Of moonwalking ladies and a scam

At the Colombo airport, you can be a witness to both the moonwalking ladies and a running scam. Moonwalking ladies? at the airport? Yup. Srilankan airlines' operations and the airport design is such that at the place of issue of boarding pass, their places are like this

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|X| |X|

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||||||||||||||||||||||| conveyor belt

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||L|| L || L || L

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The 'X' are the photocopy machines. The 'L' are the young pretty Srilankan Airlines' ground staff ladies in red sarees issuing boarding passes and checking-in luggages. They somehow frequently move around to the other counters or to take a photocopy. And for doing that, they walk on the moving conveyor belt that carries the baggage for delivery to the aircraft. When they walk against the direction of the moving escaltor, it looks like they are moonwalking from the customer's side of the counter. It really was a nice moonwalking sight.

The other is not a good thing. When we wanted to excchange back the SriLankan rupees to an international currency, there were so many currency exchange stores who were just not willing to give the currency with a bill. One said that the printer was not working and reccommended constantly to go a particular exchange center of another company who was charging a higher rate. We skipped both these crooks and went to a third. The guy says we have to give them the original receipt of converting to Srilankan currency and showing it is not enough if we want a bill. Without a bill, he is willing to exchange the currency. He said the need to submit the original recipt of getting Srilankan currency was a rule. Then we just asked Thomas Cook. They were willing exchange the currency with recipt but with their higher rate. My dad said he will get it converted it in his bank and we just went ahead to depart for the flight. Very sad state of affairs in SriLanka. Almost all the currency exchange fellows carteled together and do illegal currency changing without a bill. Beware!

P.S: This was originally written when I was in SriLanka and before Michael Jackson died. This blogpost is dedicated to the real 'moonwalker': Michael Jackson.