Sri Lanka First Impressions - Colombo Vlog 🇱🇰

I'm in Sri Lanka right now and I've been here for five full weeks. In this video I'm going to show you my first impressions of Sri Lanka from my first day here and my first impressions of Colombo. Guys, I just arrived in Sri Lanka and I got out of the airport that's close to Colombo like 20 minutes ago and this was the smoothest immigration process I've ever been through. They barely looked at my passport. There were so many forms and stuff that I had to fill out to come here for COVID and they didn't even check like any of them almost. After getting out I also got a SIM card from the airport that was a pretty good price. It was like 2000 Sri Lankan rupees or 10 US dollars for a month and 20 gigabytes. And I also got some cash out of the ATM because apparently there's a good ATM here and I didn't want to exchange my money at the airport because you get terrible rates for that. So now I'm outside. Right in front of the airport is this Buddhist temple and I was going to take a train to Colombo because it's still like 30 kilometers out from here but looks like the next train is in like three hours so I'm just going to try to catch a bus. So I'm getting a tuk-tuk to the bus station for 200 rupees. This is so hot! So guys I'm on a bus with AC which is a really nice change from the heat and humidity outside. And the bus ticket to Colombo was like 200 but I had to pay an extra 200 for my big ass backpack. Okay so that bus took like 45 minutes and dropped me off right in the middle of Colombo next to this floating market actually that's pretty popular. So the three most commonly spoken languages in Sri Lanka are Sinhalese, Tamil and English. So it's funny whenever you see a sign you see the name of the place or whatever in all three languages. And I think I'm going to have to get a tuk-tuk to go to my hostel. Getting in a tuk-tuk with these bags are kind of tricky. So I've arrived at my hostel. This hostel is really really nice and it costs like $10 per night and I got bottom bunk because there's no one else in this room yet except for me and this French woman over there. And there's a super sick rooftop. So I definitely want to see Colombo a bit more but first thing's first I need to exchange some dollars and get some money. Are you open? How much is the rate for US dollars? 203. Okay I'll get 200 US dollars in Sri Lankan rupees. So thank you is Aibo. Sri Lanka is Aibo. It's always important to learn basic words like thank you in a language, in a country I mean. But I guess I don't really know if that was Tamil or Sinhalese. So I just exchanged like $200 for cash and usually I prefer to like not travel with cash but I had to in this case because I was coming from Bangladesh and as you might know it's kind of tricky to move money in and out of Bangladesh at times. By the way if you're a Bangladeshi who's living abroad and are going through hassles just to send money back home to family I highly recommend trying out this app called TapTapSend. TapTapSend is a very simple app that allows you to send money easily from the US, UK, Canada or Europe to Bangladesh. There's a lot of good reasons to use TapTapSend. The first one is that there's like no transaction fees, zero transaction fees for transferring any amount. The second is that they have great exchange rates. They also have quick delivery times. Another ridiculous one is that you can transfer your money directly to your bank account back home in Bangladesh or directly to a Bcash account. And last but not least I've been talking to the guys there and they've offered a promo code OTG for me on the go. If you use that promo code you get like a 10 credit bonus on your first transaction. So if you're in the US you'll get a $10 credit. If you're in Canada you get a 10 Canadian dollar credit. If you're in Britain you get a 10 pound credit and in Europe you get 10 euros. So if you happen to need to send money back home and you haven't used TapTapSend yet make sure you check that out and use this promo code. It's starting to get dark but I finally have some money which means I can go and get some Sri Lankan food. Behind me that's the very famous clock tower. I read about this place earlier before I came to Sri Lanka but I didn't know I was going to walk right past it. Something really interesting is that everywhere else I've been in South Asia like India and Bangladesh the police are kind of very iffy about letting people film in a lot of places. And so far from like the two or three cops I've seen or met it feels like it's the exact opposite here. The cops are actually welcoming me and like pulling me aside and telling me like oh yeah film here, film here. Which is I guess how it is in a lot of countries but not usually in South Asia from my experience. But this is good for travel vloggers at least. Also there's like a ridiculous number of really tall buildings here and skyscrapers. Feels like I'm in Kuala Lumpur again. So yesterday was a bit interesting. I was set out looking for Sri Lankan food and then I realized I'm in this very fancy neighborhood that doesn't have any local Sri Lankan food that I like and I ate Burger King and it was terrible and expensive and I don't know why I did that. So today I'm going to try it out again and find some good food. But first let me tell you a little bit about the history of this place and the neighborhood. This place has been a big trading post for like more than 2,000 years and for the longest time starting from like around the 8th century Colombo was ruled by or Colombo was controlled by Arab merchants. Then in the 15th century the Portuguese came and sort of colonized the place and they built a fort here which is no longer here but that's why this whole neighborhood is called the Fort District. Then the Dutch came and sort of re-colonized the place and replaced the Portuguese and then they built their own fort and they tore down the fort that the Portuguese had and then the British came and they also tore down the Dutch fort and built their own military barracks and then after that like in the 1970s the people of Sri Lanka tore down the military barracks and they built the World Trade Center behind me right here and this is the financial center of Colombo. So this is a very fancy place so don't come out here if you're trying to find cheap local or street food. It's so hot right now that it's literally painful to be wearing jeans with my outfit but I have to because I need my pockets to carry all this stuff. Right now I'm walking to this building which is probably the most interesting looking building at least to me in Colombo. There are a lot of these little shops on the streets that look like they're selling almost souvenir like elephant paintings and all but I don't think this is for tourists because this is not like a touristy area shop if you know what I mean. Okay, so I'm in this neighborhood where it looks like every shop is a flower shop. Okay, right behind me that's the famous Jami-ul-Azhar mosque with the infamous candy cane architecture on the pillars and everything else. I'm gonna try to go and see if I can get inside. This is not that old, not that historic. It's less than a hundred years old but it's definitely one of a kind. I've never seen a mosque that looks like this. There's usually an entrance for visitors to go in and film and do whatever but it looks like it's closed right now for COVID so I can't really go in. I don't want to sneak in and film in a mosque when I'm not supposed to. I'm gonna try to go to another important religious building now but first I just want to try to get some food that is not burger cake. I'll get one samosa, one egg roll and one lassi. No lassi? Mango juice? Found this cute little fast food store on the side. We got the samosa, the egg roll and the juice and all this combined costs like 250 Sri Lankan rupees which is $1.25 This is really good. Egg roll is great too. This costs like 20 cents on the US dollar. Two more egg roll please. Thank you. I am so wet right now. Thank god you can't see it because I'm wearing all white. So people usually say that Sri Lanka is not as crowded as India and Bangladesh and that might be true but this is still pretty damn crowded. So I'm in front of the Ganga Ramaya Mandir which is probably the most famous temple in Colombo and a huge and gorgeous temple complex. This is a Buddhist temple. There's some sort of hymn playing in the background on like a loud speaker so I'm guessing this has something to do with the prayer though I'm not entirely sure. So in case you're wondering Sri Lanka and Colombo are both like 70% Buddhist and the rest is a mix of Hindus Christians and Muslims. This temple is interesting because it's got a mix of Indian Thai, Sri Lankan and Chinese architecture in it. This is so cool. Really glad I'm able to film this and show you all this. I'm in the second wooden building. For the last stop for today I think I'm in this place called Galle Beach Green which is this really pretty walkway right next to the ocean that's to the left of me and has got a lot of palm trees lined up right next to it. I see a lot of people come to just chill here or go on a date it seems like. I'm going to take a closer look at the ocean. Finally, I am at the Indian Ocean and I see a lot of waves which is the main reason that I'm here. It's been 13 months since I've surfed and I cannot wait to get back into it. Alright, that's it for this video heading out of Sri Lanka, going to Maritsa if I can catch this train. Like, comment, subscribe and follow me on Instagram for real time updates. I'll see you guys from Maritsa.