The Journey

Left the house early in the morning on Friday the 6^th to head to Glasgow airport for my 2.15pm flight to Dubai. We arrived at the airport too early but by luck the check-in gate was open earlier anyway so I didn’t have to hang around waiting. I had already checked-in online so just had to check-in my suitcase (which was 10kg lighter than required!) said bye to dad and then headed on through security to the departure lounge.

Sitting in departures waiting to meet Georgina 

Through the PMGY Sri Lanka Facebook group page I had already chatted to a girl called Georgina. Another Scot, raised in Elgin and now living near Glasgow. We had chosen our seats on the plane to be beside one another and met in departures. The flight left Glasgow on time with no problems. It was my first time flying with Emirates and the plane was fantastic, great seating and Georgina and I were lucky enough that it was only the two of us sitting on our row of three seats. The choice of in-flight films was brilliant too and the flight was quickly filled with three films. (The Monuments Men, Philomena and Saving Mr Banks) The food was ‘meh’ but then again when is plane food ever good?! We did have quite a lot of turbulence on the flight, more than I have had before, but it was quite good fun!

On landing in Dubai airport we had just over an hour to kill so we decided to get a smoothie. Slight problem was that we had no currency, and the currency converter place would not accept Scottish bank notes! By luck Georgina had one £20 English note though.  The departure gate was chaos, unlike any departure gate I have ever been in before but we made it onto the next Emirates plane to Sri Lanka amid the chaos. There was a stark difference on this plane and we were in the vast minority of white people. We also had a sense of déjà vu as the plane was exactly the same as the previous one and we were in the same seats!

We touched down in Sri Lanka and made it through customs in super quick speed. Compared to the customs process in America (especially considering 2013 when I was taken into a scary wee office and questioned!) the Sri Lankan customs was very basic. The guy didn’t even look at my passport photo, just glanced the visa and wrote down the number and ta-da that was me through customs.

We were collected by Ashika, the guy in charge of all the Sri Lankan projects, and we sat down with a girl named Hana from Ireland while we waited for two more girls to arrive. The airport was very small and regardless of the Air Con it seemed very hot. Unsurprisingly the sudden wave of heat and humidity when we walked out the airport was crazy! 

We had quite a long drive from the airport in Colombo to the town we will be based in called Ambalagoda.