May 2016

The journey continues…

Even though I’m home for 3 weeks now, the journey continues…my personal journey to be exact. But I’m still reminiscing about my travels. Friends & family ask me the following question all the time: “What’s the most beautiful you have seen/done on this trip around the world?”

Honestly…I still don’t know. I loved being on my own in San Francisco, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge and exploring the city by (cable) car. I also loved walking through Hollywood and visiting the Walk of Fame. Fiji was another, I hope a once in a lifetime, experience. Due cyclone Winston I wasn’t able to enjoy the islands to the max. After one night I got stuck on the mainland… So I was relieved when I could go to Sydney after a week of, well…doing nothing. I enjoyed the good weather and the great city. Japan was so beautiful in its own way. The culture, the food, the people! Also I enjoyed my short trip to Shanghai. I was impressed by the skyline. Sri Lanka…no words can describe that adventure. I got the chance to live with my family for almost 2 months and experienced daily life in Sri Lanka. I think that’s worth the most. I learned a lot about myself and the Sri Lankan life.

I can share one experience with you…it’s about what I find a beautiful gesture! It left me speechless…So I stayed with family and their neighbors had several cows. One day one of them died. Then all the men from the neighborhood gathered together and started digging a giant grave to bury the cow. Just think about that for a moment…

So now that I’m back in the Netherlands I have to make up my mind. What do I want in life? Being alone and on my own gave me the chance to think a lot. I had so many ideas when I was away. Travelling opens up your mind…I started to dream again, something I wasn’t able to for a long time. I have to keep that state of mind and start to act on it. I’m already busy with that and it’s a lot of soul-searching and thinking about what I want for myself in the future. I think listening to my heart is going to be very important…

Skin colour

My life started 33 years ago when I was born in Sri Lanka. As you may know, people in Sri Lanka are mostly dark skinned. But I grew up in a more or less ‘white’ world, namely the Netherlands. However, the Netherlands is a melting pot of different cultures and people from all over the world. My friends are a cool mix too! I love that…We look different on the outside but we’re definitely the same on the inside!

Back home I’m often confronted with my origins. Especially when I meet new people. One of the first questions is: “Where do you come from? ” I never know if they mean the place I live or where I was born. The second option follows if I answer the first because of my skin colour. When I’m in Sri Lanka it is the other way around. People want to know what life is like in the Netherlands…

When I was in Sri Lanka I met a Sri Lankan girl and she wanted to know a lot about me and life in the Netherlands, such as work and money. But she couldn’t stop talking about boys. She told me that she really likes white boys because of their skin colour and beautiful blue eyes. Also she finds white people prettier than brown or black people. Although she loved my colour, which is brown but is considered light in Sri Lanka because most people are darker than me. Then she went on and told me she wants her skin to be lighter and confessed that she goes to a beauty salon for some treatment to lighten her skin. She also uses special cream and always takes an umbrella with her when she’s going outside. And she knows people who even take pills to change their skin colour!

I was shocked even though I already knew that people in Sri Lanka (or Asia) want to have a lighter skin. Of course the cosmetics industry offers a wide range of products to meet this wish. There are all kinds of creams and face washes available. I didn’t really notice before till now. When watching tv here in Sri Lanka, these commercials of a brand named Pond’s drop by about their white beauty face wash. They promote a lighter/white skin and even talk about white cells! (Am I missing something?!) The models in a lot of commercials here are also very light skinned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXULNay-QPg

On the contrary…people in the Netherlands (or Western world) love the sun and want more of it (to get a little darker). We can go to a tan salon or book a vacation to some sunny destination. You can even buy self tanning lotion. But the original skin colour will always return eventually. I told the girl about this and emphasized that I’m proud of my skin colour! And it doesn’t matter to me if you’re black, white, brown, yellow or anything. Everyone is beautiful in their own way!

In the meantime I keep wondering where this need or wish comes from. If you know the answer, please let me know!

A long way home…

After 3 months of being away from home, I came back last Wednesday. I knew it was gonna be a long journey but I didn’t expect it to take 38 hours to reach Leidschendam!

In Sri Lanka everything went very smooth. Because I had to leave very early morning, 5 o’clock, there was almost no traffic on the road. Usually it takes 3 hours to get to Colombo airport from the place I stayed but we managed to be there in only 75 minutes. At the check in desk I asked if my luggage was going to Amsterdam because I saw that Abu Dhabi was missing on the bag tag/label. The lady who helped me confirmed it. I only had to check in again in Muscat where I had a 12 hour layover.

I decided to stay at the airport of Muscat so I got a transfer slip that made it possible to spend time there. I bought a book to entertain myself and had a lovely lunch and dinner. My flight would leave at 23:50. The guy that gave me the transfer slip told me to check in around 9 o’clock at a certain gate. During the evening the gate of my flight kept changing. So at 9 I decided to double check at the flight information desk. They told me I could just check in at the moment of boarding…like what?! I already had this strange feeling because the day before I left I received an email that something in my flight schedule changed, but nothing actually really changed…(I read that email right before I left Colombo).

I had booked an Oman Air flight to Amsterdam via Abu Dhabi, but it would be operated by KLM. And that’s probably where it went wrong…When I was at the gate around 11 o’clock to check in they couldn’t find me in their system! My flight number was of Oman Air and it had to be a KLM one. They told me I couldn’t get on this flight, just like it was nothing. I was so…I can’t describe but I think you can imagine. Waiting all these hours and then the minute you want to board you are told you can’t.

Nobody was really able to explain what happened and why…but I simple wasn’t allowed on this flight to Amsterdam. All these questions arose…Now what? How long is it gonna take until they find out what went wrong? How are they going to help me? Do I need accommodation? Do I have to pay for that? Do I have to make extra costs? Later on they found out that my luggage wasn’t checked in either…

I don’t know if Oman Air or the KLM staff booked a new flight for me but I was finally able to leave Muscat at 04:50. So that were another 5 hours of waiting. Luckily I wasn’t the only one who had missed the flight. A couple experienced the same problem. We talked to kill time in one of the lounges at the airport. They dropped us there and in the meantime they were busy getting us on a flight. There was a lot of food and drinks for free! I appreciated that because this whole happening had made me hangry.

I had to transfer in Dubai. Both flights were with Emirates. The first flight took only 45 minutes. In the past 17 hours I could have driven from Muscat to Dubai! The second flight took 7 hours. I didn’t mind that because I was flying with the A380. I enjoyed myself with the entertainment system…

At 13:15 I arrived in Amsterdam! But I still wasn’t home and I really hoped that my luggage would be in Amsterdam as well! I was so happy to see my bag on the luggage belt. So now it was time to catch a train and a bus. After 38 hours I finally rang the door bell…I was home.