As we have mentioned before, there is a gap between our immediate location and the blog location. Security was extremely tight as we left Colombo, and foreigners and locals were required to get out of taxis and take a special security bus into the actual airport itself.

We were very impressed with the smoothness and professional nature of the Sri Lankan military at the airport, so we were both quite surprised when we read about the attack by plane.

Just wanted to let everyone know we were OK.

Yes, his Dudeness loves to travel. So much so that he is literally using his body to finance his wanderlust.

When Ralf finally admitted to himself that civil engineering wasn’t his thing, he quit university and became a full-time traveler embracing his nomadic heritage (in younger years, his dad’s job required the family to move around and live in different parts of the world).

After an initial stint through South America, he started to combine work and travel spending time in Australia, New Zealand and Canada on work/holiday visas doing seasonal jobs to support his addiction. But when he returned to Europe, where he worked in the London Underground for 5 months, he got involved in a totally different, much more lucrative, line of work – drugs.

Ok, this may not be much of a stretch for a Dutch person – drugs like marijuana are legal in the Netherlands, but we’re talking serious drugs. Medication for heart disease, high cholesterol or blood pressure – you name it. And he’s not selling them, he’s taking them.

For the last three years, Ralf has been participating in medical trials. Call him a guinea pig, or lab rat, but the drug research companies pay him anywhere from 120 – 160 British pounds a day. That means, for a 3-week in-clinic trial, during which time he probably spends a lot of his day in bed flirting with the nurses, he gets close to 3,000 British pounds. Quite a chunk of money, and certainly enough for him to backpack for the better part of the year. He’s actually gone from Holland to India overland hitting some exciting countries, including: Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka, where we met him.

Being a human lab rat is not for everyone, definitely not for a hypochondriac like myself. I’d probably be a very bad patient having all the side effects and complaining a lot. But Ralf has been fine, no problems so far, just a whole lot of cash at the end of a trial. One hell of a move to support your nomadic lifestyle!

Check out his great travel blog.

After thirty years of war, ethnic tension, religious extremists butting heads, massacres, bombings, corruption… shouldn’t this place be a wreck? Why are there so many package tourists taking their holidays here? Why does everything run with relative efficiency? Why are there so many perfectly organized grocery stores? For south Asia, this place is downright affluent.

Why?

When they made a mistake at the train station and I started yelling like I would in India, why did the station master run to my assistance and immediately solve the problem? How is that possible? Almost everybody can read, and a huge portion of the population can speak passable English. So what if the word “hotel” means restaurant, these people are going way out of their way to accommodate us.

And now that the war here is slowly coming to an end, how successful can this country become with its educated population, extensive tea and coffee plantations, beach tourism, and booming stock market, reportedly one of the world’s most successful in 2008. (And that was one hell of a bad year.)

True, as the war here winds down, the Tamil Tigers are scattering and there is a constant fear of suicide bombings. This place is clearly not perfect as you can see in the morning papers. But the military conducts its searches with an efficiency that India can only dream of. And even as bombs go off, most of the population speaks of the atrocities with reflection and asks us not to judge the Tamils for the actions of a small number of extremists. This is not a third-world country, it’s something more.

But there IS one insidious third-world habit Sri Lanka excels at, that nasty double-pricing system and constant price gouging of foreigners! Taxis, motor-rickshaws, buses, restaurants, hotels, and the monuments – don’t get me started on that again. Why, Sri Lanka, why?

But, hey, at least they smile with appreciation and pat you on the back with Buddhist kindness as they rip you off. Why can’t India learn to cheat you with kindness?