Let’s start by discussing how to get to Sri Lanka. There’s no option except to fly into Sri Lanka because it is, in fact, an island off the coast of India and near the Maldives. You’ll fly into their international airport hub in Colombo and be welcomed by an extremely calm airport and a very relaxed customs and immigration process. There was no hold-up, no stress, and no confusion when landing. Overall, it was a very seamless process.
BEFORE YOU ARRIVE: Most everybody needs a visa before they can visit Sri Lanka, so please don’t be like me and wait until the week before to get yours. Try to do it at least a couple weeks before because by the time I went to get the e-visa online the system was down and was not coming back up. For a few days, I hoped the system would come back up, but sadly, it didn’t, so I had to go through a second or third party and pay an extra fee on top of the actual visa fee. To top that off, the visa site that I went through didn’t tell me I needed to upload multiple documents and things like that, so my visa ended up literally not arriving until the afternoon of the day before my flight left.
WHY SRI LANKA: I’ve been dreaming of coming to Sri Lanka and learning how to surf for a couple years now. At some point in my travels, I met a man who said Sri Lanka was incredible, compared it to Thailand 20 years ago (pre-tourism boom), and said it was a place I had to get to. That stuck in my mind, so I was waiting for an opportunity to go. I also know that Sri Lanka is in South Asia, and I’ve heard that this can be tough for a woman traveling solo, so I wanted to give myself a few more years to feel prepared and ready to go.
WHY A WORK EXCHANGE: I’ve traveled many types of ways in my life. Budget, backpacker, couple, solo, group trip, family trips, and have good and bad experiences doing all of them. One style of travel I’ve never gotten to explore was a work exchange experience. I’ve always wanted to, and I’ve even belonged to sites just like Worldpackers but never could commit to really doing it. Worldpackers reached out to me and offered me an opportunity that seemed incredible, so I decided, you know what? Let’s say yes!
SO HOW’S IT GOING?: Honestly, it’s going interestingly, and I plan to be as candid and open and honest as I can be through my writings to detail my experience so that YOU will feel ready to make this journey when it’s your time to do so. Right now, I’m staying at a surf hotel in a city called Galle, Sri Lanka, where I am managing and helping them sort out their social media and content creation strategy. As with the way things go in these types of experiences, there have been a few hurdles, but I’m doing my best to clear them and to stay in good spirits. Overall, I am so happy that I’m on this journey, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity through Worldpackers.
If you’re interested in signing up for Worldpackers, just know that for $50/year, you’ll receive access to thousands of work exchange and volunteer opportunities around the world that you can apply to and begin at any moment in time. If you sign up between now and May 31st, you’ll get 3 months FREE, which means you’ll have access to this database until August 2025. Join Worldpackers TODAY!
Signing off, Traveling Tee xo
