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Travel 2020 - TBCTravel 2020 - TBC
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Travel 2020 - TBC

January 2020 - May 2024
An open-ended adventure by George Read more
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  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
    Day 21

    Polonaruwa —> Kalkudah

    January 26, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☁️ 29 °C

    We woke up for an 8 o’clock breakfast, an assortment of baked goods, a simple breakfast but a free one! We were getting our things together and suddenly we were joined by five cats! Two adults, two young cats and a tiny kitten. I enticed them further into the room, but the little posse didn’t come much closer. We paid up for the night (after awkwardly disputing the cost) and made our way to Kalkudah in the TukTuk.

    We had decided to not take the B502 road (which was famous for elephants) to Kalkudah as it was massively out of our way and we had seen an elephant on the road yesterday anyway. Tom drove today and we got there in good time, arriving at our place ‘Inn on the Bay’ just before midday. Naturally, we dumped our bags and made our way straight to the sea! We were a 5 minute walk either side from two different beaches, either Kalkudah beach or Pasikuda beach. We decided to check out Pasikuda beach for a few hours first. It was a beautiful, a long stretch of beach full of local people and a few fishing boats scattered along the shore. We found a spot and chilled out for little while before heading over to Kalkudah beach. There was no litter on this beach and the water was gorgeous here, plus we had the beach all to ourselves. We did our usual by playing around in the waves for a little while as a few locals looked on in amusement (or so we hoped).

    We made our way back to the hotel made use of the outdoor shower and then went in hunt of food. We had been warned that the east coast was pretty dead as it was out of season, so a lot of restaurants would be closed...we found this out first hand after we drove around the local area and couldn’t find anything open or at least any local food place that were charging reasonable prices. We decided to drive into the bigger towns nearby in hunt of the local places because whether it is in season or not for tourists, the local have to eat! We drove to a small town and our logic paid off, we pulled into a very local looking place, and when I say local I mean plastic table and chairs, no menu and lots of local people sat around enjoying their food. Tom got out the TukTuk and asked the guy how much for Kottu, he said 250...I assumed that this was a western price he was charging but as it was much better than the other places near our hotel we accepted and sat down at the plastic tables as they cooked our Kottus fresh (with the loudest Kottu making yet)! The food came and it was delicious and the spice was killing me today, I think I went a bit overboard with the chilli! When it came to paying the man actually only charged us 125 each, so half the price he quoted! I presume he had reduced the price from the western price and actually accepted local price from us... finally an honest man in the north!

    Before heading back to our hotel we went on the hunt for something sweet and it wasn’t long before we rocked up to a place that was pinned on maps.me as “the Muslim Place”, that had a jam packed bakery section that had Tom and I drooling! We ordered a bag full of sweet baked goods and were happy now to head back! We thought we would enjoy our sweet food outside as we could hear the ocean but there were lots of bugs so we settled for under the mosquito net in bed with a film on!

    Midway through the film (Bridesmaids of course) we heard a scratching noise on the roof, coming from what we thought was a bird or a monkey. To our surprise we then saw four little footprints on the canopy that was draped just beneath the ceiling held up at each end by some string... what the hell was this about to join us in the room!? It slowly walked closer and closer to the wall until we could see, it was a rat! It then went from the canopy, tightrope walked across the string that was holding it up to the other side of the wall and back out... relieved that it didn’t join us in the room but hey it was still a god damn rat, albeit quite a clean looking one. We thought we had seen the last of it so got back into our film but then another scratching noise about 20 minutes later was followed by the rat running across the top of the wall much quicker than last time - Tom and I were in stitches at the acrobatic/tight roping rat and finally got to sleep, it was like some sort of guessing game whether we would wake up with company in the bed!!    Read more

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
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    Day 22

    Polonaruwa —> Marble Beach —> Nilaveli

    January 27, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☁️ 29 °C

    I woke up at 5:45 and it was beginning to get light outside. We had heard that at sunrise you can go and watch the local fishermen bring in their catch. They are obviously up much earlier than us. I rose Tom and we headed to Kalkudah beach where the sun was beginning to rise. We stood on the old Kalkudah Jetty, built by the British in 1901, and watched as a fisherman came to shore. We didn’t think he’d been successful as his pile of netting looked empty, but as he and all his mates on the beach began to unravel the net there were loads of fish in there! It was pretty cool to see all the locals pitch in and it seemed that they all took a share of the catch. We headed back to our ‘Inn on the Bay’ to pack up our stuff as we thought it best to get going as the drive north to Nilaveli was about 120km.

    We hit the road via the petrol station for some fuel and oil for Greta and some veggie roti, other baked goods and 5 bananas for the price of 4 for us. The weather was perfect, wall to wall sunshine which made for easy motoring. After nearly three hours of driving we got to Marble beach, still 30km from Nilaveli, as we had been recommended this beach by the guy who ran the hostel in Sigiriya. It was 30 rupees each to get in and it was a nice beach...small low breakers and you could walk out miles. We chilled here for a bit and enjoyed the waves, messing around as usual trying to kick and punch holes in the breakers...such kids. On the way back to the Tuktuk, I noticed a big monkey running around. We immediately realised that we hadn’t put the sides down on the Tuktuk again! Then I realised that I still had a banana left which I put on the back shelf...safe to say that was long gone - the cheeky monkeys!!

    Anyway, we hopped back in for the last bit of the journey and we eventually got to Nilaveli. The maps.me app took us a weird route so it seemed our accommodation was miles from the road, but it actually wasn’t. When we got to the aptly named ‘Nilaveli Sand Life’, it was like paradise. Sand roads, palm trees, little beach huts and a place where it felt there was a no shoe policy. We were shown to our beach cabana, right on the beach front and we could hear the waves crashing. It had an outside shower, a small wooden table and chairs and best of all, a hammock for the full beach vibe. We both immediately relaxed and I went to set myself up on the beach with my book. Tom did the same in the hammock and we spent a couple of hours just taking a break from the dirty smelly part of travelling.

    After a few hours we both got ready and headed out for some food. On the way for food, we got stopped by the police. I was driving, so got my licence ready. They looked impressed that we had the right documents and asked us where we were from etc and asked if we liked Sri Lanka - of course we said yes...they were armed. They gave my licence back and we parted with a handshake - another nice encounter with police who seemed happy that western people haven’t been put off coming to Sri Lanka after the trouble last year.

    We were a few kilometres from Nilaveli town so we hopped in the Tuktuk and set off in search of food. Not too far in we found this little place, N.K. Family Restaurant. It was a tiny little place, but the prices were good and we were hungry, obviously we ordered veggie rice and curry. It came and I can honestly say it was the best tasting food I’d had since my send off dinner by the Beck Bottom Gang. Everything was so tasty!!! We finished up and the lady took our plates away and then immediately said the cost to us...she wasn’t being rude though as there is quite a big language barrier here in the north and the people are very different to other parts of Sri Lanka. We paid and went on the hunt for a little bakery to satisfy our sweet tooth. Whilst we were having dinner we saw the bakery man go last playing his tune, so we started investigating with locals which way he had gone. We ended up not finding him but instead finding a brilliant sunset on a bridge...the randomness of travelling never gets old. We ended up getting some stuff from the local shop instead and then came back to our beach for a long walk and a chill on the daybeds. What a long day it had seemed, but we were now set for 4 nights at Nilaveli Sand Life to have a recharge.    Read more

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
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    Day 23

    Nilaveli Beach Day #1

    January 28, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 29 °C

    We had decided last night that we were going to get up for sunrise, and that we’d enjoy a lie in within the walls of our beach cabana. I had an amazing night sleep with only the sound of crashing waves to put me to sleep. Breakfast was included at this place and started from 7:30. I went out a bit earlier and left Tom asleep to go watch the ocean on the daybed...what a way to wake yourself up. At 8am we both went for breakfast, and as it was only £5 a night each, we weren’t expecting much. It turned out to be a right spread with Jam, bread, eggs, banana pancake and a roti, all topped off with freshly squeezed papaya juice all of which was delicious!!

    We came up with a plan for the day over breakfast. We would head to Nilaveli village and try and get on a boat to Pigeon Island - a national park 1 kilometre off the coast which had some decent snorkelling. We had read that it shouldn’t really cost too much - £8 per boat regardless of numbers of passengers and an undisclosed entrance fee. We turned up at the beach and were heading for the government office when we were descended on by about 10 men offering boat trips etc and throwing prices at us. There was no way we were going to take the first offer and certainly not going to the national park without an official ticket from the office. However, when we got there the office was shut and various locals were trying their best at impersonating official park staff - no Oscars were going to be won today. We were told that the office would open soon, but it was after 9am so we smelt a rat, as this office should be open early morning. One of the boat men had offered us a ‘deal’ of 11,000 rupees (£45) which we just thought was ridiculous. We waited around for a bit with Tom going for a swim until we decided that we’d call it a day. On our way off the beach, the same boat man approached us and we started to barter the price down and managed to get it down to 7,000...still too much for us for a snorkelling trip, so we headed off back to our place to chill out on the beach.

    We got back to our resort, that we practically had all to ourselves including the beach loungers and hammocks and we knew that wherever we went next, the chances of it being this peaceful and relaxing we’re slim...so we decided to just enjoy the tranquility whilst we had it and just chill out after what had been a hectic few weeks on the road. We set up camp on the beach, each taking a sun lounger directly in the sun and a daybed in the shade and would switch around depending on how hot we were, both getting into our books and the frequent dip in the sea. It was paradise, thank god we didn’t listen to people recommending for us to skip this place as it was “out of season”.

    A few hours had passed and Tom started to feel a little hungry, so he decided to venture away from the beach to get himself a Kottu. I didn’t want any food so this would be the first time for Tom driving the TukTuk alone! He found a Kottu for take away for 200 rupees, brought it back and ate it on the beach...which made me have immediate food envy. After Tom finished his food we chilled out some more, read our books and (you guessed it) played more silly games in the sea. After a little while we both decided to go and get showered and ready to go and get some food, upon going back to the room. Whilst I was showering, Tom found the two 5litre bottles of water unopened in the hut...he was confused by this as I had refilled our bottles this morning. We both looked at each other and the look of regret on my face meant it could have only one explanation...I had filled our bottles of water up with the other 5 litre bottle of shower water we were using to wash our feet before entering the hut... what a silly move! As we had been drinking it all day and were both fine, we saw the funny side of it...but we still awaited the dodgy stomachs!

    After getting our outdoor showers we got ready and walked along the beach to find somewhere for me to get Kottu. Along the way we were stopped by a few groups of cheeky kids, one of them even asking if they could have Toms’ ‘slippers’, his bracelet and then some rupees...piss off kid! We got to the local place and I ordered my veggie Kottu, and before it arrived I heard the music from the bread man getting closer and closer...Tom jumped out of his seat and ran outside to coincide with him as we had missed him the previous night. On his way outside Tom asked me if I wanted anything, I said yes with a nod looking forward to whatever came back. Unfortunately it seemed Tom didn’t hear or see me say yes or nod. So he came back with just baked stuff for him! I even sent him a load of messages to ensure I got something, but Tom was obviously not looking at his phone. We agreed that from now on we would just assume that the other person wanted something so they didn’t miss out on the best baked food ever!

    However, it wasn’t all bad news for me, as on the walk back to our place we stopped at various little shops (more like front rooms) for snacks and ended up having a feast back at the place all for around 120 rupees. Bargain! We saved some of the snacks to watch another film in bed and listen to the sound of the ocean as we fell to sleep.    Read more

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
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    Day 24

    Nilaveli Beach Day #2

    January 29, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

    It was about 1am when today started. I was up with my torch on in bed trying to kill mosquitos that had managed to sneak through the holes in our net - much to the displeasure of Tom who I’d woken up with the ruckus. Feeling like he’d had a full night sleep, Tom asked what time it was. “It’s only bloody 1am” he cried back in disbelief. He now had the task of getting back to sleep whilst my Mosquito swatting operation was in fill swing. However, surprisingly we both fell back to sleep pretty quickly and slept through till 745, woke up and had our free breakfast which was the same as yesterday, with the addition of a cup of tea. Great way to start another day in paradise!

    You can probably guess what we did first thing...read our books on the sun loungers and then went for a nice dip in the sea. We repeated this for a few hours and it was bliss. The weather was perfect and again we had the beach to ourselves. A few blissful hours had passed and we decided to go for a walk up the beach, Tom made a slight detour to get some baked food whilst I sat and looked out over the sea and went for a swim. He very kindly picked up some baked goods for me after I missed out on the bakery man last night...a nice little surprise when Tom returned to the beach. We ate our food and then continued to walk further along the beach, dodging the thousands of crabs on the sand beneath us. After walking to the end of the beach we walked all the way back to our hotel, getting quite hot by the time we got back so we jumped in the sea to cool down. A bit more chill time followed and then we went to get showered, ready and made our way to get dinner.

    Tonight we thought we would drive a bit further north the a town with a bridge we’d been to the previous to get food at a local place, already having done a price check the previous night. It wasn’t a glamorous place, next to a pretty station and with cows seemingly guarding our Tuktuk, but the guy running it was really friendly. We both had fried rice with “gravy” and oh my god it was so good! The gravy was essentially curry sauce and it was amazing, we even asked for seconds of the sauce as we got through it so quickly! After food we made our way to the bridge and sat and watched the sunset over the river, it was a great sunset again tonight! After the sun had set we went back and had another chilled evening at the beach and in our cabana reading our book and watching some documentaries - super chilled day!    Read more

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
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    Day 25

    Trincomalee and Nilaveli beach day #3

    January 30, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☀️ 29 °C

    Again, we had a fantastic nights sleep courtesy of the sound of the sea. We rose early as usual and went to the table and chairs to await our breakfast, again it was eggs, break, jam and roti but it was as good as previous days.

    Today we had decided that we’d got toTrincomalee to check out a few of the sights we had heard about. We hopped in the Tuktuk and saw that it was really empty on fuel. I spun the knob to switch us to reserve fuel just to be safe and we headed to Trincomalee. On the way we stopped to get fuel and the fill up cost us just over 1,000 rupees...our biggest one yet but still only £4.20. One of the guys said our tyre was needing some air, so he filled it up, not sure if he wanted money or not. When he had done he then said “money”, he tried to get 100 rupees from us... we said we had no cash only card and drove away saying we’d come back later, oops we forgot! Trincomalee was a town with not too much going on, so we went to the tip of the headland where there was an old temple (Hindu) and the old Dutch Fort.

    We parked up and began our walk to the temple, harassed along the way by a couple of beggars and cafe people wanting some money. We got to the entrance of the temple and once again there was a charge for leaving your flip flops which we always take exception to. We stuffed them in the bag but the guard still wasn’t happy. I ran up to see if the temple was worth a visit and it was to be fair. We both went back to the Tuktuk and dumped our flip flops, being harassed there and back by the same beggars and cafe people - got to give them one thing, they’re persistent. We walked barefoot in smug as you like and had a look round. The temple was perched high on the rocky headland with steep cliffs easing down to the ocean. It was a very colourful temple, made more so by, what we guessed was, a wedding. Lots of drums being sounded and people milling around gave it quite a buzz. By this time it was getting pretty hot so we decided that we’d check out Trincomalee beach, however it was no where near as nice as ours at Nilaveli, so we headed back via our bakery man - now a best friend. Instead of us asking what we wanted, this time he just said for us to come into the back room where it’s all made and and go through everything and pick out what we wanted. With the prices of everything firmly in our minds from the last three days of buying things we got ourselves 100 rupees of baked goods and headed back for a chill, swim and a read of our books.

    We headed out for dinner to the local Kottu man at the main road, which was nice and easy for us. As we’d done some maths earlier in the day, we realised that we comfortably had enough cash to see us through the rest of Sri Lanka, so on the way back we went and bought even more baked stuff from our guy - we were slightly obsessed and was probably a good job we were leaving the following day. We got back via the beach and it was a dark clear night, so the stars were out in full force. We had to sort out a plan for the tomorrow, would we try and get to the west coast in one chunk, or would we break it across an afternoon and following morning? We decided on the latter and that we’d stay a night in Mihintale - a temple/ruin filled town much like Anuradhapura. With that decided we headed back for our final sleep in the beach cabana. I went to do my teeth and came back to Tom saying “don’t panic” whilst sat in the room. Immediately I guessed what it could be...a cockroach!!! Tom thought he had trapped it under a big bottle cap, but it had somehow escaped and was now with all our stuff in the corner. We thought that it must have gone out through one of the cracks in the floorboards, so we safely went to bed under our big mozzy net. About half an hour later we were both reading and I looked up to see the same cockroach climbing up the mozzy net, but couldn’t see if it was inside or outside the net. I got up with a massive exhale and quickly got out the net leaving Tom behind (sorry). He promptly thanked me for the quick escape and we saw that it was inside the net! I got a big empty 5 litre bottle and fed it inside the net trapping the cockroach, and Tom craftily went in and screwed the lid on, we’d triumphed and could now sleep easy.    Read more

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
    Day 26

    Nilaveli —> Mihintale

    January 31, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☀️ 31 °C

    As it was our last day in Nilaveli we both decided last night that we were going to wake up and see the sunrise over the ocean, as the east coast is perfect for that. We crawled out of our beach cabana at 6:15, still half asleep and there it was...the sun rising, almost creeping over the horizon and lighting up the sky. We watched as it became completely visible and then made our way swiftly back to bed to try and get some more sleep. However, we didn’t get back to sleep...instead we were looking into the Coronovirus: the virus that started in China which has spread globally, killing over 200 people thus far... oh the joys to hear that Sri Lanka and India were two of the countries it had spread to. At around 730 we got up and made our way to have an earlier than normal breakfast...we wanted to beat the Russians who checked in yesterday!

    After breakfast we chilled out on the beds, I finished the book I’d been working on - a crime thriller - after only starting it yesterday. I went to go and pack up our stuff as it was an unusually early check out at this place, 10am. Accommodation was paid up, room was empty, Tuktuk was fully loaded, so we were good to go whenever we wanted. This little place in paradise only cost us 5000 rupees each for 4 nights. Incredible value at just £5.20 a night!! A few more hours had passed and we were still on the resort beach...just because we checked out didn’t mean we were going to leave this place! Nor did it mean we weren’t going to occasionally use our shower either. However, sadly we eventually decided to make a move.

    Tom was driving the whole way to Mihinthale today, we made our way through crazy Trincomalee traffic and found a local place to stop and grab some lunch! After we broke down the language barrier, we think we ordered a large portion of vegetable fried rice for 250 to share...he came over with two plates of fried rice, I guess he just divided the large portion onto two plates? We dug in, and it was very tasty! He approached when we had finished, “Country?” he asked, to which we obviously responded and then the conversation come to an end there. We then asked for a sweet roll and a 5L bottle of water to take away which he got and then asked us for 210 rupees.... that’s just less than 90p, that was by far the cheapest lunch we had so far, but we sped off in our TukTuk before he realised he had maybe made a mistake and not charged us enough, or at least we tried to speed off, the front wheel of the TukTuk was stuck in a hole! Eventually out of the hole, Tom slammed the throttle and off we went!

    50 kilometres had passed, the scenery was gorgeous, we passed rice paddy after rice paddy and lake after lake...but unfortunately it was all very samey and the road was just straight. So it made for a very boring drive in fact. I could see Tom fidgeting and stretching - obviously tired - so I offered tk drive but he refused, instead asking that I blast how the music and we have a good singalong to make the journey go faster.
    Thankfully, Tom didn’t fall asleep in the TukTuk and I got us to the hotel in Mihintale safely! The hotel was called Afenta Hotel, it was only recently opened, still unfinished in parts, but was run by a really nice young guy who kept apologising for his poor English...funny, as his was probably close to the best we’d come across. We checked into to our large double room, with private bathroom, it was very clean and stunk of Dettol...I think my mum would have even been okay staying here!

    Shortly after arriving we asked the owner for some good food places for dinner, I stood with him and he pinned two on his maps and we made our way to check them out. The first was ‘P&S’, we pulled up outside...it looked like a fancy Greggs at the front with a seated area that felt very local with plastic table and chairs and a glass counter top filled with different types of curry. We saw on the menu that potato curry and dhal curry were 70 and 60 rupee, “great” we thought, “today’s dinner is going to be super cheap”! We then asked him how much a plate of rice would cost to eat the curry with, to which he replied after doing some bullshit maths 320 rupees...nearly 5 times as much as the bloody curry!! Obviously he was related to the man in Kandy! Tom gave up at that point, patience for scamming at rock bottom and wanted to leave, whilst I was trying to get through to him that it’s impossible to charge so much for a single plate of plain rice - I was determined to get a sensible answer in the region of 50 rupees for a plate of rice, but it never happened. Eventually I gave up too and we left P&S completely baffled, we went to check out the second place. From the outside it looked like a shell of a building that had been burned down 20 years ago, with some fancy lights around the doors and windows...however, this didn’t put us off as some of the worse looking places we’ve eaten at before have had the best food! We went inside and they had veggie curry and rice for 170, sold! We ate, the food was pretty good...and then came the bill. Our maths calculated 170 x 2 = 340, however in Sri Lanka 170 x 2 = 480. We weren’t having any of this and after some awkward standing around at the till, the guy reluctantly gave us a fresh bill with 340 on it...we gave him a 500 and then waited for our change...which just as reluctantly as the second bill did arrive.

    Feeling pleased at ourselves for paying the right price for dinner, we decided to “splash” and treat ourselves to a nice cold Coca Cola at a grubby little cafe...boy, we know how to treat ourselves! We were approached by various people whilst we were trying to enjoy our drinks, one guy chanting “UK, OKAY” repeatedly, another guy trying to sell us a private tour around Mihinthale ruins and another talking about deer...very random! Tom thought the deer man worked at the cafe and tried to pay him for the cokes, he took the money and very honestly gave us the money back. We paid up and went back to our room where to our complete pleasure we found hidden away in the bottom of my day bag a couple of biscuits that we didn’t eat last night! We inhaled these and then hit they hay!    Read more

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
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    Day 27

    Mihintale —> Kalpitiya

    February 1, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☀️ 30 °C

    Up and out by 730, today we were going to check out the Mihinthale ruins, which we had heard were for the most part free of charge, apart from the main ones where it was 500. We parked our TukTuk at the parking area at the top and the man from the shop last night who tried to sell us a tour popped his head through the TukTuk...to get rid of him last night I had told him we were coming up for sunrise, he obviously knew now we were lying. We politely got rid of him again and walked to the big pagoda that sat on the top of a huge boulder that you could see from the town. On our walk there we were being whistled at, the whistles were of course coming from the direction of a ticket office. After checking out the map, we went over to the ticket office where they demanded 1,000 (not 500), we contemplated whether or not we actually wanted to see the ruins all that much (we would be in Hampi, India in 2 weeks time), and we decided not really, however as we were chatting a few Sri Lankan tourists walked in completely free of charge... this infuriated me as I said why don’t they need a ticket, the guy said that they would make a donation at the top. I asked if I could make a donation and he said it wasn’t allowed, so we left. We checked out one of the ruins that was free to enter on the way back to the hotel. When we got back to the hotel we were met by the owner, who looked a bit confused at how quickly we had done the ruins, so we just told him a white lie that we were going to do them on the way out of town and we’re just grabbing some breakfast..

    We packed up and checked out, and said goodbye our host who asked where we were staying tonight. The place in Kalpitiya was called Dolphin Wadiya. He promptly gave us a definition of what Wadiya meant - it describes an old fashioned fishermen’s hut made up of sticks and palm leaves for the walls and roof. We thought that was quite cool, so we we made our way to the West coast excited to stay at our Wadiya in Kalpitiya! I was driving today and it was 140km to our accommodation. About half an hour in I catapulted Tom forwards in the Tuktuk as I slammed the brakes on...I’d spotted a food stall at the side of the road that appeared to be selling donuts. Tom got out an asked the lady for 2 of the “donuts”, they were 15 rupees each! We ate them and they were delicious, not sweet but instead filled with vegetables and chilli...shortly after finishing them Tom went back to the lady and got 2 more...she found it funny how quickly we’d decided to get more! After about 100km we reached the coastal town of Puttalam, where we stopped and grabbed some lunch. We shared a Kottu and a veggie fried rice, was delicious and only 300, total!

    We eventually arrived at our accommodation at midday where we would be spending the next three nights. The check-in process was unusual, and by unusual I mean there wasn’t one really....we ended up milling around for 20 minutes chatting to a Danish and Canadian guy who were staying at our place, but after nobody turned up to check us in we left our stuff in the TukTuk and walked to the beach. Our accommodation was positioned on the edge of a lagoon and a shortcut for us to get to the beach was to walk through the shallow waters of the lagoon...after taking about 3 steps we discovered it was not sand under our feet but silty sludge - erghhh! We even tried to put our flip flops back on to walk through without feeling the disgusting slime oozing between our toes, but that didn’t quite work as the sludge became thicker and our flip flops started to get stuck! I took my flip flops off and made a run for it, Tom tried to do the same but one of his was wedged into the sludge and all of a sudden he felt a nibble on his ankle...after the story the Danish guy had just told us about him getting stung by some creature in the lagoon earlier on, Tom made a run for it, abandoning the flip flop in the sludge. When he got to the sand, it floated back up to the surface and he now had to retrieve it as I pointed out it was actually my flip flop I was wearing!

    We enjoyed the beach for a few hours, playing around in the waves and sand and watching the kite surfers do their thing (Kalpitiya was a hot spot for kite surfing). We then thought we would head back to try and check-in, it was around 4pm now so surely somebody would be back...wrong. Nobody was there still so Tom made a few phone calls and eventually one of the managers turned up and made up our room. We showered and chilled out for a little while and then went to watch the sunset at the bottom of the garden at the guesthouse that was right on the lagoon, the sunset was okay so we made our way back to our room to get ready to go for dinner. Twenty minutes later I shouted for Tom to come back outside, the sky had turned a deep shade of red as the sun was fully setting now. We made our way round the back of the property where the fishermen kept their boats and watch the sun completely disappear until we were surrounded by darkness. It was now time for food! The Danish guy had told us about a little place just a 2 minute walk away, so we decided to check that out.... we arrived and were greeted by a friendly middle aged man and woman, they owned this very local restaurant that doubled up as a shop. We ordered two vegetable curry and rice and waited for them to finish making the curry before the woman served us with a HUGE portion of rice and 4 curries. Tom and I are very similar with how we eat our food, always starting with the dish that looks worse and finishing with what looks best...we started off eating the green bean curry and the dhal and when we had both finished those two curries the woman took the bowls away and filled them up! This was amazing, it was all you can eat for 250, and it was amazing food too! Completely stuffed, we paid up and waddled back to Dolphin Wadiya where we played cards (shithead obviously), and also counted how much money we had left and knew that we would be fine for the rest of Sri Lanka with the amount of money we had...which shows how cheap Sri Lanka is as we only would have £14 left after accommodation and the dolphin watching tour we had planned was paid for. I had agreed to take the Danish guy who was staying at our place to the bus stop tomorrow early, as his TukTuk has let him down so we decided to get an early night.    Read more

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
    Day 28

    Day in Kalpitiya

    February 2, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ☀️ 30 °C

    I was up nice and early to take the Danish guy to the bus station. The accommodation owner had said that he would organise the lift but as usual, they were totally out of contact. We set off and he was asking questions about the tuktuk, if it was difficult to drive, any mechanical issues, etc etc. I dropped him off and he wished us well for India as he has travelled there extensively in the past and had given us some great tips. I got back to the accommodation to find Tom up and brushing his teeth, kindly opening the gates for me. As we were both up early, we decided that we would go and check out Kalpitiya town, about 8km away. Today was Sunday - not that we had any idea - and there was loads of church goers near our accommodation, we got through them and headed to town. When we got there we discovered everything was shut...even the bakeries. We couldn’t believe it, so we went to check out the old Dutch fort. However, this was now part of the army barracks so we couldn’t even get close to it. As there wasn’t anything going on, we decided to head to a separate part of the coast and went for Kudawa Beach.

    Compared to yesterday, this was a big long beach with larger waves. We set up camp and chilled out for a bit with the occasional dip in the ocean. After an hour or so, we went for a long walk on the beach taking in the scenery and thinking of our next trip to India and how we’d had a fair bit of beach time in Sri Lanka that we’d maybe re-look at how much time we’d spend in Goa. Anyway, we turned back and went back to our stuff. On the way back we looked ahead, and it looked like a group of people were going through all our stuff - we had our phones and wallets with us - but we were now walking back much quicker. We got closer and closer and it did look like they were at our stuff, but it turned out to be one of the group crouching down to undo her sandals...we now both felt bad about judging them. We went for a little snorkel around and found a few big crabs, but it wasn’t that good for snorkelling here. Tom wanted to go and get a drink and a roti at one of the nearby kitesurfing resorts, as we looked around we saw that CocaCola was 200 rupees!! We left and went a bit inland for a better deal, but the next place we asked they were still 150 rupees, we couldn’t bring ourselves to do it as we got one he other night for 50 rupees. We left disappointed and went back to the Tuktuk to go back to our place for a chill, via a local shop where we got a massive bottle of CocaCola for 150 rupees...bargain!! We then decided to go back to our dinner place from last night to see if they had any roti, but no luck. Instead they sent us down the road to another woman (who was so moody and didn’t have change for the equivalent of 10 pence) to get the roti. On the way we were in a standoff with an aggressive looking dog which was barking at us...but it soon backed off when I aimed the Tuktuk at it to scare it...Tom was also ready with the bottle. We spend most of the afternoon chilling out, reading and listening to music in the peaceful surroundings of our Wadiya.

    Just before sunset we wanted to try and get further west onto, what looked like, an untouched beach. We took the cycle bikes from the accommodation to get there. What we didn’t think through was that we had to go the same way as the aggressive dog from earlier. We got close to where it was before and it was there, stood in the middle of the road barking like a lunatic at us even though we were a good 50 yards away. I said to Tom that we would just have to go through it, but with feet at the ready to kick out if needed, but best to just cycle through fast. I went first as the dog went down an alley to the right, still making a load of noise. As I went past I looked down the alley, this thing was sprinting back up with its mates all as aggressive as the instigator. Tom was about 15 yards behind and by the time he was opposite the alley the dogs burst out onto the main road and were snapping at his heels - truly a scary moment, but we got though unscathed. We carried on for a bit until reaching the end of the track and due to the tide being high, we couldn’t get to our sunset point. We tried to go round and somehow ended up going past a set of kids who began to throw cow poo at us...the little shits...and kind of a pointless thing to do as they now had cow shit on their hands and we had none on us. Our quest for the sunset had been a disaster and we still had to go back through the dog zone! Tom was certain we were getting attacked because we were white, I thought that was ridiculous but it could be true - who knew, maybe they were racist dogs. Anyway, we were lucky and got back without another attack and we just decided to go to the boardwalk for the sunset, which actually turned out to be quite nice.

    Earlier in the day we had a message from Jennie. It was three years to the day that I lost my flip flop off a pier in Port Lincoln in north east Australia and a fisherman got it out with his line and hook. On this boardwalk in Sri Lanka I dropped on flip flop and the wind took it right off into the water. I then put the other down to go into the water, I put the other one down to get the other and that blew off too!! February 2nd must be cursed for me and my footwear. I went in and it was the same slimy sludge as the day before when we crossed to the beach, not a good sensation, but I managed to get them both back. After the sunset, we needed food, so we headed up to last nights spot but disaster, it was shut. With nothing else around, we had to jump in the Tuktuk for a search. Like at lunch, everything was way overpriced (wanting 600 rupees for veggie rice). Instead, we went to the local shop from earlier and got a range of things, noodles, spicy sweet potato crisps, biscuits and a sweet cake. We took it back to our place and had a little picnic accompanied by a cup of tea. We organised some stuff and sent some messages to the dolphin watching man to confirm about our trip tomorrow morning, but we didn’t get an answer so we went to bed hoping to see dolphins in the morning.    Read more

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
    11
    Day 29

    Dolphin Watching in Kalpitiya

    February 3, 2020 ⋅ ☀️ 28 °C

    We awoke at 630, and we still hadn’t heard anything from the guy who was going to be taking us on the dolphin trip today...as we only had today to do it we were starting to get a little anxious that we may miss our chance to do it. By 7 o’clock we were speaking to the owner of the guesthouse about arranging it with another person, but it was almost as if he could hear us saying this as he turned up just after this conversation. He apologised for not responding to our messages as he was night fishing- even though I sent him 3 messages throughout the day yesterday...? A little annoyed at the shocking communication we eventually got onto the boat with 2 crew members, (because in Sri Lanka they have to have double the number of staff to do a job) and set off for the trip, making a stop off at a very unofficial looking office to pay for the park tickets of $9. The sea was a little rough and our driver was hitting pretty much every wave hard! Tom was sat on the right of the boat and I was on the left. Each wave splashed Tom with water, so he was soaked whilst I remained nice and dry! We eventually saw in the distance a few boats and our driver told us that this is where the dolphins were, and then we started to be able to see all the splashes that the dolphins were making and I got very excited to see them up close! Before long our boat was in the area where a pod of 10,000 spinner dolphins were!! 10,000!!! Different groups of dolphins would surface, play around and then dive back down to get more food so we didn’t move our boat too much we just waited for dolphins to come to us, which wasn’t exactly difficult with so many around. It’s difficult to put it into words how incredible the experience was. Tom and I both sat at the front of the boat with our legs in the water as dolphins swam just feet away from us, we could almost touch them they were that close.

    We stayed for around 2 hours, having seen a crazy amount of dolphin before heading back to our place. We were pretty hungry so decided to take the push-bikes that the guesthouse allowed us to take for free and went on the hunt to find some food. We found some little snacks and I even grabbed some instant noodles to have back at the place and we had a stupid argument over literally nothing....perhaps we had spent too much time together coupled with some early starts, so we decided to have a few hours separate and have some solo time to ourselves on the beach. I went across to a deserted beach which was cut off by the incoming sea, so had to walk through deep water to get to it I chilled here for a bit reading my book which I was eager to finish before heading to India. After a few hours we come back together, showered and got ready and made our way into town in Greta. However, Greta was struggling as she didn’t have much fuel left at all. We found the fuel station and literally as we were pulling in the engine cut out! Talk about perfect timing and place to run out of fuel! We filled up on fuel and went deeper into the town where we found a local restaurant. We both got a Kottu, which was great and then we made our way back where we chilled out and packed our stuff up to leave tomorrow.    Read more

  • TravelerTravel 2020 - TBC
    1
    Day 30

    Kalpitiya —> Negombo

    February 4, 2020 in Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 32 °C

    We got up nice and early as we were leaving for Negombo and the airport today. As we’d packed up the previous night, it was pretty relaxed and we had time to do a bit of the blog before we left. As we checked out, we were chatting to the owner and our neighbour about all sorts and he asked us if we had everything, and we gave back a confident ‘yes’. We set on our way with some bakery items we got yesterday and headed south, with Tom driving the first stint. We were blasting music out, without a care in the world when Tom stopped and asked if we had our flip flops...we searched the Tuktuk but nothing. We’d bloody left them - unbelievable!!!

    Today was Sri Lankan Independence Day, from the British in 1948, and pretty much every house and car and Tuktuk we went past had a flag on it. It was a 145km drive from Kalpitiya to Negombo, so we split the journey in half and I took over after 75km. We weren’t allowed on the major motorways or the till road in a Tuktuk, so we set Google Maps to avoid these and continued. For whatever reason the route we took seemed to avoid all major roads, including the main coastal route which we were ok to go down. Still, it got us off the busy road and before long, we were in the outskirts of Negombo trying to find our accommodation. It was like a maze and narrow roads, and the heat was getting to me, so I threw in the towel and Tom took over the last 5km with me navigating.

    We eventually got to the guesthouse and dumped our bags. The lady was really nice and we paid her there and then so we knew how much money we had for the rest of the evening. We went into Negombo to the beach front as we needed to get ourselves a Lion Beer - our first one here! We were looking around for ages, and the first couple of places we went were all sold out. So we ended up going to a hotel and they said we could have one, and if anyone asked we were staying there. We sat outside overlooking the beach with a cold beer at the end of our Sri Lanka adventure, sad to leave but ready to get going in India. I FaceTimed my dad who was out in Portugal, was nice to hear I’ve inspired him and Kate to book flights to Sri Lanka next January (hopefully the blog comes in handy). We jumped back in the Tuktuk and went to find Hangover Hostel where we were due to hand back Greta, truly a sad moment as she’ been such a reliable gal and we’d clocked up some 1250 miles in her around Sri Lanka. We grabbed some takeaway Kottu and some other bits to try and use up the last of our cash as we planned to Uber to the guesthouse from town and to the airport the following morning. Whilst at the handover point, we got a couple of print outs of our passports, cheekily for free, and went out to the main road to get an Uber...sounded so simple in theory.

    We requested a ride and were quickly accepted, but the guy rang us and said he was at the airport and wasn’t going to leave, so he cancelled. We then got another thug who accepted, but he started texting us saying that he was also at the airport and had queued up for hours and wasn’t going to come get us. It was so weird why they’d accept a ride when we clearly weren’t at the airport. However, this guy wouldn’t cancel and wanted us to (which costs us money) so we had a big argument with him saying that we are not cancelling and he would have to. Eventually he did cancel and then we got accepted again BY THE SAME GUY who then proceeded to ignore our calls and texts asking him to cancel. We’d figured out that this must be a scam where they refuse to cancel so you have to pay them when you cancel....so baffling. Anyway, we eventually got a guy who accepted, wasn’t at the airport, and was moving our way according to the little car symbol on the app. He saved the day when he turned up and took us to the guesthouse after an hour of our lives were lost!
    When we got back it was pitch black, so we went in and packed up the rest of our stuff, devoured our final Kottu and hit the hay ready for an early start to head to India.    Read more

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