Blogs from Trincomalee, Eastern Province, Sri Lanka, Asia

After a couple of days of lounging about the beaches and trying to spend as much time as possible twelve meters under the water surface, I decided it was time to continue my exploring. After the morning's diving, I set off back to Trincomalee, the nearby city that I had passed through on my way to Uppuveli. After a few minutes of sweltering on the hot and dusty main road, I was able to flag down a local bus heading south and I squeezed on amongst the brightly-saried women for the fifteen minute ride into town. Being in the north-east, Trincomalee has a different vibe to the other parts of Sri Lanka I had so far visited. Street signs are written in both Tamil and Sinhalese and there is far more Hindu culture evident in the ... read more

HE SAID... Today we were travelling south-east from Jaffna to Tricomalee. We woke early at 5:30am, organised our packs and headed down to JetWing Jaffna’s amazing breakfast area. I had cornflakes, toast, jam, an egg hopper (thin crispy rice flour and coconut crepe cooked in a mini-wok, with an egg in the centre), wild orange juice, guava juice and tea. It was another fantastic breakfast, and I wished we could eat like this every morning. We checked out of JetWing Jaffna, jumped into our minibus and drove a short distance to Jaffna’s bus station, where we clambered into a very packed public bus and sped off towards Trincomalee. As we drove through Jaffna’s streets, I was unsettled by the war-torn houses that still bore the marks of ammunition. The further we travelled from Jaffna’s suburbs, the ... read more

I have been in Sri lanka for a month now and am officially a resident here! I got my visa extended on Friday. We are starting to act a bit more like residents as well. I won't get in a tuk tuk (three wheeled taxi) now without considerable bargaining. Its quite funny how stressed we get about an extra 50 rupees which is actually only 25p. One day we got to play how many people can you fit in a tuk tuk and the answer is 6 (they're only made to take 3) so that was a bit of a squish! This weekend we headed up to Trincomalee which is in the north east of Sri Lanka. We hired a mini bus to take us. Google maps estimated it would take 4 hours to travel 268 ... read more

Phuket, Thailand is also a developing area working hard to attract tourists. Our bus drive for an hour takes us the length of Phuket Island, across a new bridge replacing a very ornate one, and on to a rustic pier to board a narrow, simplistic covered wooden motorized craft with movable benches. Our goal is to visit the monoliths just off shore, rising from the ocean in Phang Nga Bay, similar to the ones we saw in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. These limestone mini islands have an additional attraction of grottos dug out by the ocean that you can go into or pass through. Many kayakers ride aboard larger vessels out to these grottos and then paddle themselves through. We also see James Bond Island, so named because scenes from Man with the Golden Gun were ... read more

by Jan Picture a nice, very quiet beach. Nobody bothering you, selling you useless and overpriced souvenirs and clothes. Add friendly locals, a great crowd of chilled out backpackers and amazing food! This, in a nutshell, is Uppuveli, a place where we spent a week, even if our intention was to stay only a few nights. When leaving Polonnaruwa we weren't even sure where we were going. When looking for a tuk-tuk we decided that we want to go to the train station and head to the east coast of Sri Lanka. West and South coast are the two main tourist attractions, while East is slowly recovering from the civil war which ended a few years ago. The area around Uppuveli was part of the fighting between the national army and the Tamil Tigers, so just ... read more