Say it three times and I'll believe you

by Matthew Lukjanenko (Australia)

I didn't expect to find Sri Lanka

We, the two most well traveled people within our group of family and friends, sat wondering how we were going to get out of this scam we had fallen victim to. The Buddha statue in front of us, draped in lotus flowers and seemingly smoking incense, smiled the way that he did, which at that time looked pitiful. The Buddha statue behind us looked more concerned by the situation we found ourselves in or perhaps it was because we had our backs to him which I knew to be a faux pas. We re-positioned ourselves so that we were neither facing to nor away from either of them but then realised that he was truly everywhere and there was no position in which we could not be offending so we returned to our original position. I preferred to be pitied than be someone’s source of disappointment. We hadn’t seen our friend in a while, the one who had invited us to experience the unique Hindu festival at another temple that only happened once a year and was luckily on that day. While we couldn’t see him, we knew he had eyes on us, as did the driver positioned in front of the only exit. In telling this story, I realize that we may seem naive to have accepted an invitation from a man on the street, in a country within which we had just arrived but he was not the first man to have invited us that morning, he was the third. The third man within an hour on that hot, wet street of Colombo who had mentioned this festival to us and had offered to share his tuk-tuk with us. My days as an undergraduate psychology student taught me that, as humans, we use schemas in order to be cognitively efficient. I wished this had been the example in the textbook of when not to rely on a schema then maybe we would have politely declined this third invitation. The marble floor was starting to burn from the midday heat and the Buddha’s smile seemed to be show more impatience than pity now, so we stood and made our way to the exit. Our friend appeared unsurprisingly out of nowhere, relieved that we were leaving. We started to put on our shoes and assume a sprinter’s start position ready to make our exit, but we false started and gave him time to remind us that we needed to pay the driver before racing off. We passed through the gates being skillfully pushed by our friend toward the driver without him ever making physical contact with us. The driver smiled when he saw us and told us, rather than asked, how impressive the temple was. We said we were off to meet a friend nearby and asked how much we owed him. He quoted what seemed like a large sum which became even more absurd when it was converted into AUD. We both nervously laughed to which he took offence. The situation was escalating, and my (best) friend seemed prepared to fight. She is taller than me and at the time was likely stronger, so I entertained the idea of a battle for a split second before reaching into my bag, pulling out some USD and placing it on the seat next to the driver. It was about half of what he was asking but I said, sternly though most likely weakly and unconvincingly, that this was all that we had and that we knew he was scamming us along with his friend. I grabbed my (best) friend’s arm and we began walking away to a chorus of jeers and insults coming from the driver. He threatened to call the police and we shot back that we’d do the same to which he sped off. We silently walked the few kilometers back to the hotel and once in our room, immediately googled scams + Sri Lanka, the first result of which detailed in length our experience that morning. We resigned to not let it affect the rest of our trip or bias us toward the many other wonderful, welcoming people that we would meet in the next two weeks.