Welcome To Resplendent Fucking Lanka

 The first thing I saw in Sri Lanka was a large blue sign that read:

POSSESSION OF ILLEGAL DRUGS

CARRIES DEATH PENALTY

Some five minutes later I saw the sign

WELCOME TO SRI LANKA

ENJOY YOUR STAY

They sure do know how to greet people.

It has been a week since I left India, and I have to tell you, Sri Lanka is... different. I haven't seen a cow in days and not one person has even suggested that I should try their fabulous goat meat curry. When you order chicken here, you receive.... chicken. Not some thick bowl of hot slop with an anatomically impossible amount of chicken bones within, but actual, tender pieces of spiced chicken. Rather than say, run over my foot while parking, rickshaw drivers here sometimes actually slow down to let pedestrians cross busy traffic. Whereas in northern India it at first took me about three weeks to get a local girl to so much as say hello, in Sri Lanka I walked away with some digits within 24 hours. In the central bazaar of Colombo, policemen ensure that drivers, cart-pushing coolies, and everyone else stay in their lanes of traffic, and seem to take it personally when some asshole forces them to unfuck a traffic jam. The soldiers patrolling every other corner of downtown with their AK's are just delighted to stop their rounds and chat you up, and as yet not one of the approximately 80,000 people who've asked me where I'm from have tried to use that as a way to lure me into a souvenir shop.

And, ladies and gentlemen, they serve beef.

Now, one would suspect I'm finding things much on the up? Wrong. Maybe I would be, if Sri Lanka wasn't so enthusiastically responding to India's demands that I suffer a miserable and/or unlikely death overseas.

Attempted murder #1, and the main reason I've spent so long in Colombo is related to visiting the doctor and being whisked off to the hospital for "acute gastroenteritis". Good. I've already dealt with fucking dysentery on this trip once and giardiasis twice, so it's nice to mix things up a bit.

Attempted murder #2: walking out of the hospital in a half-conscious haze, going a few blocks, and then discovering a blind man was accompanying me, I lost what little concentration I had, and almost got hit (again) by a bus. This wouldn't have been half as maddening if there wasn't also a blind man present who apparently avoids buses with much greater aplomb.

So, Sri Lanka, I see how it is. You want to throw down the glove as well? Fine. If it's a battle you want it's a battle you have. If I may offer a word.... don't bring a knife to a gun fight, and don't bring gastroenteritis and public transportation to a pimp juice showdown.

IT. IS. ON.