Pettah, Colombo

Pettah, Colombo, Sri Lanka (3 September, 2005)


Pettah is the district in downtown Colombo located immediately east of Fort. Unlike Fort, which has grand colonial buildings as well as gleaming skyscrapers, Pettah is a totally different kettle of fish. This is the market and bazaar district. It is wonderfully colourful, loud and crowded. Pedestrians jostle their way down the narrow shopping streets, hurrying past coolies and wooden carts.

The name Pettah comes from the Sinhalese words, pita kotuwa, meaning outside the fort. This area is located outside the since demolished fort, and it grew into a bustling district.

I have the opportunity to explore Pettah on foot. I was on the last day of our tour of Sri Lanka, and we had a leisure half day off to explore the city on our own. Pettah on foot provided me the opportunity to be part of the atmosphere that is part of Colombo, and I hope members of AsiaExplorers who has no opportunity to join us will be able to enjoy it through the description on this page.

Coolies taking a break, Pettah (3 September, 2005)

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About this website

Dear visitor, thank you so much for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye and my hobby is to find out about places, write about them and share the information with you on this website. I have been writing this site since 5 January 2003. Originally (from 2003 until 2009, the site was called AsiaExplorers. I changed the name to Penang Travel Tips in 2009, even though I describe more than just Penang but everywhere I go (I often need to tell people that "Penang Travel Tips" is not just information about Penang, but information written in Penang), especially places in Malaysia and Singapore, and in all the years since 2003, I have described over 20,000 places.

While I try my best to provide you information as accurate as I can get it to be, I do apologize for any errors and for outdated information which I am unaware. Nevertheless, I hope that what I have described here will be useful to you.