Big excitement - we leave the hotel TWICE today!

---

Despite having been warned by Roy NOT to wake up before 8am, I was awake at 5.45am. Mind you, so was he, so it isn’t all my fault today. We were out on the balcony having a coffee by 7.45am. I can’t believe the final leg of our Sri Lanka journey starts tomorrow. Breakfast at 8.30am. Eggs and beans for Roy, fruit and scrambled eggs for me.

We’ve been getting bored at the beach - I never thought I’d say that - and so with Roy feeling a lot better now, we’ve decided to go out adventuring again today. We sat in the shade all morning. A few little dips in the pool but no serious swimming. No wonder I’m waking so early - I’m expending very little energy!

At lunchtime, we ventured over to the local Folk Museum which was fairly interesting but too hot to stay inside for very long. The visit was slightly ruined by the tuk tuk guys hassling us on the way in and then a pretend “guide” latching on to us in the museum and doing the usual trick of latching on to us and following us around. It is wearisome, and if they would like tourists to venture outside of their hotels more (unaccompanied) they need to back off a bit! On the other hand, you have to take in to account the tourist situation there, and that numbers are well down and business is very slow indeed. Such a shame for such a great place.

Oh, I’ve just remembered another hawker in Kandy who was trying to sell a shirt to me. It was white, cotton with short sleeves and Sri Lanka written on the pocket - it actually was a half decent white men’s shirt. But I didn’t want it. “Madam, Madam, buy this shirt for your husband, very nice shirt Madam”. I politely said “no thanks, I don’t want a shirt” about half a dozen times, so he deftly changed tack - yelling “It’s a blouse, it’s a blouse for you Madam”. I thought it was resourceful (and funny) and whilst I was tempted, I still didn’t buy!

One of the tuk tuk men was stalking us before we went in to the museum, and knows that we are planning a trip to Galle. He is keen that we come and see him later to discuss it. We’ll see.

Back to the hotel for smoothies (nutty dream for me and banana something for Roy) and then a snooze by the pool. I woke with a stinking headache. Then got ready, with some apprehension, to go to Galle. Roy is worried that we’ll just get non-stop hassle when we get there, but I say that this is not a reason not to go, and that we can handle it. Feel like we’ll be running the gauntlet all night.

At 4pm, filled with a ridiculous amount of trepidation for two mature travellers, we stepped out of the hotel. Big decision - do we ask Chandika on the beach, or do we go outside for a tuk tuk? We could see Chandika, skulking around the beach in his usual spot. He was wearing a Beckham shirt. That was it, decision made! We went out of the front of the hotel - there was nobody there - just a line of empty tuk tuks! Before too long, a cluster of tuk tuk drivers started to appear from nowhere, and you could almost sense the excitement as they realised we were potential customers. Then, from the back, our guy from lunchtime came striding out - the body language was unmistakeable - “these two are mine, boys - back off”. And, to be fair, they all did. I think there is an unwritten beach boy/tuk tuk driver “code” that means once you’ve been singled out as a punter by one of them, the others all leave you alone.

Samantha (that was his name) greeted us and we negotiated a fare of 500 rupees to Galle. Well, I say negotiated, we more or less just agreed to pay him without any wrangling, as it seemed fair to us. As he turned to lead us to his tuk tuk, his face broke into the widest grin I’ve ever seen! He virtually strutted to the three wheeler like the cock of the north, proudly showing off his victory (us) to the other drivers. Blimey, business must be bad. And heaven help us tomorrow when Chandika finds out we’ve been out on a trip (which he will).

So, on to Galle. Passing through several villages and the larger resort of Unawatuna. En route, Samantha pointed out various “interesting” things - Koggala village, airfield, industrial park, big Buddha, lake (we couldn’t see it) etc. His main point of conversation, though, was about the range of cheap seafood restaurants in Unawatuna that he could take us too. People from the Fortress go to them because they are “very cheap” and our hotel is “very expensive”. He quizzed us on the price of a beer in the Fortress and demanded that we recite the menu prices for any prawn dish - he could get all this for us half price. To be honest, I knew all this anyway from online research before we left. But we can afford to pay the inflated Fortress price for things - and did we really want the hassle of venturing out every night? No, we decided we didn’t. If people at the hotel had specifically recommended any of these places, I might have been tempted to give them a try - but given that people in the hotel don’t socialise, chances of that happening were remote.....

Samantha seemed to think that he was going to escort us around Galle - but we had other ideas. “Just drop us off at the main gate and we’ll be fine”. He was horrified. “Madam”, he said, “Galle is a VERY big City - you can’t possibly just walk round there on your own.” When we actually got to the main gate, he didn’t put up much of a fight - I was ready for one, though. I was thinking, hang on, I am 46 years old and I live in the second biggest city in the UK - don’t tell me I can’t walk around Galle! But he just left us to it... but not before he’d made us read through an assortment of laminated testimonial letters from British customers praising his driving and tours.

Galle is made up of the old city built within a fort, and a new city. We went into the fort area only - not enough time to see both. It’s fairly compact and we wandered around with the aid of a Rough Guide to Sri Lanka book. After using the ATM, buying a Dialog top up card and some books, we ended up on the ramparts of the old Fort for a walk. As the sun started to drop, we came across lots of locals out and about - ice cream men, young guys jumping off the rampart into a rocky sea (presumably for money), sweethearts, schoolkids, Buddhist monks and families walking. It was really quite pleasant - the schoolkids took great amusement at my refusal to walk a rickety looking plank which connected a broken section of rampart towards the lighthouse. We watched them singing a group song, and then having a snack of bread rolls and a banana - they were so well behaved!

I am delighted to report that one character walking on the rampart tried to pull the “Milk Powder” scam on me! I’ve been reading about this one for years, but never had it tried on me. Of course the story was embellished by a tsunami tragedy and how friends in Manchester had paid for the tent he lived in. (The scam is that they tell your their child is hungry and needs milk, ask you if you’ll buy a tin of milk powder for them at a local pharmacy - as soon as you have (for an inflated price), they return it and split the cash with the pharmacist. Usually the baby is with them but this guy was on his own.)
We walked further round and watched two cricket matches going on within yards of each other, and just below the ramparts. Then we found a pair of nesting lapwings fighting off crows and dogs on their territory, watched that for a while as the lapwings were like fighter planes!

We sat on the wall and watched the sun set. As we walked back round we came across a group of locals trying to winch up the remains of a shipwreck below. It was getting exciting but we decided we had to leave as the light was fading. We rang Samantha (we took his number when he dropped us off) and asked him to come back for us, and told him we’d meet him at Main Gate. We were trying to find the Old Gate - where the Dutch East India company built its huge warehouse, but we quickly found out that Galle is unlit at night - the only lighting was from houses - there are no street lights. Our hotel (the Fortress) is modelled on the Great Warehouse. We stumbled across it more by accident than design and then got a big disorientated - it took us a while to get back to Main Gate.

Samantha turned up on time and took us back to the hotel - stopping briefly so that I could get some pictures of the fish stalls along the way. He made a few final attempts to get us out to Unawatuna, but we declined. He also tried to sell us a few tours for the next day - Yala National Park (which is 4 hours away!), Koggala Lake, other beaches. We said we were leaving at 11am but that did not deter him. “I can come for you very early” was his reply. Nice try, Samantha.

Exhausted by the walking and sales pitches, we had a beer before getting showered and changed. No canapés tonight! Then we got ready and came back down for dinner. I had the Mirissa Lagoon Prawns (“the most popular dish in the restaurant) which came with three types of rice, lunus miri (chillis) and coconut gravy. Oh, and salad. Roy had Tuna, potato, carrot, peppers and onion stew - also a mild curry sauce. With red country rice and salad. Bottle of Chilean Sav Blanc. All very good. We shared the crème brulee selection (coconut, orange, cinnamon).

After dinner, the manager came to chat and ask us some feedback on how our meal was. We said it was excellent (it was) but then Roy mentioned that we didn’t think it necessary to serve salad with curry sauce - it didn’t seem to go. You’d have thought he’d just invented the lightbulb! The manager over-enthused about this for AGES. “Yes, sir, that is a very good point. I will make sure that all my staff tell customers not to put the curry sauce on their salad”. What?????

I think we upset one of the waiters. He’s been creeping round us for days, learned our names and uses them constantly in conversation. For my taste, he’s just a little bit over the top. After dinner he was telling us that we won’t see him tomorrow before we leave, as he’s having a day off. In other words - you must tip me now. We’d already decided to leave a larger tip with the manager to be shared - that is always my preference in smaller hotels like this.

We were in bed by 10.30pm.

---

Photos

Exterior of Fortress hotel
Looks nothing from the road!