombo was all about.

At first sight, we could tell how arresting Sri Lanka was going to be. By bike, we saw small street vendors, jungly canals, trash burning, art in forms of women’s fashion, sarongs for men, lottery tunes, fish markets, trading, coconut water for sale, stray dogs and cats in the masses, and seriously everyone we encountered saying a genuine hello.

Sri Lanka, I felt, was going to show us who she was, as long as we were ready to take the plunge.