Waiting to Exhale

Exiting the international airport in Colombo can be alarming: uniformed men tote guns, and there are acres of razor wire. Colombo's quaint commercial center is clogged with police checkpoints. President Chandrika Kumaratunga lives there; having survived an attempted assassination bombing three years ago, she's not taking any chances. In fact, there's little to fear. Nobody worries about bombs going off in Sri Lanka these days. You can travel just about anywhere on the island: to the northern peninsula of Jaffna or to the eastern beaches near Trincomalee, areas that were off limits for most of the past 19 years of civil...