The Grandest Oriental Hotel

As Sri Lanka's international airport is at Colombo, we landed there and covered Edward's route in a different direction to him. He landed at Galle, travelled north to Colombo, inland to Kandy and then back by the same route to Galle whereas we went from Colombo to Galle, up through the mountains by bus and train to Kandy and then back on the train to Colombo.

In Colombo, Edward stayed at the Royal Hotel which as far as I can ascertain was replaced by the GPO in the 1890s. A photo showing the mail coach, by which Edward travelled up from Galle, can be found on a pinterest site called NILAN's Beautiful Sri Lanka. Thanks to my abysmal technical skills I failed to upload the photo but if you're interested you can google it yourself.

We had booked a room in the Grand Oriental Hotel which is also in Colombo Fort and claims to be the first European style hotel in Sri Lanka.The site was originally the Dutch Governors residence which was extended in 1837 to become barracks for the British military. In 1875 it was further rebuilt and opened as the Grand Oriental Hotel with 154 rooms. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was the place to stay in Colombo and claims a number of Asian leaders and other celebrities such as Anton Chekov, as former guests.Today other more modern hotels have taken the mantle of Colombo's finest but the Grand Oriental is still a nice place to stay with an air of the faded Raj and thus ideal for us to get a feel of Edward's experience.

The Grand Oriental Hotel 

In Edward's day it appears that Colombo was essentially Fort, based on the old Dutch fort and where all the Europeans lived, and the adjoining area of Pettah which was where the Sri Lankans lived. Once outside of those areas you were into the hinterlands, whereas today, Fort and Pettah are just the downtown centre of a huge, sprawling metropolis. Edward visited cinnamon gardens in Colombo which were presumably where the suburb of Cinnamon Gardens are today, a couple of kilometers from the centre of town. We took a tuk tuk, 3 wheeler down to the National Museum there which is located at the edge of Colombo's largest parklands, Viharamahadevi Park. The museum was well set out with a huge range of relics from all periods of Sri Lankan history and a good place to get an overview of that history.

We walked back from the Museum up along the coast and through Galle Face Green, built like an English beachfront promenade, in 1859, just after Edward was here. Colombo's appeal as a tourist destination is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that Galle Face Green consistently appears in lists of "Things to do in Colombo" but it is a barren, shadeless, windswept area where the grass is struggling to survive. It was too sad for me even to take a photo.

In the evening, like Edward we ventured into Pettah but unlike him we didn't stumble on any local entertainments. He came across a performance, which continued till midnight, consisted of a sort of morris dance with sticks, but not involving any great display of skill or activity. The dance was accompanied with songs and music produced from a violin and a Malay drum beaten with the fingers. Edward found the music pleasing and the novelty of the whole scene...interesting and agreeable. For our part we just found streets and alleys full of the usual bustling commerce of Asia. Endless shops and stalls selling all kinds of food, household items, clothes, tools, bags etc etc. Edward mentions tasting mangoes which he thought had a flavour of turpentine and anything but nice whereas we had mangoes on several occasions which while smaller than Australian mangoes, were just as nice and considerably cheaper.

High Jinks on the High Seas

After leaving Albany on the Madras, it took Edward nearly two weeks to reach his next destination, Galle on the south coast of Ceylon. For us, travelling by car to Perth, and then the following day by plane to Colombo it took just over two days.

After the storm mentioned in my last post, the trip became a languid cruise, the most exciting occurrence being the identifcation of a midnight rambler, who had been periodically invading the single ladies cabins and groping the residents after lights out, ever since the voyage began. The first suspect was a certain officer of the ship, who, poor wight, although a bit of a dandy and admirer of the sex, was not thought to be capable of such doings as these. However, after a determined effort to catch the offender, one of the ladies was able to observe that it was one of the Chinese cabin crew. Because these pigtailed gentry are all so much alike, she wasn't sure which Chinaman it was but eventually it was decided that it was a popular servant named Ai Youg.

Once he was pronounced guilty he was handcuffed and then attached by his pigtail to the mainmast! This was seen as the ultimate humiliation but according to Edward, preferable to any corporal punishment.This event, which one might have thought a major scandal in the puritanical Victorian times was described by Edward in terms of detached humour and almost as a case of "boys being boys".However, as the voyage was ending three of the passengers, a lawyer, a soldier and a priest who Edward later described as law, war and divinity circulated a letter casting much censure upon the officers, and calling in question the treatment of the crew, and general management of the ship, calling on other to sign it in support.

A man of authority himself, Edward clearly took a dim view of this do-goodery and clearly wasn't about to lend his signature to the letter. Finding little support the authors of the letter re-wrote it in milder terms but still got few signatures. When the Captain got wind of it, he demanded to see the letters and something of a scene took place.

Once ashore in Galle the authors of the letter, having got virtually no support for their general complaints, took up the specific cause of the mistreatment of Ai Youg and made application to the chief magistrate to institute proceedings for his redress.To Edward's undisguised delight, however, Ai Youg seeing which side his bread was buttered on and wanting to put the whole situation behind him declared  that he had no complaint to make against anybody-that he liked his captain and officers-that he did not like to be put in handcuffs, or tied by the tail, but would accuse no one of unjustly treating him; and, finally, that he came before the magistrate only because he was brought by a policeman, and had no other wish than to return to his ship and resume his duties. 
Ai Youg was, therefore, dismissed, and returned on board with all despatch; and our friends, looking extremely foolish, were left to explain their position to the magistrate as best they could. 

Our plane at Perth

Our trip was not attended by any such excitement, being wholly uneventful. Although a low cost carrier Malindo Air, a joint Malaysian-Indonesian venture, provided a good service in a fairly new looking aeroplane. Unlike most flights out of Australia there were few Europeans aboard and in fact on the first leg, from Perth to Kuala Lumpur the plane was pretty empty. From KL to Sri Lanka it filled a bit, primarily with some kind of Sri Lankan sporting team who had clearly enjoyed some success as they were carrying a huge trophy which only just fit in an overhead locker.