About the weather... (Aluthgama to Unawatuna)

We almost braved the local bus from Althugama to Hikkaduwa but bottled out at the last moment and got a tuk tuk, it still only cost us around £12. After seeing the way the bus drivers here drive, were trying to avoid using them unless absolutely necessary. Maniacs isn’t the word. If we’d been on our own, fine, but with the boy, no chance. They barely even reach stationary when stopping at the roadside to pick you up before you have to leap on. And the overtaking….jeez, worse than India!  We would have been on the train on this portion had it not been for the repairs to the track after Althugama.

We stopped at the Tsunami memorial on the way, which is very close to where the ‘Queen of the Sea’ train was swept away killing 1700 people and making it the worlds worst train disaster. It’s a  beautiful monument and a very sobering experience, especially as they’ve left the houses around the statue exactly as they were after the event.

The Tsunami Memorial near Hikkaduwa and one of the houses left as they were after the event. Sobering.

After 2 days in Hikkaduwa I can’t see why it gets all the negative press, true it’s more touristy, but in small, backpackery way, small cafes on the beach playing the ubiquitous reggae music and small hotels and guesthouses strewn along the beach front. The beach here is beautiful tho, curving round in a lovely 2k long cove. It’s still pretty quiet at the moment, and by all accounts gets very busy in Dec/Jan when I can imagine it gets engulfed by the stench of the young, looking for fun & frolics to a soundtrack of clanking beer bottles & the  twanging of knicker elastic. Hang on, sounds familiar ‘(but in the way distant past admittedly, and without much of the latter)…

The beach at Hikkaduwa. Well, Sea, strip of sand and guest houses. Curtis rockin' his French Foreign Legion look.

Our hotel (Ocean View) hosted a nice wedding here last night, Swedish couple I think, but they had traditional Sri Lankan drummers and dancers (all of whom probably work in IT or Banking when not reviving historic dance routines for fee paying tourists). but the costumes were lovely and we got some great film of them playing with the Curtster…. Mind you the wedding disco later was dreadful, 15 year old soft rap and ‘holiday’ techno, mind you they did play Wigfield's ‘Saturday Night’ so it seems  that some themes of spiritual redemption thru song are universal.

Curtis is always a hit with the ladies, even the ones in fancy dress. Not sure about the camp centurion look tho....

Spent the next day wandering along the beach, hopping from café to café, finding another excuse to stop and have a coffee/lunch/beer/feed ‘babba’ (as the locals call him). Curtis also did some more swimming (well, floating) in the pool. Beats the weekly trip to Morrisons I gotta say….

Another guy we met back in Kandy (Stuart) was in town on Fri night so we arranged to meet up with him. We went for a wicked pizza in an Italian run joint (look, there is only SO much curry and rice a guy can eat ok!) and he suggested several guest houses to us. His family are coming out at the beginning of Dec and were planning to hook up with them then too.

Curtis was way happy with his new cushion.       No Buglers in Galle.         Classic Austin (I think) in great nick

After 2 days in Hikkadawu we headed by tuk tuk again to the historic town of Galle, a little further along the South coast. It’s a really nice place unlike any other town we’ve been to so far, set inside and old Dutch fort with quaint little shops and cafes, but after 2 days you really feel you’ve seen all there is to see? There are a couple of nice churches and an evening stroll along the ramparts with the locals (and mosquitoes) is a must. nothing much is open after 9pm, and there are no bars to speak of, so it suits us for a few days. Nice guest house tho, run by a very friendly  Sri Lankan family.

Galle. Lovely place, some really nice architecture. A mix of the old and new.

Weather is a funny thing, we were expecting glorious sunshine on the West Coast of Sri Lanka as that’s out of monsoon season now, with the East having it’s monsoon.  However we’ve experienced rain most days in the East/South. It only rains in the afternoon after at least 3pm sometimes 6 or 7pm so it’s no great hassle. It can rain for anything from 15 mins to several hours, and anything from heavy to a tropical downpour! We’ve seen some magical electrical/lightning storms since we’ve been here. All the locals turn of their computers due to the increased risk of a strike! And the 5 days we spent on the East coast were completely rain free. Go figure.

The restored Church in Galle. The lighthouse and the good old British Post Box.

From Galle we moved on to another beach resort, this time the famous Unawatuna beach only 5k from Galle. Now, this is more like the places we’ve been to before, lots of little shopes selling tourist crap (wooden elephants, I love Sri Lanka t-shirts, flip flops, you know the kinda thing.But it does have lots of very good restaurants, including several veggie/vegan ones, and very nice they are too, the best food we’ve had so far on our trip. Make a change from the veggie rice/noodles or curry that’s usually the only thing I can have on the menu.

Unawatuna beach is beautiful, a 1k curved bay, but it’s kinda ruined by the fact that it’s wall to wall restaurants and guest houses, and they all come right up to the beach front, leaving only a few yards of sand in front before you hit the ocean in a lot of places. Shame, must have been stunning when the hippies first started coming here in the 70s. Now I reckon they all own the aforementioned guest houses! The place also gets rammed in Dec and every place is full of partying White faces as one guy put it. Best get out before then then! Again our guest house (French Villa) is really lovely, away from the beach and the bar music, but only a min or so walk to the beach. The owner gave us a family sized room when he saw we had Curtis, and has been helpful. We were recommended the place by 2 US nurses we met at the guest house in Galle, so we chatted to them a lot. Unfortunately the second night the owner decided to get drunk with some of the guests and blasted out music till way after midnight keeping everyone else awake! We checked out the next day....

Unawatuna beach, lovely, but again they've built right up to the font leaving a small strip of sand. The proud dad!

On the downside, and I guess this happens to all parents at some point, Curtis had his first fall out of bed, and onto a hard concrete floor too. He was in the centre of our huge double bed happily playing with his toys as he’s done every day, I was on another beds, I looked up and he just rolled over a couple of times, and before I could get over there fell out of the bed and hit the floor. He was screaming, I was beside myself with panic, so I picked him up tried to calm him down. I wanted to come home immeadiately, but we all calmed him down, and 20 mins later he was back to his old self. We checked online about baby concussion etc and kept a very close eye on him overnight. Needless to say I didn’t sleep very well, and still feel guilty about not being next to him to stop it from happening. We won’t be making that mistake again. Next day he was on top form tho, and the nurse gave him the once over and said he looked fine to her. I guess it was a bit of a shock to all concerned, not least Curtis.

By the way, now I've learnt how to use this blog properly I've added maps to the earlier posts so you can see where we've been, and made the pics bigger. Check them out....

The many faces of Curtis. The Swiss Nappy Head.....the Sleepy, butter wouldn't melt Beauty and the Blofeld (minus cat)

We’re On The Road Again… (Trinco to Aluthgama)

Sri Lanka railways map.

The beautiful beach at Uppuveli.                                                                  Susan & Curtis 'aving it large.

A couple of stops on the Curtis Road Show.
With a Tamil family at a Trinco temple & with the local children at the beach

Well, we finally managed to drag ourselves away from the relative luxury of the Lotus Park Hotel, although not quite how we planned. After much debating we decided to return to our starting point (Colombo) and begin our tour of the West coast beaches. We discovered that there were 2 flights a week from Trinco to Colombo (the other side of the country), 40 mins and you were there. Perfect. Then we found out the flights were run by the military, on 15 seat Y12 Chinese built propeller planes, but we decided that they couldn’t be that bad and went ahead and called to book seats. Unfortunately there was only one seat left on that particular flight, so we were now left with only one option…. A 10 hour train journey across the whole country with a 6 month old baby, in 2^nd Class at 7am!

Curtis & Susan as we began our 10 hour train journey. Curtis decides he'd rather sit away from his embarrassing parents.

Once again, to our complete surprise, Curtis was as good as gold for the whole journey. The train wasn’t bad at all, and we met a really lovely Sri Lankan family who were doing the same journey and who spoke a little English.Yet again Curtis was the star of the show, being passed around the carriage, poked and prodded, sniffed and kissed, tickled and tweaked like some chubby ET. Still it kept him entertained and made the long journey seem much shorter. We also decided to try to carry on the journey from Colombo to get to the first of our West coast beach resorts (Aluthgama) rather than staying in the capital, which just happened to be where our Sri Lankan friends where going, and they saved us a lot of time by showing us the quicker places to change train, and they helped with our luggage too. At the end of our journey they even invited us to their house for dinner the next night, which we accepted.

Curtis and the lovely Sri Lankan family we met on the train ride to Althugama. 

We checked in at the Anushka River Inn in Aluthgama, and once again we were the only people there and hence got the best room in the house with a balcony overlooking the lagoon. Where ARE all the tourists?

The answer to the above question it seems, is in the REALLY posh resorts hotels, the ones that you see all over the world. The ones where you pay a fortune to stay in a beautiful, but sterile, ethnically-designed environment, where you need never leaves the confines of the resort, and where the only locals you meet are either cleaning your room, speaking flawless English on the reception, or acting as a footstool when you want to put your feet up by the pool. You could indeed be anywhere in the world, and the only thing that would differ is the shade of your servants skin…. We often enquire about rooms in these places and have been quoted anything between $150 and $250+ a night, and even at these rates they were all full (or was it my ‘I love Hackney’ bag that prompted that response?) It’s not for us, even if we could afford it, we prefer our way, we’ve got photos of our room cleaners and kitchen staff holding Curtis, met really lovely people (and yes, many that weren’t there just  to serve us), learnt a lot about Sri Lanka and its people and we still manage to sleep in comfort and eat well. AND we’re only 2 weeks in….

View from our balcony at the Anushka River Inn. Not bad....

Aluthgama is very nice, not stunning, we’re overlooking a lagoon behind the main beach area which is home to all the aforementioned resort hotels. The beaches further along the coast are nicer but again with very little accommodation apart from the resorts.

The beach at Aluthgama.                              Phone box, same as UK but this one doesn't smell of....

We went for dinner at our new friend Nihal's family home last night, and a very nice evening it was, all his relatives and neighbours came round to ‘check us out’. As usual Curtis was the star and he disappeared for 10 mins at a time only to reappear in a different relative’s arms to the one he left in. H really has been a star on this trip, and really seems to be enjoying himself, despite being in a different location every few days, and being man-handled by all and sundry, he’s taken it all in his stride and is laughing and giggling his way across the country (well mostly, he IS only 6 months old!). We ate a lovely fish & veggie curry with rice followed by lots of fresh fruit for desert – a real feast. The only thing that let the night down slightly was our tuk tuk driver who charged us way over the odds to get there and back after promising to only to charge us local rates as we were invited by a local, and proceeded to try and sell us trips at every opportunity.

Dinner at the home of our Sri Lankan friends. Spot the odd one out..... Nihal and Curtis

What is it with tuk tuk drivers, the whole world over it seems they slowly descend into money grabbing, fake friendly, lying, tourist fleecing low-lifes

Had our first (of many hopefully) Ayurvedic massage of the trip today. I’d forgotten how thoroughly relaxing they are, you come out very chilled, feeling very healthy and pleased with yourself, and wanting to eat mung beans and water for the foreseeable future. That doesn’t last tho, we’ll be back on the beer, curries and egg rotis by tomorrow no doubt.

After 3 days here we’re moving on to Hikkaduwa tomorrow, which by all accounts is one of those 70s hippy destinations that’s been ruined by slow commercialisation over the years, a bit like a mini Goa. But you’ve got to check these places out, and apparently the beaches south of the main drag are still quite palatable and much less touristy. I’ll be the judge of that methinks….

Curtis and Buddha. I'm not suggesting any similarities......

Go East (not so) young man.... (Kandy to Trinco)

Daqgoba and Temple near Kandy, which Susan appears to be propping it up for some reason....

So after spending 4 days in Kandy, and after some debate, we headed off to Sigiriya to explore the ‘Cultural Triangle’ which is situated in the centre of Sri Lanka and comprises of many ancient cities and temples spread over 50 or 60k in the centre of Sri Lanka. We splashed out on a taxi again as we couldn’t face the bus yet.

Jet lag is a bitch, it seems that the older you get, the longer it takes to kick it. It’s been 5 nights now and I’ve not had more than 3-5 hours sleep a night, strange, you don’t feel tired during the day either, too much going on I guess, but the long nights are a real drag. Thank god for Audio books! PG Wodehouse (cheers Steve!).

The god of fish spitting or something like that.       You just don't get signs like this in the West. Or hornets I guess...

Anyway, we arrived tired yet again at the Wadula Hotel in Sigiriya which we picked due the excellent reviews on Trip Advisor, although when we got there it didn’t quite live up to expectations. I think that’s the problem with TA, it’s become so big that every Hotel or B&B has to have good reviews on there so they either pay people or get family to put up the reviews for them to make sure they look good. You can usually tell the fake reviews, they spend most of the time talking about the facilities and trips in bad English, not the state of the rooms and service. Oh well, we thought, it’s only for one night.

Susan posing  on top of Lion Rock (I know, sounds like a reggae soundsystem...) and the view down

Susan went off to check out Lion Rock while I looked after the boy. By all accounts it’s an amazing ancient Royal palace on top of a huge sheer faced rock, but not for those afflicted by Vertigo, so that was me out for a start. After that we were ready for food, but we proceeded to wait over an hour and a half for our food at Wadula, other people waited nearly 2 hours for theirs, this German party were ready to riot! Mine was dreadful when it arrived too. Rubbish.

That evening was so draining and depressing that we decided to head straight to the beach to chill out, get some sleep, acclimatise and then do the rest of the cultural stuff later when we were properly rested. So next morning we headed off to Uppuveli just North of Trinco on the North East coast. All round this area, in fact much of the North & North East coast ,was badly affected by the war and was in the control of the LTTE until a few years ago, and the also got badly hit by the Tsunami too. Because of these misfortunes and because it’s not that easy to get to, we thought it would be perfect for some chillin’.

Curtis on tour 2012...it really is starting to feel like the Curtis Joe Road Show...

It’s monsoon season on the East coast at the moment (they have to opposing monsoons that split the country in two, so you could theoretically hop from one side to another and miss the monsoon all year round. Saying that, we’ve been here for 4 days and it’s not rained once! It’s hotter and dryer that the West coast but not as humid.

We stayed our first night in a cheap fan room, which was ok, but it was very hot during the night and we were worried about Curtis de-hydrating, so we bit the bullet and checked into the plush Sea Lotus Park hotel next door. I reckon there are only about 3 or 4 rooms occupied out of 80+ so we pretty much got the place to ourselves. A/C rooms, flat screen TV, wifi, lovely pool. And, were still here 4 days later! Nice. Curtis has been swimming everyday, well, floating with us, he loves it.

The beach outside our hotel in Tincomalee. I think the boat must have been full of poor people and was torpedoed by our posh hotel....  Small temple just along the beach at Uppuveli. Almost makes me feel religious, almost....

And lastly, but most importantly. I’ve discovered 2 new local beers, Anchor, which is nicer than the Lion and Barons which is about the same. They also do a Lion Stout which is 8.8%! Needless to say I wait till the afternoon before moving on to that…..

If there’s one thing staying in the first room taught me, is that we’re way too old to be slumming it anymore, living like a local is all well and good, but when you get to my age you need life’s little luxuries. Like a hot shower, and the movie channel.   I make no excuses….. I never was much of a hippy.

Curtis in our King size bed and having his first swimming lesson. Rolf Harris would be proud...

I want Kandy...

After a jet lagged 3 hours sleep, followed by a 3+ hour taxi journey from Negombo to Kandy with the nice Saudi couple and their daughter, we arrived hot & more than a little dazed at the Sharon Inn in Kandy around 2pm. We took a room on the top floor with lovely views of the lake and decided to keep going and wander round the town rather than crash out.

View from our balcony at the Sharon Inn Kandy.                          When it rains here, it RAINS!

The evening curry buffet at the guest house was apparently renowned (well according to the Rough Guide, and we all know how wrong they can be!) so we decided to give it a go, even tho it was expensive by Sri Lankan standards (900R = £5). What a great choice that was, 10 different Sri Lankan veggie dishes all of them delicious, and there was me thinking I'm gonna be hard pressed to find any veggie options anywhere apart from the ubiquitous noodle/rice with vegetables combo. Two platefuls and a large bottle of the old Lion beer and we were ready for bed around 9pm. Got bitten a couple of times by a lone mozzie earlier, which I located and dispatched with a half snarl, half smile, watching my own blood spat over the coat hanger that it had decided was a good place to have a post Whitey-meal snooze. Insects 0 - Simians 1.

The family who run the Sharon Inn (neither whom was called by that moniker strangely enough) have been really helpful. They even borrowed a large wooden cot for Curtis to sleep in from the local orphanage. We did have visions of some war-ravaged child being unceremoniously hefted out of his slumber onto a cold stone floor to provide Curtis with his bed, but being tourists, that soon passed, and we decided our needs where greater than his, and besides, it's character building.

I don't know if you're like me, but I never get a good nights sleep for that first night under a mosquito net, I spend all night imagining that one or two of the little b*ggers has managed to clamber into the bed Green Beret style just to spend the night chomping away at leisure on the Brit buffet. I'm constantly waking thinking I can feel them landing, or walking on me looking for a decent stabbing point. Hence, we both had another restless night, and it didn't help that my feet stuck out 6" from the end of the bed either. We didn't get bitten tho, and hopefully tonight I'll adopt more of a 'C'est la vie' attitude to sleep.

The next afternoon we walked round the lake in Kandy, saw some lovely wildlife (some of which alarmingly, were eating the other lot)

Definitely not a veggie...                                           The hair, yeah just had it done, It's the Billy Idol look.

then went to the Temple of the Tooth. Stupidly, I forgot to wear long trousers, and being the holiest shrine in Sri Lanka I decided exposing my knees to the attendant worshippers was probably a little rude, so Susan went into the temple while I looked after Curtis outside. Well, we must have met every female worshipper over the age of 30 in the whole place in the 45 mins we were there. Curtis had his face rubbed, cheek squeezed, head patted, foot tugged and toes tickled by what seemed like every single one of them, and we answered many questions and posed for photos with their children. For that short time I think we (well he) was more popular than Buddha himself. Although last time someone said something similar, there were fervent record burnings, so maybe I should tread a little carefully! Susan thought the temple was very nice, although at £6 to get in I guess even Buddhism has been hit by the recession. All that to see a fat bald blokes discarded molar that isn't even there apparently. So much for the treading carefully....

Curtis rockin' his Rod Stewart 'Do ya think I'm sexy' number.                 The Elephant Man. No, not that one......

Gabba - The Arrival (Negombo)

Well, we arrived safely yesterday after a slight delay in taking off, Curtis slept in his bassinet for most of the way, I can't tell you how relieved we were not to be 'one of those people with the annoying crying baby' that we've all encountered and wondered 'why they had to be on our flight, and sat in the seat in front of us, and not in the hold'....he literally slept like a baby for most of the flight.

Curtis, being Curtis, refused to empty his pockets at security at Heathrow, something about 'an infringement of his Civil Liberties', so had to be sent thru the scanner himself, or he wouldn't be allowed to fly.

"See I told you man, you've got nothing on me..."

The flight was fine, food ok, the in-flight films looked like they were being fed from a bank of video recorders in the cockpit, all fuzz and rolling distortion, so we didn't bother. One funny thing that did happen, when we hit turbulence the one of the Cabin crew said to hold the baby in the bassinet, we couldn't work out why he was so insistent, until he told us "when plane goes down, baby goes up!" Needless to say we held him in it every time we hit a bump after that.

"Well, I was only saying to the lady at baby yoga the other day,

you just can;t get the leg room in these things anymore...

We got a taxi to Negombo, which is ok, it's where everyone heads for one night rather than staying in Colombo, as it's on the beach and a bit nicer. Because of that, they are used to people only being here a short time and there is a bit of hassle of the "come into my shop", "use my tuk tuk", "buy my grandmother" variety, but it's all pretty amiable banter.Curtis has made lots of friends in the 24 hours we've been here, they love children here, especially the women. Both times we've eaten the female staff at the restaurants have taken him off to pass round the family while we eat, god knows where he's disappeared to, he's probably been cloned and has his own bank account and property portfolio by now. Anyway, they've seem to love him, and are genuinely curious.

We've met a nice Saudi couple with a 5 year old girl, and were all sharing a minivan to Kandy tomorrow, so will report more when we get there.Till then I'm going out to eat one of many rice and vegetable dishes that I will be having over the  next 3 months.....