Following the Ramadan holy month, all Government employees are lucky enough to get a paid holiday of at least seven days from work, which starts immediately after the end of Ramadan and fasting has stopped. However, because the exact first day of EID cannot be predicted until the moon has been sighted, we are not given our actual holiday dates in advance. Therefore we dare not book a long break.
We risked booking a short break to Sri Lanka, guessing at the most likely days I would be off work.We decided to travel to Galle in the south of the island, having flown to the main capital of Colombo and we were collected from the airport by our host, Widushan, the owner of the Lace Rock Beach Cabanas, where we were staying at Ahangama.
Our journey from the airport was a long one, as we had arrived during rush hour and the traffic in Colombo was dreadful, and there is no bypass around the city. A new expressway connects the outskirts of Colombo and Galle but it took us nearly two hours to get to it because of the heavy traffic. Colin, who is already a nervous passenger, was beginning to realise that the traffic in Qatar was light compared to the behaviour of the buses, Tuc Tucs, motor cycles, lorries and cars on the streets of Sri Lanka. There are no rules or sense to the behaviours, just horn blowing and then go for it. The buses seemed to rule the road.
We arrived at our destination quite late and in the dark and went straight to bed - we had been travelling for quite a while. We got up the next morning to the most fantastic view - our cabana was about fifty yards from the beach and the sea. The surf was up and the waves were crashing but a very relaxing sight.
We spent a quiet first day with a couple of short local trips to Galle, where we visited the old fort, a local turtle farm and a walk down to a nearby beach. Galle is a very pretty tourist town with some typical tourist restaurants, tea shops and souvenirs to purchase. The currency was very strange, with about two hundred Rupees to an English Pound, which made it very difficult to calculate.
Our hosts at the cabana were very hospitable and could not do enough for us - Siri the houseboy seemed to take a liking to Colin and they had a pact that he would bring him an hourly beer - this was accomplished even though they did not have a common language.
We had a couple of bouts of Monsoon rain, one in the night and we woke that morning to find the rain coming in under the door and pools of water on the bedroom floor. However, an hour later the sun was out and everything had dried up.
On another day, we had two exciting trips to a Government funded spice and herbal garden and a tea plantation. The tea plantation was fantastic - they cultivated eleven or more different varieties of black tea, rubber, had a shop and also gave you the chance to have a cup of tea in the owner's plantation house. This was just as you would expect a rain forest to be like - damp and steamy but very well maintained.
We risked booking a short break to Sri Lanka, guessing at the most likely days I would be off work.We decided to travel to Galle in the south of the island, having flown to the main capital of Colombo and we were collected from the airport by our host, Widushan, the owner of the Lace Rock Beach Cabanas, where we were staying at Ahangama.
Our journey from the airport was a long one, as we had arrived during rush hour and the traffic in Colombo was dreadful, and there is no bypass around the city. A new expressway connects the outskirts of Colombo and Galle but it took us nearly two hours to get to it because of the heavy traffic. Colin, who is already a nervous passenger, was beginning to realise that the traffic in Qatar was light compared to the behaviour of the buses, Tuc Tucs, motor cycles, lorries and cars on the streets of Sri Lanka. There are no rules or sense to the behaviours, just horn blowing and then go for it. The buses seemed to rule the road.
We arrived at our destination quite late and in the dark and went straight to bed - we had been travelling for quite a while. We got up the next morning to the most fantastic view - our cabana was about fifty yards from the beach and the sea. The surf was up and the waves were crashing but a very relaxing sight.
We spent a quiet first day with a couple of short local trips to Galle, where we visited the old fort, a local turtle farm and a walk down to a nearby beach. Galle is a very pretty tourist town with some typical tourist restaurants, tea shops and souvenirs to purchase. The currency was very strange, with about two hundred Rupees to an English Pound, which made it very difficult to calculate.
Our hosts at the cabana were very hospitable and could not do enough for us - Siri the houseboy seemed to take a liking to Colin and they had a pact that he would bring him an hourly beer - this was accomplished even though they did not have a common language.
We had a couple of bouts of Monsoon rain, one in the night and we woke that morning to find the rain coming in under the door and pools of water on the bedroom floor. However, an hour later the sun was out and everything had dried up.
On another day, we had two exciting trips to a Government funded spice and herbal garden and a tea plantation. The tea plantation was fantastic - they cultivated eleven or more different varieties of black tea, rubber, had a shop and also gave you the chance to have a cup of tea in the owner's plantation house. This was just as you would expect a rain forest to be like - damp and steamy but very well maintained.
Our accommodation was clean and simple but very basic - the only downside being the ants in the bathroom which we seemed unable to cure. Our hosts were a lovely family and we had the pleasure of being invited to their home for a family meal to celebrate the daughter's birthday. It was an honour to be a part of seeing a real Sri Lankan family's home life.
Before long our five days were up and we had the long journey back to the airport in Colombo. We will definitely go back to Sri Lanka again - there is a lot more to see in the north of the country.
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