Look for Sri Lanka’s connections to Southorn Playground in Hong Kong’s Wan Chai on a trip around the island nation, ‘Pearl of the Indian Ocean’
- The story of Southorn Playground goes back to Sri Lanka in the early 1900s, and diplomat Sir Wilfred Thomas Southorn and his future wife, Bella Woolf
- We retrace Woolf’s journey from Colombo to Kandy, with its Temple of the Tooth, and Jaffna, and her brother Leonard’s to Hambantota in the south
A curious connection exists between a popular recreation area in the heart of urban Hong Kong and the lush jungles, undulating tea plantations, ancient temples and reef-fringed beaches of Sri Lanka, some 3,900km (2,400 miles) away.
Southorn Playground, sandwiched between busy Hennessy Road and Johnston Road, Wan Chai, was opened in 1934 and named after Sir Wilfred Thomas Southorn, Hong Kong’s then colonial secretary.
Southorn was introduced to Woolf by her brother, the English literary figure Leonard Woolf, when the two men worked as colonial administrators in what was then British Ceylon.
Bella Woolf was an accomplished writer in her own right and in 1914 had published a travel guide to Sri Lanka, How to see Ceylon. By retracing her steps, visitors to Sri Lanka can enjoy a uniquely Hong Kong connection to the shimmering Pearl of the Indian Ocean.
Bella Woolf arrived by steamship in Colombo in 1907 and, like most Western visitors, stayed at the Grand Oriental Hotel, or GOH as everyone called it. The hotel still stands, with its expansive marble lobby housing a bust of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, one of many celebrated guests, although the place has lost much of its lustre over the years.