Junie's monologues of travel adventures & daily humdrums



ripped off in Sri Lanka

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staring out from a tuk tuk in colombo

First of all carpeteers, I've got news. IM MOVING! out from my apartment on the famous sheikh zayed rd to a really nice building in Satwa. Will keep everyone updated on the move, but all i can say at the moment is that im pretty stressed out about the move cuz i only have one day to do it. many many things to relocate.
ONE DAY! and then im off! Where to? TO PORTUGAL! on leave! im so excited. So many changes happening at once!
Me and gilles plan to go to portugal and make our way up the east coast of spain towards the south of france. so AKANG DATANG everyone . Ok back to my second trip to sri lanka.

elephant motifs on a temple wall

I GOT RIPPED OFF. By some faux guide who pretended to be our friend. He proclaims to be waiting to collect his bike at the repair shop and had a couple of hours to spend and being a friendly person he likes to chat with people from other parts of the world. He doesnt want money he just wants a good chat and a favor of us sending him back some stamps since he is a stamp collector. Stamp collector my ass! More like scam artist! Anyway i should have known better right, i've got cheated before. But being me, i will just love to believe in the good of people , and even though i had misgivings and i didnt trust him at first, i started to think maybe this time its different, i shouldnt be a skeptic at my age, its way too sad to be a skeptic so quickly just cuz i got burnt a few times. I thought to myself, cant be that bad ,since im with a friend what can he do?
he wants to follow us on our walk about tour of colombo , let him then. well i thought wrong.


On the pretext of advising us to go to a nearby temple thats a hundred years old and some hindi temple he knows he says its just a tuk tuk ride away. So i thought yea why not . we hailed a tuk tuk and hopped on. His name was ratna. And ratna the rat says that being foreigners in a new country we shouldnt buy anything from the locals since they only jack up the price so when he tags along we wouldnt be cheated since he could make sure that the price the driver quote is a fair one. This pretend advisor is such a phony. U see the reason why i sounded so acidic is cuz im really upset and hurt. I felt like a fool believing him. I had my doubts but i chose to try to believe that he was kind and true. He said " U know i help u and i ask for nothing in return, i just ask that u return my friendship with a stamp and a picture we take together as friends " touching enough for me. I was taken in. sighhh, i gotta stop the softie in me. anyway he did accompany us to two temples then it was to a gem shop which we didnt want to go but he was insistent and directed the driver there.WHAT? red warning light swtiched on i didnt have a good feeling about this looks like a tourist trap already. didnlt like it at all. i thought i'll make him feel bad. I said " ratna in thailand the tuk tuk drivers brings us to gem shops and they get some money on commission to drive tourists there. If u want us to go there so you get some money u can tell us, we wouldnt mind going if you stand to get some benefit" He appears to be offended " I already told you i dont want your money i jsut want you to have a look at the gems of colombo its really worth looking at" scammed again. the best part is coming yet.

well then. We stepped in and out and told him tell the driver we wanna go back to the city . After we got to our destintation, i asked him to ask the driver how much the trip'll cost . He ask the driver and told us the driver says 6000 ruppees. I said it is ridiculous . ( we asked a tuk tuk before how much it'll cost us and the quote was 300 ruppees which i believed is already jack up to befit a tourist) so 6000 is way over the top with 6000 u can hire an air conditioned car to take you to the other end of sri lanka. He said thats what the driver says he says since we are with him we pay only half the price we pay 2000 ruppees . I was soooo angry. he didnt want to let us off the tuk tuk unless we pay it. CAN U BELIEVE IT? i said no its not so much , he says ok just pay 1500. and he acted really aggressive. I paid it and got off really upset.
Just when u believe a little in goodness it turns around and bites you right back. such a let down.
mood of the moment: pissed off.







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  • Travel blog of Junie
  • A design-lover who also loves to create, I blog about inspirations and beauty that i come across in my daily life.
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