Blogs from Bentota, Southern Province, Sri Lanka, Asia

R: This will be a fairly short post as we didn't do much here. With a long flight day to Australia to look forward to, we opted to have a few days of relaxation in a resort type place. We arrived about 4pm, and one of the quirks of this hotel was the boat transfer. When you arrive on the boat landing stage on the mainland you get whisked onto a small transfer boat which whisks you onto the hotel complex on a spit of sand isolated from the mainland. The hotel is fairly nice, 4* kind of resort. Large pool, quite a few families, three restaurants etc. But its location is quite special, directly on a spit which you can walk down a long sandy beach just outside the pool. We got upgraded to all ... read more

After breakfast we took the launch across the river to meet Upul. We felt lucky that he was able to take us to the airport. We traveled on the highway so the roads were good and not at all chaotic. We went across the emerald island of serendipity, past Colombo and on to Katunayake airport. It was a day time flight home so the ten and a half hour flight wasn’t so bad. I watched three films and it went quite quickly. Terrible food again though. Sri Lanka is a truly beautiful island slightly smaller than Ireland. A lot of development has taken place since the civil war ended in 2009 with new roads and developments. The south coast has also had to rebuild roads and buildings since the tsunami in 2004 but there is still ... read more

Today's early start was made worse by the resignation of Ollie Sale after his famous victory yesterday as captain.  Once again we faced a journey of around two hours, which was worsened by the "back row banter" from Fred Cave, who was wondering how not to be run out again. On arrival the captain lectured us on the difference between the batting tracks in Jersey and Sri Lanka. Having been put into bat, we started brightly, but another collapse and some incredible fielding resulted in the steady fall of wickets. After a slight recovery we reached 99 for 9 off our 20 overs but that was never going to be enough.  The first ball of the second innings set the tone for the remainder of the game, with Whiting conceding five wides down the leg side. ... read more

Today we transferred to Club Bentota, stopping on the way at the official Sri Lankan Cricket shop where many if us bought replica world cup items.  Heading south on our two and a half hour journey we encountered more problems with the onboard air conditioning, causing us to fear that another Tom Edwards sweat pool would appear. We had lunch upon arrival and soon after we were enjoying the luxuries of the pool and the water polo goals. The water polo however soon got over crowded and a bit too aggressive, therefore we moved to the beach for a bit of cricket, for the second encounter between the two teams we formed in Colombo. However, the Red Barrons came out on top again despite the best efforts from the likes of Stuart-Smith who was one of ... read more

Woke early and it is very hot again today. Saman IS nice, but nowhere near as perfect as our other hotels have been. E.g. the coir matting in the bed area, only 1 litre of water per room each day, a small tv. Moan, moan, moan. Actually, I don't like to watch tv on holiday but since Roy was ill, we got in the habit of switching it on and we got hooked on National Geographic channel. Roy likes reptiles, and there are some shockingly bad snake hunter programmes! Jungle Jake is just one of them... And there is an ad playing CONSTANTLY for a Spelling Bee contest that is being aired tonight. There is an Asian kid in it who spells Shylock (S.H.Y.L.O.C.K. if you were wondering) and we've both got our imitation of him ... read more