BANGKOK TO SRI LANKA

11 April, 2004

9:10 Bangkok Time: Waiting at gate 33 to get aboard the flight no. 307 to Sri Lanka. Had my dinner at KFC. I am full now. Wifi Internet cards are sold here. I only need a wifi-LAN card to get access to that. The prepaid card usage charges are 250 Baht for 1 hour. Pretty steep. Wifi is still costly in this part of the world. I am now proceeding to my flight.

9:30 I started towards the queue. Fortunately I found out that the person next to me is Pawan, my Nepalese counterpart. We are both heading for the same conference and he is my roommate in Sri Lanka. He is a nice chap and we managed to sit together in the flight.

We chatted al along the way. He is an introvert type of guy and is critic of the current Nepalese political situation. Many days in a month are wasted because of strike calls by the Maoists, who want the end of monarchy in Nepal. We both came to a conclusion that the political leaders in all the countries of this region, except Bhutan are simply taking their country to ruins.

12 April, 2004

00:00 we landed safely in Colombo. Thai is punctual like ever. Colombo Airport is no match if compared to Bangkok Airport. There was a pickup arrangement for us by the hotel and we reached late at night. There are cottage rooms for us with Air-condition and TV and 3 star facilities. The TV had only one channel working which was an Italian channel.

We freshened up and chatted for sometimes before going to sleep. We enjoyed the place with lots of greenery surroundings except for two moments: 1) A six inches long scorpion like insect crawled past our beds in the night. And 2) A bee went crazy in the toilet while I was in.