A pangolin in Anuradhapura

This week-end, because it is a poya day on Monday I went to Anuradhapura which is a day’s journey from Batticaloa and another of the world heritage sites. It is a huge ruined city they excavated out of the jungle. I had to hire a bike because it is really spread out and spent 7 hours cycling and walking. The place was awash with Buddhists dressed in white as opposed to the monks who wear orange, Thousands and thousands, busloads of them. I lost count of the number of times I got asked my name and where I was from. Not my age. Perhaps that is not deemed polite in temple spaces.

I saw my first snake and I did shriek. I am afraid of snakes because so many are poisonous here. It was doing the very fast twirly move routine across the stones around the temple and I had no shoes on. It had a grey body and a luminous green head. The second amazing animal I saw I think was one of those anteater things. It was crossing the road and I looked twice thinking it might be a baby crocodile. I did not go past it. I waited while several buses and lorries went past as it was very large, hissing and I wasn’t sure how fast it could move. Then it slinked off into the bushes.

At the moment at work, I am ploughing through a tourism report for the Eastern province commissioned at provincial level. Now the provincial masters are involved there will probably be more of these to extrapolate bits from for our plan. It’s quite interesting. Apart from pointing out the various local inadequacies for catering for tourists such as any point of information, the standard of toilets both inside and outside accommodation, inadequate hygiene levels in restaurants etc, it has some rather charming illustrations which include ‘branding’ for Batticaloa centred on a very picturesque lighthouse near where I live, rickshaws (I am not sure these would take off locally with local people, as they have already ‘jumped’ to trishaws), and little hand carts to sell tourist stuff – they really have nothing at the moment. For example, they have no idea that sarongs are something foreigners will buy.

Would I like the Batticaloa that will be here in 3-5 years time, its pristine beaches edged with hotel developments? Take away the loneliness factor and in some ways it’s nice to be the only white (well light brown) person and be somewhere so beautiful and undeveloped.

This evening I was invited out to dinner in the newly opened East Lagoon 5 star hotel by a little posy from US Aid. It felt like I was dining with Kofi Annan.

FOCUS AREA 3 – Tourism

This is the area with most opportunity and currently very little resource being put into it.

Most tourists who come to Sri Lanka do not want to lie on a beach all the time. They want to see and experience new things that they can’t do elsewhere. Batticaloa must identify its unique offer and promote that – boat trips, leisure fishing, trekking in to the interior. More and more packages now promote staying with local families. A good living can be made from having 1-4 rooms of a good standard, offering food and getting business through recommendation because you look after guests and make sure they have a good time.

The following is a not exhaustive list of what the District should be looking at:-

Set up a working group and include local active people with an interest. At all times think private public partnership and be inclusive.
Look at a Batticaloa website. Please show respect for the entrepreneurial flair that created the one already in existence.
Who owns the hotels and are they recruiting local staff? If so how? Are they using local providers for food produce etc?
Look at culturally encouraging local women to enter the service industry. It is not rife with alcoholism or prostitution. If they are worried about that involve the local police. It is far better that they work locally than go off to the middle east for years at a time and abandon their young children with disastrous consequences for their emotional wellbeing and education.
Get the museum at the Fort functioning.
Produce a leaflet of local places to visit, eat at, stay in. US Aid funded one looking at the eastern province.
Open the tourist bureau.
Exploit the lagoon more for boat rides and bird watching
Promote Batticaloa for leisure cycling
Get local traders to think ‘tourist’ and what they could promote, but it must be good quality and attractively displayed.

Batticaloa District Development Plan DRAFT 2013