Category: Travel Diary

What Sri Lanka Taught Me and Why I am Done with My Passport Privilege

I spent years avoiding developing countries like Sri Lanka. I knew I would fixate on the unfairness of life in developing countries. The first few days were confronting to the point where I had to take a break. There wasn’t just rubbish along the roadside, there was rubbish everywhere, piles of it, plastic caught in drains, spread across open ground, sitting in places people walk through every day, and the water was filthy, green and stagnant. I found it hard to look at and harder to accept that people live with it. I found it hard to reconcile we are providing aid and I couldn’t see the impact.

I visited the traditional tour offering of temples and ruins, but I didn’t linger. As a child, I stayed for hours. This time, I looked elsewhere. When I stand in front of iconic sites, I am looking for a specific photo, not a history lesson. I listen to the dates and names, but I forget them immediately. History books offer a static version of the past that lacks heart They lacked lived experience no matter how good our guide was and he was exceptional, I walked through the ancient cities because they were on the itinerary, but the stones remained silent.

My photographs record what is left. When I look through the lens at a ruin, I think about the people who originally cut the stone and shifted the earth. I wonder what they would think of these remains. I find myself wishing I could have a conversation with the people who actually lived there over the centuries. I want to know how they navigated their world, not just the names of the kings who ruled them. Since I can’t talk to the dead, I look for the modern version of their story in the people I meet today, staff in the hotels and the families in the villages. I want to see how they are navigating their world right now.

This is the source of my frustration. I didn’t go there to see iconic sites. They are important because they exist, but that is all they are, landmarks on a map. I have zero interest in ticking off a list.

I travelled with a group of twenty Australians. They were well-read, and our conversations kept circling back to the mess of global politics, the threat of war with Iran, Netanyahu’s next move, and what Trump’s latest act of disruption meant for the rest of us.

These are not distant headlines when you are travelling through a country like Sri Lanka. Decisions made by powerful men in wealthy nations and heavily armed states do not stay inside their own borders. They travel through fuel prices, food prices, trade, sanctions, aid, tourism, debt and fear.

We spent time connecting the dots between how people vote in countries like the United States, the leaders they put in power, and why a family somewhere else suddenly pays more for groceries, petrol or the bus to school. Power first, people after, is not an abstract idea. In countries with less room to move, it arrives quickly at the kitchen table.

Our guide Ash broke down how it actually works in his country. Fuel is available but it is rationed The government makes sure tour buses keep moving because tourism feeds the economy. Meanwhile, a local parent can’t get to work, a teacher misses their class, and a nurse can’t make their shift. You see how quickly a community starts to implode struggle when other countries make decisions that impact well beyond war zones. See my blogs  see my blogs on my conversations with Ash here, here  and here

When you see the impact first hand it makes the global imbalance feel very real. Wealthy countries set the rules to keep their power, and everyone else just has to find a way to survive.

We’re part of that system. The people we put in office make decisions that travel a lot further than our own borders. When we choose leaders who only care about their own leverage, “power first, people second” becomes the standard. It shows up here in what a family can afford or whether they can even get from A to B. Once you see a system strain like this, you realize that everyday dignity is much more fragile than we think.

The parts of the itinerary that resonated most strongly with me were the safaris. We visited national parks and saw animals living in their natural habitats. We drove through the park, watching closely, becoming spotters ourselves.

An animal would emerge from the scrub, tolerate our presence for a moment, then disappear again. It felt unpredictable, immediate and alive. It also gave us the chance to see native animals we do not have in Australia, in the landscape where they belong.

I remembered the Botanical Gardens for their curated beauty. I have a garden at home where I plant things and hope for the best. In Kandy, I saw those same plants thriving in ideal conditions. It was a welcome relief from the reality of the streets

I am a stickler for well laid out design. When I arrive at a hotel, I notice the bathroom, the desk, the lighting and the power points. I want to see whether someone has thought about the person using the room.

At Jetwing in Kandy, that instinct led me somewhere else.

In several of the other hotels, I noticed the public facing teams appeared to be mostly men. Women were present, yet often in roles that felt more decorative than central, appearing from time to time as the smiling face of hospitality rather than as people visibly running the place.

Jetwing felt different. I saw what appeared to be a more equal mix of men and women across the team, and women seemed to be part of the working life of the hotel rather than added to the edges of it. I wanted to understand whether this was accidental or deliberate, so I asked Ash, our guide and the constant thread through the trip, why this hotel seemed to offer young Sri Lankans, including young women, a stronger pathway into a tourism career.

Ash helped me get an interview with the General Manager. He told me they target young people in schools. They introduce the, to women in upper management. They work on the principle “You can be what you can see”.

Ash was the strongest link in the itinerary.  His stories provided the context I sought. He offered real insight into the economy and the focus on education, giving young people the opportunity to have careers that provide a genuine liveable wage and opportunities beyond traditional life. But even with Ash, I realized I was still inside a closed loop. I had his professional narrative and the intellectual debates on the bus, but I was missing the unfiltered local voice and the younger members of his team Dino and Lucky helped provide this. See blog post here 

I am a listener, not a collector. I want to understand systems and power, yet the tour is built for people who want to tick off a list. I want to talk to the engine room, yet I was shown the museum. Sri Lanka reminded me I’m not a typical tourist, and that leaves me between a rock and a hard place. When my friends ask where I will go next, I honestly do not know. I am home now, and I see my own world differently. I remember the insight, not the landmarks. Going there showed me how decisions made far away arrive in people’s lives, in the price of food, the cost of fuel, and the dignity of an ordinary day.

The leaders we choose decide more than our own future

Back home after three weeks in Sri Lanka. I saw what fuel shortages look like without passport privilege.

The petrol stations aren’t empty. There is fuel.
It goes first to tourism, because tourism brings money into the country.

Families miss out. No transport. No income. No school. No healthcare.

Teachers can’t reach their classrooms.
Parents who sacrifice everything for their children’s education watch that chance slip because a bus can’t run.

Nurses can’t get to clinics. Medicines don’t arrive.

Drivers, farmers, shopkeepers are left waiting while the system they serve no longer functions.

And still, people stretch every rupee. They put their children first.

Then you come home to abundance.

Where one person throws away food, another is searching for it.
Where one person chases wealth, another is trying to stay healthy.

And above all of it, the imbalance is obvious.

Countries with everything still want more.
More influence. More control.

Those who already hold power set the rules.
Those without it are told to accept them.

And we’re part of this.
The way we vote carries.
If we vote for me, me, me, we get leaders who think the same.
Power first. People after.
And people far from us live with the consequences.

After seeing what happens when something as basic as fuel is taken away, you understand how quickly everything can fall apart, and how much dignity depends on the basics.

Drop the good guys and bad guys for a second.
You know who decides who gets in the club and who doesn’t.

The countries with nuclear weapons set the rules.
They still have theirs.
Others are told they can’t have them.

If your country was being told no, would that seem fair to you?

Sri Lanka through the people who make the journey possible

Ash our tour guide, Dino our bus driver and Lucky our driver’s assistant, spotter, and passenger support.

Sri Lanka is my fifth group tour overseas tourism experience. We all know the feeling at the beginning. A group of strangers, a guide you have yet to meet, fifteen days ahead. Each of us arrives keen to meet each other. The group, and the guide, will shape the trip as much as the country itself.

Our tour guide Ash (Niruth Ashendra) meets us at the hotel the night before. We stand around in a loose circle, share a short backstory and why we have come to Sri Lanka. The first challenge of meeting new people begins. There are no name tags. The test starts immediately. Some people write names down. I start linking names to faces and their stories, hoping it sticks. It rarely does. Then Ann and Adam introduce themselves. A and A.  “A” breakthrough.

 The conversation carries into dinner. By the time we arrive at breakfast the group has started to connect.

We walk out to the bus to the bus. You step on and see the seats, the windows, the air conditioning, check for charging points and if the seats recline. Then you see the team.

Lucky (Mohottige Shalitha Lakshan), stands at the door with a tray of flowers. He hands one to each of us as we step onto the bus. People smile, cameras come out, conversations begin. It happens again the next day, and the day after that. It becomes part of the trip.

Dino (Rajapakshe Pathiranage Dinushan Isurinda), is in the driver’s seat. Lucky moves between the door and the aisle, handing out refillable water bottles.

Ash, walks down the aisle, doing a head count, all warmth and welcome, something we discover is typical of Sri Lankan people

After my first two blogs (see here and here), I had feedback from two Australian readers who work in the social and environmental justice sector. Bill worked in international development and understands how aid is designed, funded and delivered across countries like Sri Lanka. He reminded me that what I was seeing from the bus sat alongside years of programs, partnerships and investment that a visitor rarely sees. He encouraged me to have conversations with people on the ground, to move beyond what I could see from the bus. It became clear very quickly that the only people I had real access to were Ash, Lucky and Dino. Neil remined me about passport privilege, the ease of arriving, observing, and leaving.

A view from the bus shows moments. A conversation shows a life.

I had already spent time with Ash hearing his story (see my blogs on our conversations  here, here  and here.) I had now spent 12 days watching how well the three of them  worked together

Today I sat down with them in the hotel foyer. Ash translated for Dino and Lucky, and you could see how much their ability to understand and speak English will shape what opportunities open up for them next.

Ash works as a freelancer, often with Butterflies, the local partner to Bunnik Tours. He can choose when he works and who he works with. Dino and Lucky are employed by the bus company, which is contracted into the tour.

Dino is 29. He has been driving for ten years, across cars, vans and heavy vehicles. He went to Japan to earn money and send it back home. Getting there meant paying an agent a large fee and taking on loans. He worked long factory shifts until his back gave out and he came home.

He is married. He lives with his parents and is building a house on family land for his wife and himself. Each trip pays for more walls.

Lucky is 22. He worked in a hotel before this job. He notices when someone hesitates on the steps or when a bag needs lifting. He moves before you ask

He came into the job through Dino. They grew up in the same village. They trust each other and it shows.

Lucky is working toward a heavy vehicle licence when he turns 24. Ash encourages him to build his English and move into guiding, work that brings more income and more options.

Their choices keep pointing in one direction. Work, income, a house, and family stability.

On the road, Dino watches the traffic carefully and moves skillfully with it. Motorbikes pass close to the bus. Tuk tuks move into narrow spaces. Dogs cross. Cows stand in the road. When he overtakes, he uses the horn and the other drivers respond. It works as a signal. Everyone understands it and uses it.

Lucky watches everything else, the passengers, the luggage. In tight spaces he works like a spotter, out of the bus, guiding Dino through and directing traffic.

When we step off the bus to visit temples or markets, Dino and Lucky stay and wait for us to return.

As we talked, the conversation moved to what comes next.

Dino wants to keep driving and finish his house.

Lucky spoke about getting his heavy vehicle licence. He has to wait until he is 24. For now, he works alongside Dino and learns the job from the ground up. Ash encourages him. Better English opens the next step. Guiding, more responsibility, better pay, more opportunity.

I asked them what it was like working with travellers from countries like Australia, seeing how we travel and where we stay. Opportunities they can only hope for.

Lucky said he enjoys meeting people, hearing their stories, seeing how they live.

Dino nodded. “It’s good,” he said. “You see different things.”

We step off the bus and walk into hotels, temples, restaurants. They stay with the bus or head to driver accommodation nearby. Basic rooms, shared spaces, simple meals. The same trip, two different versions of it running side by side.

The conversation shifted again, this time to life outside the tour.

Do they have access to clean water. Yes, both their families are connected to the town water supply. I asked about the diseases I was vaccinated for before I left. Ash tells me typhoid is rare in today’s Sri Lanka. So is catching rabies, malaria or Japanese Encephalitis.

Whilst healthcare is free, they spoke about long waiting lists. If something needs to happen quickly, you find the money. Sometimes there is no money.

Dental care was another thing. If it costs too much to fix, you take the tooth out.

We spoke about growing up here. The civil war. The tsunami.

 Their memories are fragments. Ash remembers it well. He spoke about it as something that sat in the background of his childhood. On the bus he shared with us about his family’s frightening experience with the tsunami. He laughed when he told us his father who is Anglican was praying to Jesus, his mother who is a Buddhist prayed to Buddha to keep them safe.

Then the conversation moved to now.

Sri Lanka has changed, people talk more openly about politics. Ash described Sri Lankans as politically savvy. They follow what is happening. They talk about decisions and how those decisions land in their own lives.

There was a time when speaking out carried risk.

Women show up in public spaces here. Ash spoke about protests led by women, especially families still asking what happened to those who “disappeared” during the war. Mothers and wives stand together, holding photos, returning again and again, asking the same questions.

There is also a long history of women in political leadership. Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the world’s first female Prime Minister in 1960. Her daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, later served as President.

 Women have seen leadership at the highest level.

At the same time, what you see on the ground is mixed. Women ride motorbikes, work in hotels, and move into management roles in places like Jetwing Kandy Gallery. The General Manager spoke about mentoring and creating pathways for young women to step into leadership.

They also showed me their TikTok accounts ( Dino and Lucky). Short clips from the road, moments from the trip, small snapshots of Sri Lanka through their eyes.  This is their country, their work, their way of sharing it. In those videos they are  at the centre of the experience, showing places, telling stories, and building something of their own.

For Dino and Lucky. The here and now is the focus.

Dino is building his house. Lucky sees new opportunities for him in tourism.

Tourism brings income. It also brings a window into other lives, every day, right in front of them.

I have been working in the environmental and social justice sector for twenty years. Most people I know want to support others. The harder question is how to do that in a way that helps people build the lives they want, rather than the lives we imagine for them.

The answer starts with conversation.

For Australians, support can be practical. Travel with companies that use local partners and treat local staff well. Tip directly. Share the work of people like Dino and Lucky, including their TikTok videos ( here and here), because visibility can become opportunity. Support programs that build skills, vocational training, women’s leadership, clean water, health access and safe futures for children. Support what is built with people, not for them.

Passengers sit on the bus and look out the windows, taking in the country they have come to see, immersing themselves in it as much as someone passing through can.

Ash, Dino and Lucky give us lifelong memories. We leave with their stories, their plans, and a clearer sense of how global support can strengthen the lives they are building.

Sri Lanka is so much more than what tourist’s see

Tourists come to Sri Lanka for many reasons, the wildlife, the temples, the gardens, the tea country, the history, the colour, the warmth. Then there is the country beneath the itinerary, the one shaped by pressure, memory, pride, politics, religion and daily endurance.

This is what our Sri Lanka guide, Niruth Ashendra, Ash, opened up for me in this interview. Read previous blogs here and here 

Ash spoke about Sri Lanka as a small island with a long history and a fierce instinct to protect its independence. He also spoke about what it means to live in a country that sits in a volatile region and feels the force of decisions made far away. In his telling, Sri Lanka is forever managing its own domestic pressures while also absorbing the consequences of conflicts involving much bigger powers.

It is unconscionable. War and global instability exact a price from every country. Developing countries are forced to carry that price while already under strain. People who played no part in the decisions are left to absorb the damage through higher fuel costs, dearer food, rising transport bills and tighter family budgets. They are doing their best to raise living standards and give their children a better future, then decisions made in wealthy countries sweep through and make that task harder. Ash gave that reality a human face. In developing countries like Sri Lanka, global conflict lands in kitchens, school bags and petrol stations.

When conflict involving Iran edges closer, Sri Lanka is suddenly dealing with oil, debt, trade and sovereignty all at once. Add the weight of the United States through aid, trade and global influence, and you can see how quickly a small country is forced to tread carefully.

Ash said Sri Lanka handled it wisely by treating it as a humanitarian issue rather than a political one. Rescue the survivors. Get them medical care. Return them safely. In other words, act with decency, protect independence, and refuse to become a pawn. He also mentioned another Iranian vessel in a strategic eastern harbour, which was a reminder that geography can turn a small island into a place of sudden importance. Ports, shipping lanes and location all count when bigger nations start flexing.

The same tension came up again when he spoke about an American soldier in Sri Lanka who had been accused of war crimes. Ash saw that as another test. How does a small nation respond when the person involved comes from a country as powerful as the United States? His answer was careful, grounded in legal process, though the underlying point was larger. Sri Lanka is often required to make decisions in the shadow of power it does not control.

Then he brought it straight back to ordinary life.

He used Sri Lanka’s long relationship with Iran to show how exposed a country like this can be. Sri Lanka still owes Iran about US$251 million for oil it received years ago. Normally that debt would be paid in US dollars through international banks, because that is how most of the world trades. Sanctions closed that path. The sanctions are driven mainly by the United States. Much of the world’s trade runs through US dollars and the banks tied to that system. Once the US closes that door, other countries feel it too.  Payments that move through US dollar channels can be blocked, so the usual way of settling the debt is gone even when both countries are willing. Sri Lanka’s answer is tea. Ceylon tea is shipped to Iran, Iranian buyers pay for it inside their own system, and the value is counted against the oil debt. No US dollars move. No standard bank transfer is needed. The debt comes down shipment by shipment, while Sri Lanka protects scarce foreign currency and keeps a key export industry moving.

War, instability and global conflict show up first in the price of diesel and petrol. Fuel costs then push up transport, groceries and daily living. Salaries stay the same. Families absorb the blow. In Ash’s account, few people are living in comfort. Most are working out how to keep going. Each fresh international shock tightens the screws a little more.

This is where the moral imbalance becomes impossible to ignore. Rich countries talk about inflation. Developing countries live the consequences in a harsher form. Families already close to the edge do not have room to absorb rising costs. Families cut back on food, delay plans, live with more strain and carry more fear. A war somewhere else can strip nutrition from a child’s lunchbox in Sri Lanka. It can make a teacher’s journey to school more expensive. It can shrink a household’s sense of possibility. There is something deeply wrong in that.

Sri Lanka has long been proud of its literacy and its commitment to schooling. Ash is proud of that too. Yet he made the point that free education still depends on families being able to feed children, get them to school and keep life together. When electricity, water and food all rise, households cut what they can. Entertainment is already thin on the ground for many. Food is often where the damage falls first. Ash spoke about parents feeding their children and going hungry themselves. This tells you a great deal about family life in Sri Lanka, and about the sacrifices hidden inside rising prices.

He made another point that it is often overlooked. Teachers carry these same pressures. Teachers need to travel, eat and think clearly. A country can value education strongly, though the people delivering it still live inside the same rising cost of living as everyone else. Global conflict reaches into classrooms through fuel, food and stress.

Ash also spoke about the civil war. He described the war as rooted in division between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority, with extremists on both sides turning tension into violence. In his account, there were no winners, only heartbreak, grief and long shadows.

Ash was born in 1991. The war was already under way. He grew up with it. Although the fighting was concentrated in the north, Colombo endured bombings, fear and disruption. His parents kept him close to home because buses and public places felt dangerous. He missed normal childhood freedoms because safety came first. This is the kind of detail that makes conflict real. It is not only about leaders, armies and ideology. It is about the child who never got to roam freely, the parent constantly scanning for danger, the family changing how it lives because terror has entered public space.

He described the day the war ended with a memory that felt almost cinematic. He was out with a school friend when he saw people in the street with Sri Lankan flags and firecrackers. At first he thought it must be a cricket celebration. Joy on that scale felt unfamiliar. Then he learned the war leader had been killed and people believed peace had arrived. What came through in that story was relief, disbelief and the release of a tension carried for years.

He also explained how war reshaped education itself. School continued, though travel changed. His father paid for a school van so the children would not need to use public transport, which had become associated with bombings and danger. Safety cost money. Families with means found ways around the risk. Families without those options would have faced much harder choices.

Ash believes the war held Sri Lanka back while other countries were developing. He sees the post war years as a period of visible change, infrastructure, electricity, development, growth. He also knows that emotional wounds take far longer to heal than roads and buildings take to construct. Sri Lanka has moved forward. Sri Lanka still carries pain.

This realism also shaped the way he spoke about ethnicity and religion.

He places Tamil presence in Sri Lanka within a long historical story, stretching back centuries. This is part of the country’s makeup, not some recent intrusion. He then gave one of the most heartening examples in the whole interview, the role of his school headmaster, who mixed Tamil and Sinhalese children in class so friendships would form naturally across ethnic lines. This was reconciliation done through daily life, simply structuring a school so children grew up with one another rather than apart from one another.

Ash then moved from history and politics into social values, especially around women, religion and what holds Sri Lanka together.

Questions about restrictions on women, he said, are best answered fully by women themselves. Even so, his observations were revealing. He described Sri Lankan parents as highly protective, especially of daughters, and he could see how that protectiveness can become a barrier. Girls may grow up under strict rules around where they can go and how freely they can move. Marriage can bring another set of expectations. In his account, control often shifts rather than disappears.

He also pointed to women in powerful roles, including one of his aunts, the only woman on the board of a telecommunications finance company. He admires her greatly, and he can also see the effort and exhaustion involved in succeeding inside a male dominated world.

One example he gave was startling because it shows how slowly change can move through a culture. Only recently, he said, were women legally allowed to purchase alcohol from wine stores. The law had carried old ideas about motherhood, respectability and public behaviour. Even after the law changed, the judgement remained. Women buying alcohol still attract looks and commentary. In some places, they drink privately or discreetly while men drink more openly. In Ash’s own family, sharing a drink across generations is perfectly normal. In other families, it would still raise eyebrows. That tells its own story about Sri Lanka. Law can change faster than culture, and culture changes unevenly.

Religion is another area where Sri Lanka has its own clear lines. Ash spoke about Buddhism and the expectation of respect. Images of Buddha carry meaning and deserve reverence. Selfies with Buddha, or photos where your back is turned to Buddha, are seen as disrespectful, and even visible Buddha tattoos are frowned upon. Respect for religion is woven into public life, not tucked away as a private matter.

At the same time, Ash described Sri Lanka as a mosaic, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians living alongside one another. He talked warmly about festivals and the way communities share food, sweets and hospitality across religious lines. Sinhala and Tamil New Year, Vesak, Christmas, Eid, each becomes an occasion for neighbours to give to one another. For him, this is what makes Sri Lanka special. Diversity is tasted in kitchens and handed across fences.

Small tensions and provocations do exist. Yet he also said those moments usually fade rather than grow because Sri Lanka has already paid too high a price for division. Parents who lived through the civil war have no appetite to see younger generations walk back into conflict. That memory still acts as a brake.

Then there was the answer that perhaps said the most about Ash himself. When I asked what he was proud of in Sri Lanka, he answered without hesitation. The people.

He talked about their resilience, their smiles, their kindness and readiness to help. He was talking about a country where people carry hardship and still meet one another with warmth. He sees Sri Lankans as generous and instinctively responsive when someone is in trouble. This is the country he knows best.

His pride is clear eyed. He wants better opportunities and better living conditions for those same people. He knows kindness does not pay bills. Hospitality does not solve housing stress. Resilience is admirable, though it should not be endlessly required.

This was the gift of these interviews. Ash went beyond the postcard version of Sri Lanka. He gave me a country balancing independence and vulnerability, pride and frustration, memory and hope. A country shaped by global events far beyond its size, and by ordinary people who keep going anyway.

Tourists come for the highlights.

Writers stay alert for the human voice that makes a place legible.

In Sri Lanka, that voice was Ash’s

Kamani survived the tsunami and asked the question no one wants to answer

The ocean came once. What happens after that point is not nature, it is policy, priorities, and whose lives are treated as expendable.

You walk in expecting a collection of photographs and meet a voice that speaks from every wall.

“Why are we creating disaster when nature gives us so many.”
— Kamani

It frames the room.

This is the Tsunami Photo Museum on the south coast of Sri Lanka, near Telwatta between Hikkaduwa and Ambalangoda. Kamani De Silva, a local woman who survived the 2004 tsunami, started it after losing family, home and history in a single morning. She gathered photographs, stories and fragments of what remained, many returned by aid workers, to rebuild a record of what happened and to place it in front of anyone willing to look.

She gathered these stories to keep the faces in view, to show what happens when protection fails, and to ask why we keep adding to what nature has already done, through conflict, through power, through choices that turn risk into catastrophe.

The stories sit on timber and tin. Handwritten, uneven, sometimes misspelt, direct, unfiltered, raw and immediate.

“12500 children were left orphaned.”
“We are so helpless.”
“We do not know where our parents are.”
“Please bring us back to them.”

Faces of children. Faces of mothers. Faces caught in the moment where everything has already gone. The facts sit there in full view. Death, 40,000. Missing, 5,650. Injured, 15,200. Displaced families, 84,031. A single event, one morning, one coastline.

Survival comes into view through early warning towers, instructions, what to do when the sea comes again, a community building its own system after the fact. The gap between what existed and what followed sits in full view. Preparation arrives after loss.

Then the argument widens.

“Million of people suffering in the world with the war.”
“We are so small, we are innocent, why you destroying our world of children?”
“Please do not do that.”

Images of war sit beside images of the tsunami. Children crying, displaced, holding onto each other. The cause shifts. The outcome remains.

“Our children are innocent. Don’t destroy their world for your unlimited power and greed.”

This is where it becomes personal. The sea takes, then human choices decide who carries the burden, where people live, what protection exists, who rebuilds, who waits.

Earth is calling. Are you listening.
When you destroy nature, you destroy yourself.
If you protect nature, nature protects you.

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Animals move before danger comes. They feel it, they leave, they survive.

“As the human we should follow them.”

This is her plea, act early, move before the damage lands. What sits around it tells a different story, warnings delayed, systems built late, decisions shaped by cost and distance from consequence. The pattern holds, people left exposed, then left to rebuild.

“Why? It is our karma? Why? It is true we have to pay for our sins?”

People look to fate for answers. The causes sit in human decisions made long before the wave arrives.

“Slow down and be patient with your life in this world.”

If you are looking for wealth, somebody else is looking for health.
When you smile, a tear appears in another place.
Each time you throw food into the dustbin, someone is looking for it.

Everything in the room holds the same thread, disaster, inequality, waste, conflict, each one shaped by decisions that fall on the same people again and again.

“PLEASE WE NEED PEACE”

The words sit in red at the bottom of the wall. They read as a demand.

The ocean came once. The difference between survival and devastation sits in what is built, what is funded, and who is forgotten.

I interviewed my Sri Lanka guide and got far more than a travel story

The many faces of Niruth Ashendra

I have spent this trip watching Sri Lanka from many angles, through hotel foyers and dining rooms, market stalls and crowded roads, temples, gardens and long coach rides. Visitors see the beauty quickly. The deeper story takes longer. It often arrives through conversation, trust and the people who carry a country in their daily lives.

That is what happened when I sat down with our Bunnik guide, Niruth Ashendra, known as Ash.

His story carries family sacrifice, migration, education, work, religion, politics, love and ambition. It also carries the pressure of trying to build a secure life in a country where many people work hard and still find that security sits further away than it should.

Ash comes from a modest family with two sisters, one older and one much younger. There is a 15 year age gap between him and his youngest sister. He laughs about how awkward that felt when he was a teenager, then talks with obvious affection about the joy she brought to the family.

At the centre of his story is his father. As a young man, his father went to America, worked there for several years, overstayed, saved money, returned to Sri Lanka and opened a shop. That business became the family’s engine. It paid school fees, created options and kept the household moving forward. Later, when the business was sold, Ash’s father became a tour guide himself. It gave Ash an example close to home of tourism as honest work, people work, work that could be built through effort and personality rather than privilege.

Ash speaks of his father with respect. This was a man who did what he had to do for his family. Money was limited and choices had to be made. His older sister was the academic one, so the family backed her education. His father sold what he had and sent her to Canada. She built a life there, became a citizen, studied at university and now works at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver as an international student coordinator, helping students from other countries settle in and find their feet.

Ash’s road was different.

He finished secondary school and did vocational training, qualifying as a hair stylist because his father still hoped he too might find a path overseas. Instead, he went straight into work. He landed in event management with a company handling business to business exhibitions. On paper it sounds promising. In practice, he was doing everything, marketing, administration, banking, office management and whatever else needed doing. The company had an international flavour, Indian managed, Pakistani owned, American branded, which gave him exposure to foreign visitors and a wider world. The salary, though, was pitiful. He says that in today’s terms it worked out to less than US$50 a month.

He stayed for four years, young enough to believe experience might lead somewhere better. By 2014, at around 23 or 24, he had had enough and walked away.

That was one of the hinge points in his life. He was home for months, with little money and no clear plan. He had barely travelled. He wanted movement, possibility and a future that felt larger than the one in front of him. What had appealed to him in exhibition work was the contact with foreign visitors. He liked helping people. He liked the exchange. He liked the feeling of making strangers comfortable in unfamiliar surroundings.

So he borrowed his father’s car and started driving tourists around Sri Lanka.

That was the beginning of his life in tourism.

There was no polished ladder into the profession. He says he learned on the job and that the tourists themselves were his examiners. He watched, listened, adjusted and improved. In the process, he came to know his own country more deeply. Tourism gave him a livelihood, contact with the wider world and a stronger feel for the country he was showing to others. It also offered something else that sits high on Ash’s list, the chance to earn a fair living for genuine effort.

Over time he added qualifications. He worked his way towards the highest recognised level in his field, National Tourist Guide Lecturer. He completed that in late 2024 and by early 2025 he was fully qualified. You can hear the satisfaction in that. For someone whose education was shaped by financial limits, this was a moment where experience, determination and delayed study finally came together.

His connection with Bunnik developed slowly. He had known the company since 2017 through the local Sri Lankan operator handling Bunnik tours. He had worked with Sasha Bunnik and remembered being offered a job on the spot. He did not take it then. His more formal involvement came later, partly from 2023 and fully in 2025. He also shared the story of how Bunnik became connected to Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami, when members of the Bunnik family came to help communities in the aftermath. That history still shapes how he speaks about them.

Then his personal story intersects with one of the hardest periods in recent Sri Lankan history.

He met his wife through Butterfly, the local destination management company that handles travel logistics and ground operations, including bookings, office coordination and tour support for visiting travellers and partner companies. They met during the post COVID economic collapse, when Sri Lanka was short of foreign reserves, fuel, medicines and certainty. Ash recalls a moment when the office generator had no fuel and work could not continue unless someone solved the problem. His future wife, who worked in accounts, knew someone with access to petrol some distance away. They got into a car, set off to collect fuel and that became the beginning of their relationship.

He speaks of her with deep admiration. She is an accountant, though from his description her work stretches well beyond that title. She handles numbers, logistics, office matters, practical problems and whatever else needs doing. She also cared for her parents through illness and loss. Her father died after complications linked to diabetes and stroke. Her mother, a teacher, had an ulcer on her tongue operated on and then suffered complications that left her partly paralysed and increasingly frail. Ash says his wife sold property, rebuilt her life around caring for her mother and carried that responsibility with determination.

This part of the interview says a great deal about women’s labour in Sri Lanka. Paid work. Family care. Domestic responsibility. Emotional management. Ash sees it clearly in his wife’s life and tries, in his own household, to carry more than many men might. He has taken on sweeping, balconies, bathrooms and part of the cleaning because he can see how much she already does. Even so, she still feels culturally compelled to cook for him and do more. The respect given to women inside the family is genuine. The expectation placed on them is genuine too.

Ash’s wife also gave his life shape and direction. During the financial crisis and its aftermath, he still felt professionally unfinished. He wanted to complete his qualifications properly. In 2023 he stepped back and returned to study, finishing the National Tourist Guide Lecturer course in 2024. She backed him through that period. Her salary was modest. Her responsibilities were huge. Even so, she supported him emotionally and financially. He describes her as the pillar in his life. That support changed the way he saw his future. He decided he wanted to marry her.

The wedding tells its own story. They had little money. He had no appetite for a grand display. She wanted a beautiful day. So they built one the way many families do, through effort, goodwill and help from the people around them. The wedding took place at her home. Friends, relatives and office staff helped create it. There was a dress, a gown and the people they loved. They married in May 2025.

Ash’s family background also opens a window into Sri Lanka’s religious life. His mother is Buddhist. His father is Anglican. They eloped. Ash followed his mother’s faith, partly because she was the one managing the day to day labour of raising the children, cooking, organising school and taking them to temple. At the same time he attended an Anglican school. He grew up moving between traditions, which seems to have left him comfortable with complexity. His wife is Catholic, so that pattern continues in a new form.

The material reality of life in Sri Lanka runs underneath all of this. Ash and his wife rent a small apartment south of Colombo in an area that is affordable rather than desirable. It sits inside a three storey house, landlord downstairs, landlord’s son upstairs, the couple in the middle. Housing, he says, is one of the country’s biggest pressures. His parents moved 18 times because they were always renting. He grew up in 14 of those houses and now counts this as the 15th home of his own life.

That detail says more than any broad statement about housing stress. Constant movement shapes a person. It shapes what security means. It shapes aspiration. Ash is 35. He says he only paid off his first vehicle, a scooter, last year. In Sri Lanka, a house and a vehicle are practical assets, status markers and signs of adulthood all at once. He feels the gap between the life he wants and the life he can currently afford.

That is one reason Australia appeals to him. He likes Australians. He finds them easygoing and friendly. He says Australians tend to ask about animals, culture, food and local spirits. He also sees Australia as a place where ordinary people can get ahead more easily. He imagines used vehicles being more affordable. He imagines the supermarkets. He laughs about wanting to walk through a giant Australian supermarket, though what sits underneath that is clear enough. He wants to see what life looks like when basic services are dependable, goods are plentiful and everyday planning carries less strain.

At the same time, he is clear eyed about Sri Lanka’s challenges. When I asked what changes he would most like to see, he went straight to education and housing. Sri Lanka may have high literacy, and that is one of its great strengths, yet higher education still sits out of reach for many. Ash still wants a bachelor’s degree, in tourism or perhaps archaeology, which has become a growing interest. Even the more affordable course he has in mind would cost about 400,000 rupees over three years. That is a significant burden.

He also points to the wider economy. One of Sri Lanka’s major sources of income comes from citizens working overseas, particularly in the Middle East, and sending money home. Garments are another major employer. In his account, lives inside that industry vary sharply. Designers and pattern makers can do well. Factory workers face a much harder road. For men, the dream jobs often sit in sales, marketing, banking and insurance, sectors associated with status, better income, access to loans and the visible signs of success.

He also speaks with affection about Sri Lanka and with clarity about what is wrong. He loves its beauty, wildlife, culture and people. He also sees what holds the country back, corruption, housing pressure, the cost of education, the weight carried by women, the strain on young couples.

He and his wife have chosen to hold off on children because the sums do not work. He mentioned a relative’s private hospital bill for childbirth, 1.2 million rupees. That figure says a great deal about why younger people pause. He links this to Sri Lanka’s falling birth rate. He and his wife live around work rosters, long absences and brief windows at home. When he is away guiding for 15 days, he gets about four days at home before heading off again. They speak every morning and every night. The marriage runs on commitment, care and phone calls across distance.

His long term hope is to build something more secure. He would like to run his own travel agency one day, shape his own schedule and spend more time at home. There is ambition in that, along with a very ordinary human desire for a life that feels settled.

Travel writing can easily become a collection of impressions, a temple here, a buffet there, a few adjectives about beauty and colour. Ash reminded me that the deeper story sits inside the people who carry a country every day. Through him I saw Sri Lanka through family choices, work, migration, class pressure, gender expectations, political anger and hope.

One guide cannot stand in for a whole nation.

One guide can reveal a great deal.

Ash gave me Sri Lanka in human form.

The Sri Lanka guide who gave my trip its heart

Meet Niruth Ashendra, Ash to our group, the man behind the microphone and the reason this trip carried so much heart

International travel has only become part of my life in the past five years. The first trip came through an opportunity to attend the World Food Prize. Like any Australian, once I had accepted the reality of a very long plane journey, I decided to make it count. I spent five weeks away, starting in the UK, then travelling through Italy and on to the United States. In America I was lucky enough to spend time with people working in education and agriculture, from professors to trainee teachers, and those conversations added depth to everything I was seeing.

The following year I travelled through the top of Spain and Puglia in Italy. My original trip changed shape, which left me with a spare week. I spent that week in the Aeolian Islands and saw a little of Sicily as well. At my wonderful travel agent’s suggestion, I then finished the trip in Malta. What an extraordinary place. I also had a fascinating guide there, Philippe, and you can read that story here.

I had excellent guides in Spain and Puglia too, and you can read my blog about Alex here.

Last year I visited the Balkans. Having worked with Macedonians, Croatians and Serbians, I was keen to see their countries for myself. I loved that trip. Then I went on to Portugal and the southern half of Spain, and that was when something became clear to me. Group travel only works when the guide has judgement. A guide who talks constantly on the bus can drain the life out of a trip. A guide who offers a rose coloured version of a country’s history leaves you with something polished and thin.

By then I had decided it was time to visit developing countries. Friends had spoken with such enthusiasm about Sri Lanka and Vietnam. I briefly toyed with fitting both into a three week window. My travel agent, wisely, said I would miss far too much. So I chose Sri Lanka, with a four day stop in Singapore to see friends on the way.

That decision brought me to our Bunnik guide, Niruth Ashendra, known as Ash, and to the reason for this piece.

In my previous two blogs, I wrote about Sri Lanka as a traveller. This piece comes from a different instinct, the writer’s instinct. I am always interested in people, especially the people whose work sits closest to the public. Tour guides are in that category. The hours are long. The responsibility is constant. The work takes them away from the people they love. They deal with logistics, personalities, fatigue, minor crises, repeated questions and the emotional weather of a whole group. Something draws a person into that life. I wanted to know what it was for Ash.

He had already stood out to me as an excellent guide.

One of the things group travel can get wrong is the guide who feels compelled to fill every silence. Bus rides become rolling lectures. By the end of the day your ears are tired and the country has barely had room to speak. Ash has much better instincts than that. He gives you the key points, tells you what to look for, shares the stories that help a place come alive, and leaves enough space for you to take it in.

He was also generous with his time in a way the whole group noticed. He was always there to assist. He was responsive, calm and practical. We used WhatsApp throughout the trip, which turned out to be a very smart way to keep everyone connected. We were encouraged to share highlights and photos, and Ash used it to reinforce the main things to notice at each attraction. That meant we arrived knowing the heart of the attraction. It enriched the experience without overloading it.

He also has humour, warmth and a very natural way with people. You could see how much he was admired by the group. Respect like that is earned. It comes from competence, generosity and the hundred small moments when people realise they are in good hands.

Once I sat down with him, it became even clearer why he is so good at what he does.

Ash brings far more than information to the role. He brings honesty, emotional intelligence, generosity and a strong sense of responsibility. He understands hard work. He understands family sacrifice. He understands what it means to build a life step by step. Those qualities shape the way he guides, and they shape the way he talks about Sri Lanka.

That is why I wanted to interview him.

Tourists see the highlights. They rarely get to sit down with someone at the coalface and ask how they came to this work, what they value, what the job asks of them, and what their country looks like through their eyes. Ash was open, thoughtful and generous in those conversations.  Credit goes to the tour company, Bunnik, as well. Trusting team members to share the real texture of the country they call home is too often rare in today’s world of carefully curated messaging.

Ash gave our group an excellent experience.

He also gave me something a writer always hopes for, a person whose story opens the door to a much bigger one.

The next two blogs take that conversation further. In one, I share Ash’s personal story, his family, the path that led him into guiding, and the values that shape the way he works. In the other, I look at what he taught me about Sri Lanka itself, its people, its culture, its pressures, and the quiet resilience that runs through everyday life. Through Ash, I came to understand a great deal more about the country we were travelling through, and the people who carry it.

Sri Lanka Shows The Gap Between Spending And Reality

These tanks sit at my hotel. Treated water. Ten thousand litres at a time. I can turn on a tap and trust what comes out. Safe drinking water should not depend on where you sleep. Everyone in Sri Lanka deserves it.

I came here as a tourist on a cultural journey. Everyone told me how beautiful the country is and how wonderful the people are. That’s what I expected.

I wasn’t expecting to finish each day reflecting.

Reflecting on the gap between what I have and what people here manage without. Reflecting on how normal clean water, reliable health care and basic infrastructure feel at home, and how visible their absence is here.

Reflecting on how quickly you understand why vaccines sit at the centre of daily life. Reflecting on how easily illness can become something serious when the basics aren’t in place.

Reflecting on why people leave.

And then reflecting on something else. What this says about us, about the choices we make at home, and where we spend our money. The gap between what we know and what we are prepared to act on.

We are not standing on the sidelines. Australia is already spending money in places like this. Bill sent me some background that shifted the question for me. Bill is someone I trust on these issues. He has worked in the sector, served on the board of World Education Australia and Good Return, and is widely respected by those around him for his steady commitment to social and environmental justice.

He reminded me that there is already a serious structure behind Australia’s aid and development work. The Australian Council for International Development is the peak body for Australian NGOs involved in international development and humanitarian action. Its membership includes more than 130 organisations working across more than 90 developing countries. Large agencies, smaller community based groups, secular and faith based organisations, all part of the same system.

This is not a loose collection of good intentions. There are standards, reporting, accountability. There are people who have spent years trying to make this work.

So the question changes.

It is no longer enough to say Australia should spend more upstream and less at the punitive end. We are already spending upstream.

So why does it still look like this?

Bill’s advice was simple. Ask people.

I won’t have the chance to do that on this trip in any meaningful way. So I am drawing on what people in this space have already heard when those conversations do happen.

The answers are not complicated. People want the basics to work.

Clean water you can trust. Waste systems that don’t sit in the open. Health care that is close, reliable and affordable. Jobs that provide steady income. Transport that gets you to work safely. Schools that lead somewhere real.

They want consistency. Not programs that arrive, run for a while, then disappear. Not pilots that look good in reports and never scale.

They want work more than workshops. Income more than messaging.

They want to see where the money goes. They know aid exists. They also know it does not always reach them. That creates scepticism.

And they want to be asked at the beginning, not at the end.

None of this is surprising.

What is confronting is how closely it lines up with what I am seeing.

I thought the story was simple. We spend too much on borders and not enough on the causes.

Now I can see a more nuanced version of the story.

We are already part of this. Money is already flowing. The question is whether it is reaching the right places, whether it reflects what people actually need, and whether we stay long enough to see change last.

That is what I am reflecting on now.

Not only what I am seeing, though what sits behind it. Who decides. Who benefits. Who gets heard.

None of this is an argument for blank cheques, donor vanity projects or money that never reaches the people living with the consequences. It is an argument for asking harder questions about what works, what lasts and who gets to decide.

The next step is obvious.

Ask better questions.

Then listen.

Australia Funds the Warning Signs and Ignores the Problem

I came on a holiday and now I am putting together a briefing note to get an audience with Penny Wong.

Six days in Sri Lanka and it has become impossible to dodge that Australia spends billions on detention centres, offshore processing, border enforcement and surveillance, locking up children and stripping people of hope, and far less on the conditions that drive people to leave.

Billions on Warnings, Almost Nothing on Solutions

In my first piece I wrote about vaccines, public health and the visible conditions that make disease prevention a daily issue, not a travel checklist.

This second piece comes from a different place. I have taken a day out and stayed at the hotel because I needed a break from what I am seeing. The contrast is confronting. Writing this is how I turn that into action.

I am drawing on the leadership training I trust. Goal, problem, solution. In an ideal world we would sit down with the people we want to support and listen, and listen, and listen.

We pour money into deterrence after people decide to go, when the wiser investment is supporting them to stay

You do not need a policy paper to understand the pull of Australia from here. You need eyes and a nose. You need to walk past polluted water, rubbish piled where people live and work, and the kind of infrastructure gap that turns an ordinary stomach bug into something far more serious. You need to hear that Australia funds bus shelters carrying warnings about people smugglers and recognise the absurdity in full view.

We will pay for the warning sign. We drag our feet on the conditions that might remove the need for the warning.

And of course people look at Australia and want what we have. Clean water. Reliable health care. Schools that open doors. Work that pays enough to build a life. Streets that do not force public health into every hour of the day. Add a strong Sri Lankan community already living in Australia and the path becomes easier to imagine. People are not chasing fantasy. They are responding to the visible difference between one set of conditions and another.

Now place that against our politics at home. We live in a country of abundance, still right wing politics thrives by feeding grievance. Migrants are taking our jobs. Migrants are buying our houses. Migrants are the problem. It is the old script. Find a villain. Feed the resentment. Keep the public focused on who to blame rather than what to fix.

This is where the debate in Australia becomes so shabby. We hand the microphone to people who reduce human desperation to border slogans, as though cruelty counts as policy. They rage about boats, numbers and national strength. They rarely talk about sanitation, disease prevention, local health care, waste systems, corruption proof delivery, or long term partnerships with communities. They talk about the last stage of the story because outrage plays well at home.

There is another audience for this conversation. People who already know Australia has obligations beyond self protection. People who understand that generosity without discipline achieves little, and discipline without humanity turns ugly fast. This is where the hard thinking belongs. How do we help build safer, healthier lives in countries people are leaving? How do we do it from the ground up, with local knowledge, clear goals, open reporting and constant scrutiny? How do we keep money out of corrupt hands and get it to the people and projects that can change daily life?

We Warn Them Not to Come, Then Do Nothing About Why They Leave

None of this is beyond us. Trial programs. Local partnerships. Transparent metrics. Public reporting. Long term commitment. Real listening before money moves. Australia knows how to design systems, monitor spending and explain outcomes when it chooses to. This is a choice.

Sri Lanka has made one part of this brutally clear to me. People do not hand over life savings to smugglers because they are reckless. They do it because paradise looks believable from where they stand, and because home has stopped offering enough protection, dignity or hope.

That should force a different question onto the table in Australia. Not how loudly we can declare the border secure. How seriously we are prepared to invest in the basics that give people a reason to stay where they are.

I came here for a holiday. Six days in, I am thinking about budgets, public health, political courage and the poverty of a national debate that still treats deterrence as the main event.

This is the second piece. I will come back to the question in another six days, and I doubt it will have become any easier.

Why does Australia pay to lock people up rather than fix the reasons they leave?

Australia spends huge sums punishing desperate people at the border instead of spending earlier on the health, sanitation and opportunity that might help people build a life at home.

Sri Lanka has forced me to see something I have managed to avoid for years. I have travelled in first world countries, stayed in clean places, come home with photos and impressions, and rarely had to think about the public health conditions that shape daily life for millions of people. This trip changed that within hours. The vaccines alone told part of the story. The streets, the water and the smell told the rest.

Before I left Australia, I went to my chemist to check what I needed. COVID, flu, diphtheria, tetanus. Then typhoid. A check on hepatitis A. A conversation about Japanese encephalitis. Malaria risk. It felt like a long list for a short trip.

Then I arrived and understood exactly why the list exists.

You step outside and you see how easily disease can move. Waste sits in the open. Water carries what it should not. Heat amplifies all of it. This is daily life for people who do not have the infrastructure many Australians take for granted.

I am drinking a cocktail standing in water that you wouldn’t dream of drinking 

And then, in the middle of this, 0ur guide pointed out bus shelters funded by Australia.  He asked if we knew why they were there. We did not. He told us they carried warnings about people smugglers. Sri Lankans, he said, look to Australia and want the life they believe exists there.

Of course they do.

You can see the reasons from here. Reliable health care. Clean water. Education that leads somewhere. Jobs that pay. A future that feels secure. Add to this a strong Sri Lankan community already in place, people who help new arrivals find work, housing, a foothold.

So people make a calculation. They sell what they have. They take risks. They hand money to operators who promise a way out.

And this is where we shake our heads.

Australia spends huge sums punishing desperate people at the border instead of spending earlier on the health, sanitation and opportunity that might help people build a life at home.

We will pay a fortune to lock people up after they leave, still we drag our feet on helping create the conditions that might let them stay.

Standing here, that choice looks harder and harder and harder to defend.

We already spend money in places like this. Those bus shelters prove it. We fund messages telling people not to leave. We fund systems at the other end designed to stop them arriving. The spending is real. The intent is clear.

Still the gap sits in front of you.

What would change if a share of that money went into the basics people talk about here every day. Clean water systems. Waste management. Local health services. Vaccination programs delivered as standard care, not as travel protection for visitors. The kind of infrastructure that reduces disease, improves daily life and gives people a reason to stay.

The aim does not change. Fewer dangerous journeys. Fewer families risking everything. Less money flowing to people smugglers.

The starting point shifts.

Travel can be many things. This trip has stripped something back for me. Vaccines protect people like me when I arrive. Investment in public health and basic infrastructure could do far more for the people who live here.

Here is the question again for all of us.

Why are we willing to pay a fortune to lock people up after they leave, still so reluctant to help create the conditions that might let them stay?