Besides the 18 cities I’m visiting on this trip to scout out as prospective future homes, I’m staying a couple of nights here and there in “layover” cities. These are places that intrigue me but didn’t quite make the cut, and/or cities that are situated in a convenient location to rest for a bit to break up a long leg of travel.

My rule (another one of my “red lines” for this trip — I’ll lay them all out in a future blog post) for layovers is: no one-night stands. Even in layover cities, I give myself at least one full day there to explore.

Colombo, Sri Lanka is one of these. Sri Lanka’s only real international airport is in Colombo’s suburbs, so it’s easier to stay here for a night or two (three, in this case) to make hopping on a plane and heading to Europe logistically a little bit easier. It’s a vastly larger city (753,000 in the city proper; 5.6 million metro) than Kandy and so, I thought, would present a rather different Sri Lankan experience.

Once again, stymied in my quest for an elusive reserved seat on a Sri Lankan train, I bought a standing-room only second-class ticket.

This time, however, I took my time and asked a station attendant to point out the second-class cars. It turns out, on my way here, I bought a second-class ticket but actually rode in a third-class train car. At first, I thought, “wow, second class is way better than third class! I’m still standing, but it’s so much less crowded!”

And I had one of those inexplicable moments of joy again. I just felt goodwill toward everyone on the train. I even felt like chatting with strangers, which usually doesn’t happen to me without two or three drinks on an empty stomach. I talked to a British backpacker, who, it turned out, had got on the wrong train. (After he left, I double-checked with the locals on the train. Yes, this train is going to Colombo. The trains don’t have destinations or train numbers posted, so it’s easy to get on the wrong one.) Then I put on the Bluetooth earphones that I bought in Taiwan (“開機” [“booting up”] a chipper-sounding Chinese woman’s voice says each time I turn them on) and listened to an audiobook to kill time.

Well, unlike the train from Colombo to Kandy, the train from Kandy to Colombo just gets more crowded as you approach the capital. By the halfway point, I decided that no, second class really is almost exactly the same as third class. There are individual seats rather than benches, which didn’t matter to me since I was standing anyway, and I think there’s one more fan (three vice two) in each car. But otherwise, it’s the exact same experience.

But, my expectations were sufficiently lowered by my last train trip that I didn’t mind too much standing for the entire three and a half hours. Even when the battery on my Bluetooth headphones died (低電 “low battery,” the cheerful Chinese woman in my ear warned, followed by 關機，斷開連結 “shutting down, connection severed” 30 minutes later) and I lost my in-flight entertainment. It was actually kind of fun to watch the young men hanging out the sides of the train. Sri Lankan train cars have entryways, but no doors, so it’s possible (and necessary, if the train is packed) for people to lean out of the doorways. Young men lean out beyond the train, the wind blowing and puffing up their hair and shirts. You can see one of them hanging out of the side of the train in the window of the photo above. Someday I am going to try that.

After nearly four hours, the train finally made it to Colombo. I grabbed my backpack and my newly purchased man-purse from the overhead racks (the man-purse’s shoulder strap swung down and whipped me directly in the eyeball as I pulled it down; my right eye was bloodshot for three days afterward) and made my way to my hotel, not too far from the train station, ignoring all of the usual auto-rickshaw (tuk-tuk) taxi drivers offering me rides. (One of my rules for this trip is: no solo taxi rides. If I can find another person or people to split it with, OK, but otherwise I’m using mass transit only.)

My first look at my lodgings, the City Hotel, filled me with dismay.

My first steps inside only intensified that feeling.

I knew from the “3/F” in the place’s address that this wouldn’t be a nice hotel with a reception desk right there as you walk in from the street, as I had enjoyed in Taiwan. But this was downright grimy. “I hope Sri Lanka doesn’t have earthquakes,” I told myself, “because this place isn’t going to survive any shaking.” I reached the third-floor landing without seeing anything that resembled a reception desk. Today happened to be a full moon poya day, which is a Buddhist holiday. I began to get concerned that the hotel was closed. I find it impossible to take a holiday seriously if it happens every month, but Sri Lankans take their poya days very seriously.

I descended back down to the street. As I did so, a tuk-tuk pulled up and a European couple got out. I figured correctly that they were also checking in to the City Hotel and followed them up. As it turns out, in British English, the first floor of a building is called the ground floor, effectively floor zero. The next floor up, which would be the second floor in the U.S., is called the first floor, and so on. So my problem earlier was that I’d pulled up a floor too short. There was indeed a tiny reception desk there on the third British floor, and after the French couple ahead of me checked in, I did the same. And I was pleasantly surprised.

Just goes to show you, don’t judge a book by its cover! The room (I got a free upgrade to a double, as the owner informed me the single I’d reserved had flooded, probably during the same torrential rain shower that hit Kandy the day before) was no-frills, with one notable exception, but it had everything I needed.

And so I had a few days to explore Colombo. That first afternoon, I just wanted to get some food into my belly quickly, so on my first circuit of the neighborhood, I popped into “Hotel No. 1” — remember a “hotel” is a cheap restaurant here — and got a plate of curry rice, the go-to Sri Lankan lunch.

This place was definitely a dive for locals, the equivalent of truck stop food. A bunch of tuk-tuk drivers popped in and got cups of tea while I was in there. I ordered from English menus mostly in Kandy and so got the non-spicy versions of things, but I got a full dose of Sri Lankan spiciness with this dish. I kept having to swat flies off of the plate. A gaunt stray cat walked in and meowed pitifully until one of the proprietors shooed it away.

Walking my meal off afterward, I began to experience some distress in my stomach. I hoped it was just the spiciness and not a reflection of the level of sanitation of the food. And after a short while, my stomach settled down, so I concluded it was the former. My traveler’s diarrhea-free streak remains intact! I think probably I built up an immunity to unsanitary food while I was gorging myself on street food in Taipei.

On 1 May, my first full day in the city, I walked from my hotel in Pettah District to the nearby historic Fort District. As always in Sri Lanka, Westerners walking anywhere are greeted by stares from passersby and solicitations from tuk-tuk drivers. By this point, it didn’t bother me too much, but I still found it draining.

Sri Lanka travel tip no. 1: Westerners arriving in Colombo for the first time should stay in Fort, not in Pettah. Fort is the government and business center of Colombo and features all these lovely, restored colonial buildings.

More importantly, Fort — particularly the cavernous insides of many of these restored colonial buildings — is much less crowded than Pettah. I wandered into the old Cargills Main Store building — Cargills was a British colonial department store chain in Sri Lanka and is still in business — which includes a small modern Cargills supermarket, a liquor store, and a snack stand, but is mostly just empty space. I bought some snacks for lunch and just enjoyed being in the nice, cool shade in a non-crowded place.

Afterward, I walked back to my hotel in Pettah. Pettah is blue-collar Colombo. If you want to get a sense of how life is like for most people in this city, it’s worth spending some time in Pettah. And if you want a “bazaar” experience, the Federation of Self Employees Market in Pettah is the place to go. But I wouldn’t recommend staying there. Like I said, I can only handle Sri Lanka in small doses. Pettah is a shovelful of Sri Lanka.

And so I settled back into my pattern from Kandy: I’d go out for just an hour or two a day to get lunch and do a bit of exploring, and then spend the rest of my time in my room, blogging and travel planning.

I booked my original air tickets from Sri Lanka to my next destination, Spain, last fall, with Ukraine International Airlines. Sri Lanka travel tip no. 2: Don’t book a ticket on Ukraine International Airlines’ Colombo-Kiev flight. They made two major schedule changes, forcing me to rearrange my travel. Finally, a few days before my flight was scheduled to take off, they cancelled the flight entirely and booked me on a red-eye flight out of Colombo with Turkish Airlines. All in all, I ended up staying an extra two days in Colombo at the expense of two days in València, Spain. Not a great trade-off, if you ask me. But I made good use of the extra time, booking hotels and bus tickets for subsequent destinations and getting mostly caught up on my blog.

Next stop: ¡España!