Now that many people are talking about the hornets in Sigiriya, I thought it worthwhile to recall my experience with hornets some decades ago in Kandy. My wife and I, both Ceylon Tourist Board national Guide Lecturers, had taken two coach loads of French tourists to the hill capital of Kandy. Having visited the Temple of the Tooth Relic of the Buddha (the biggest source of income at least for travel agents who give it predominance in all travel literature), and the Kandy Museum (which is Greek to most Foreign tourists who would run after a monkey instead!) we were happily walking back to the hotel when someone shouted in Sinhala, "Debaroo! Debaroo!!!" (hornets, hornets). We quickened our steps but the jet-propelled hornets were quicker! My wife had a parasol which she used for protecting herself and she looked like an acrobat on a tightrope!

All of us ran into our coaches but the hornets chased us through the shutters and the entrance door which had to be kept open for us to enter.

Outside our coach there was the usual ‘vanilla-pod vendor’ and when I warned him he said that hornets loved the smell of vanilla pods (natural perfume, unlike the chemicals sprayed by women on their bodies to hide body odour).

To cut a long story short, one balding French gentleman showed me his head and it was full of hornet stings. I instructed the coach-driver to take us to the nearest hospital and there it was, a private hospital with nobody on strike. Yes, the doctors, the nurses, attendants - no red-tape, full of smiles and ready to help in any emergency. (The coach-driver was one Appuhamy who later told me never to trust a state hospital in such an emergency!)

A pleasant young nurse removed thirteen stings from the old man’s head and the supervising nun (it was a private hospital by the Kandy Lake run by some Christian organisation, more as a service to humanity than otherwise).

An antihistamine was given by a very kind doctor who monitored the patient for half-an-hour before discharging the French Tourist with a note explaining what he did. Unlike the government hospital doctor who injected the Rubella vaccine to a child despite a written warning from the child’s mother, the kind doctor asked a dozen questions from the Frenchman, using me as interpreter, if the old man was allergic to any drug or food.

Finally, when we asked for the bill, the doctor said, "That’s OK, look after him!"

There are doctors and doctors in this land of sunshine. The Kandy private doctor would have made a good ambassador for the Ceylon Tourist Board to sell Sri Lanka abroad.