"You Want Tuk-tuk?"

One of the first things to strike me about Sri Lanka was the sheer number of tuk-tuks, the tiny three-wheeled taxis which are such a familiar sight in most of Asia.  As we roamed the island we found even the smallest towns and villages would have droves of them, mostly parked, often with the driver taking a nap inside or passing the time of day with his fellow drivers.  I suspect they provide a sense of purpose to men who would otherwise be unemployed.  They are the bottom end of the transit market, moving people and goods to the spots inaccessible to trucks and cars as they wheedle their way through the tightest traffic jam and the narrowest alley, guided by a cheap and ever chirruping mobile phone.

For the tuk-tuk driver it's always open season on tourists.  They will peremptorily ditch an existing passenger or errand and do a suicidal u-turn across a busy main road just to get a tourist on their rear bench, because tourists equal serious cash.  Even when you drive round in circles and fail to deliver the perspiring white person or couple to their desired destination, cash will still be forthcoming from their bulging wallets before they alight.  It's impossible to walk anywhere in Columbo, well anywhere in Sri Lanka really, without being accosted every fifty metres by a hopeful driver saying "you want tuk-tuk?"

After days of serious harassment we accidentally got our revenge on the tuk-tuk tribe in Kandy.  We were in the city centre, it was hot and neither Sue or I had our reading glasses.  We were looking for the Botanical Gardens on the map and I had mistaken them somehow for the Bogambara Stadium, a rugby venue, some five kilometres from our desired goal.  Navigating our way on the map to the Stadium it was not surprising that we couldn't find the Gardens.  I hit on the wonderful idea of instructing the inevitable tuk-tuk that stopped to take us to "the Botanical Gardens" while pointing emphatically on the map to the Bogambara Stadium which was actually about thirty metres from where we stood.  The driver, understanding little English and following my insistent finger pointing at the Bogambara Stadium on the map, said optimistically "three hundred rupee?"  This is about £1.50, practically nothing to a hot and bothered tourist and outrageously expensive to a local.  I decisively said "OK" and Sue and I jumped in.

The driver now had a problem - our destination is looming behind us thirty metres away and he can't really take us there direct without the fare looking much too big.  So he takes us on a wide circuit of the roads around the Stadium.  He stops at one point to show us a view of the rubbish strewn, but otherwise deserted, pitch in a gap between two dilapidated stands.

"Bogambara!"  He exclaims proudly.
"What?"  We reply, puzzled and cranky with dehydration.

The circuit continues with me getting more and more irate about our failure to see any sign of any botanical gardens.  Finally, he delivers us back to more or less where we started, at which point I get out, incandescent with rage and refuse to give the driver his three hundred rupee.  Eventually I give him  a fifty rupee note which he grudgingly accepts with a sense of injustice equal to my own.

Sue then persuaded me to hunt for my spectacles and having found them I study the map again and realise my mistake, prompting a fit of hysterical laughter from both of us.  No doubt the driver will have his own tale to tell about the loony old tourists who insisted on doing a circuit of the Bogambara Stadium and then went completely mad and refused to pay him.