u/Weird_Cook_8139

I want to share a very disturbing experience we had in Mirissa, especially for couples and female travelers.
This happened on the evening of 5 June, outside Mirissa Cargills.

My wife and I were standing there and trying to call an Uber. From the beginning, some tuk-tuk drivers nearby were giving us bad looks, making comments because we were trying to use Uber instead of taking their tuk-tuk.

When the Uber arrived, the situation got much worse. A group of tuk-tuk drivers immediately became aggressive. They started clapping, shouting, and mocking us, saying like, “You want to go with Uber? Go, go to Uber.”
Then they surrounded the Uber car and started intimidating the driver. The driver became scared and kept saying, “Cancel, cancel, I’m sorry, I won’t go.” He was shaking.

My wife calmly said that the driver was cancelling because of your behaviour. As soon as she said that, one skinny, tall guy with a beard came toward her and started abusing her. He used language, including “f you***” and “go the f*** away,” random lines like “it’s not about money, we have fucking money, fking respect us..” and kept shouting at her aggressively.

What shocked me most was that he specifically targeted my wife. He came close to her, opened the car door very aggressively, and acted like he was going to push her into the car while shouting, “You want to go in the car? Go into the car.” It felt threatening, humiliating, and scary. I never expected this kind of behaviour towards a girl, my wife.

The Uber driver was shaking and kept saying he could not take us because they would beat him if he drove away with us. But even if the driver cancelled, what were we supposed to do? Walk back home with all these aggressive men around us?

Another shocking part is that literally no one came to help us.

We were staying at a nearby Airbnb, so we did not want to escalate anything or get into more trouble. Somehow
, we managed to get into the car and leave.

This is not only about tuk-tuk drivers charging tourists more money. The bigger issue is safety, especially women’s safety. A group of men staring, making bad comments, surrounding a car, shouting abuse at a woman, opening the car door nearly pushed her and trying to intimidate her is harassment.

Tourists should not have to accept this. I always found Srilankan man very gentle, polite and very helpful. but after this experience i just lost my words.

I want to share a very disturbing experience we had in Mirissa, especially for couples and female travelers.
This happened on the evening of 5 June, outside Mirissa Cargills.

My wife and I were standing there and trying to call an Uber. From the beginning, some tuk-tuk drivers nearby were giving us bad looks, making comments because we were trying to use Uber instead of taking their tuk-tuk.

When the Uber arrived, the situation got much worse. A group of tuk-tuk drivers immediately became aggressive. They started clapping, shouting, and mocking us, saying like, “You want to go with Uber? Go, go to Uber.”
Then they surrounded the Uber car and started intimidating the driver. The driver became scared and kept saying, “Cancel, cancel, I’m sorry, I won’t go.” He was shaking.

My wife calmly said that the driver was cancelling because of your behaviour. As soon as she said that, one skinny, tall guy with a beard came toward her and started abusing her. He used language, including “f you” and “go the f away,” random lines like “it’s not about money, we have fucking money, fking respect us..” and kept shouting at her aggressively.

What shocked me most was that he specifically targeted my wife. He came close to her, opened the car door very aggressively, and acted like he was going to push her into the car while shouting, “You want to go in the car? Go into the car.” It felt threatening, humiliating, and scary. I never expected this kind of behaviour towards a girl, my wife.

The Uber driver was shaking and kept saying he could not take us because they would beat him if he drove away with us. But even if the driver cancelled, what were we supposed to do? Walk back home with all these aggressive men around us?

Another shocking part is that literally no one came to help us.

We were staying at a nearby Airbnb, so we did not want to escalate anything or get into more trouble. Somehow
, we managed to get into the car and leave.

This is not only about tuk-tuk drivers charging tourists more money. The bigger issue is safety, especially women’s safety. A group of men staring, making bad comments, surrounding a car, shouting abuse at a woman, opening the car door nearly pushed her and trying to intimidate her is harassment.

Tourists should not have to accept this. I always found Srilankan man very gentle, polite and very helpful. but after this experience i just lost my words.

I want to share a very disturbing experience we had in Mirissa, especially for couples and female travelers.
This happened on the evening of 5 June, outside Mirissa Cargills.

My wife and I were standing there and trying to call an Uber. From the beginning, some tuk-tuk drivers nearby were giving us bad looks, making comments because we were trying to use Uber instead of taking their tuk-tuk.

When the Uber arrived, the situation got much worse. A group of tuk-tuk drivers immediately became aggressive. They started clapping, shouting, and mocking us, saying like, “You want to go with Uber? Go, go to Uber.”
Then they surrounded the Uber car and started intimidating the driver. The driver became scared and kept saying, “Cancel, cancel, I’m sorry, I won’t go.” He was shaking.

My wife calmly said that the driver was cancelling because of your behaviour. As soon as she said that, one skinny, tall guy with a beard came toward her and started abusing her. He used language, including “f you” and “go the f away,” random lines like “it’s not about money, we have fucking money, fking respect us..” and kept shouting at her aggressively.

What shocked me most was that he specifically targeted my wife. He came close to her, opened the car door very aggressively, and acted like he was going to push her into the car while shouting, “You want to go in the car? Go into the car.” It felt threatening, humiliating, and scary. I never expected this kind of behaviour towards a girl, my wife.

The Uber driver was shaking and kept saying he could not take us because they would beat him if he drove away with us. But even if the driver cancelled, what were we supposed to do? Walk back home with all these aggressive men around us?

Another shocking part is that literally no one came to help us.

We were staying at a nearby Airbnb, so we did not want to escalate anything or get into more trouble. Somehow
, we managed to get into the car and leave.

This is not only about tuk-tuk drivers charging tourists more money. The bigger issue is safety, especially women’s safety. A group of men staring, making bad comments, surrounding a car, shouting abuse at a woman, opening the car door nearly pushed her and trying to intimidate her is harassment.

Tourists should not have to accept this. I always found Srilankan man very gentle, polite and very helpful. but after this experience i just lost my words.

I want to share a very disturbing experience we had in Mirissa, especially for couples and female travelers.
This happened on the evening of 5 June, outside Mirissa Cargills.

My wife and I were standing there and trying to call an Uber. From the beginning, some tuk-tuk drivers nearby were giving us bad looks, making comments because we were trying to use Uber instead of taking their tuk-tuk.

When the Uber arrived, the situation got much worse. A group of tuk-tuk drivers immediately became aggressive. They started clapping, shouting, and mocking us, saying like, “You want to go with Uber? Go, go to Uber.”
Then they surrounded the Uber car and started intimidating the driver. The driver became scared and kept saying, “Cancel, cancel, I’m sorry, I won’t go.” He was shaking.

My wife calmly said that the driver was cancelling because of your behaviour. As soon as she said that, one skinny, tall guy with a beard came toward her and started abusing her. He used language, including “f you***” and “go the f*** away,” random lines like “it’s not about money, we have fucking money, fking respect us..” and kept shouting at her aggressively.

What shocked me most was that he specifically targeted my wife. He came close to her, opened the car door very aggressively, and acted like he was going to push her into the car while shouting, “You want to go in the car? Go into the car.” It felt threatening, humiliating, and scary. I never expected this kind of behaviour towards a girl, my wife.

The Uber driver was shaking and kept saying he could not take us because they would beat him if he drove away with us. But even if the driver cancelled, what were we supposed to do? Walk back home with all these aggressive men around us?

Another shocking part is that literally no one came to help us.

We were staying at a nearby Airbnb, so we did not want to escalate anything or get into more trouble. Somehow
, we managed to get into the car and leave.

This is not only about tuk-tuk drivers charging tourists more money. The bigger issue is safety, especially women’s safety. A group of men staring, making bad comments, surrounding a car, shouting abuse at a woman, opening the car door nearly pushed her and trying to intimidate her is harassment.

Tourists should not have to accept this. I always found Srilankan man very gentle, polite and very helpful. but after this experience i just lost my words.

Edit:
I see many people blaming me for posting this on social media, not making an official complaint, calling the police, or recording a video.

First of all, all of you already aware that this kind of tuk-tuk mafia.

It is very easy to say “you should have called the cops” or “you should have recorded them” when you are local, you know the area, you know the people, and you know how things work there. But I was a tourist. I did not know anyone there. I was staying in a remote Airbnb nearby and we planned to stay there for a week. At that moment, we were surrounded by aggressive men, the Uber driver was scared, trying to drive away and literally no one around us came to help.
In that situation, what was I supposed to do? Take out my phone and start recording them, escalating the situation even more? Call authorities when I do not know how the local system works, how powerful these gang are, if authorities taking commissions or not? Or try to escape the situation and protect my wife first?

When you are in a place you do not know, surrounded by a group of aggressive men, with your wife being verbally harassed, your first priority is not making it a physical assault. Your first priority is getting out safely.

And honestly, seeing how many people are blaming me just for posting about it online, I am even more sure that if I had tried to stand up to them or go to the police, even more people would have blamed us and said we misbehaved with them or created the problem ourselves.

These tuk-tuk drivers are not hiding in some secret place. They are usually parked around the same tourist spots, harassing tourists openly. Unless something becomes very serious, most tourists probably just stay quiet and leave because they do not want trouble.

I shared this because tourists, especially women and couples, should be careful. That is all.

We met many good people in Sri Lanka. But this specific situation was scary, and i believe worth sharing.

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