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Published: March 28th 2012
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Hikkaduwa beach weekend!
Hi everyone!
This weekend Amie,Tamsin, Jonathan and I travelled down to Hikkaduwa beach, which is down in the southern province of Sri Lanka about 10km from Galle. We decided that after our extremely active and somewhat torturous hiking weekend that we deserved a chilled out trip this time around! We left at 11am on Friday morning and headed to Colombo on a public AC bus. They have 3 different standards of public buses here; your standard public buses, then slightly posher ones and then your top of the range Sri Lankan AC buses. To be completely honest, they're all pretty horrendous! Anyway, it took about 3 hours to get from Kegalle to Colombo, and from there we switched onto another bus to Galle which stops in Hikkaduwa on the way, which takes another 3 hours. Like I said, nowhere in Sri Lanka is 'nearby'! Amie thinks Kandy is close because it
only takes an hour and a half to get there from Kegalle! The trip itself wasn't too bad, not as bad as last weeks trip anyway! Last weekend all of our bus changes were in this horrible town called Hatton, which we quickly learned
to despise.
Upon arrival at the beach we walked up the main road looking for accomodation. It wasn't long before we found a guesthouse offering double rooms for 1000 rupees a night. That's less than 2.50pound each per night! The room was nothing special of course, but it was clean, had a decent looking mosquito net and a working fan... win! Oh and it was right on the beach! Pretty great deal! So the four of us arranged to stay there for 2 nights and head home on Sunday afternoon.
We arrived too late to catch any rays on the first day, but we did manage to find an awesome pizza restaurant called 'Woodfire Pizza' on the main road during our search for accomodation. Western food is actually quite hard to come by here, I'm surprised and pleased by the lack of McDonald's and Pizza Hut's outside of Colombo! But after eating nothing but curry for breakfast, lunch and dinner for 2 weeks, 'Woodfire Pizza' was a nice change! After dinner we walked along the beach and stopped in a few bars, namely 'Funky de Bar' which played a fine selection of all the songs I used to
hear at work everyday, and 'Mambo's', the famous surf/party bar which played some some of generic dance music. Jon wasn't happy. If it's not Radiohead or The Smiths he's not happy. He reminds me of my brother, and he's super tall and has Brother-esque sulks when he's stressed! Tamsin seemed to enjoy 'Mambo's' though, although she did spend a lot of time checking the football and formula 1 results while we were there! Jon is a Crystal Palace fan by the way, but he likes Saints because they play 'proper' football. Haha!
During the Saturday and Sunday we hung out at the beach in front of 'Budde's Restaurant', mainly because they had complimentary sunbeds for patrons. We'd arrive there at 9am for breakfast and hang around all day. Unfortunately, on the Saturday I fell asleep in the shade, and woke up to find myself partially in the sun! As a result I now have weird patchy sunburn on the inner side of my right calf! Very odd! But I'm glad I didn't catch it on my face. Safe to say I do not tan well, I just go pink, so i've given up trying. On the other hand, Tamsin
was lying in the sun all day with minimal sun protection and has gone a lovely colour! Don't you just hate people like that?! On Saturday evening we headed back to our beloved 'Woodfire Pizza', of course!
On Saturday Jon and Tamsin had done some research into the price of day tickets to see the cricket in Galle, and by the evening they had resolved to stay in Hikkaduwa for an additional 2 nights in order to see it. I wanted to go to, purely so I could have bragging rights as my dad and my brother both love a bit of cricket! But Amie was due to leave for San Francisco on Monday night and if I had stayed in Hikkaduwa I wouldn't have been back in time to say goodbye to her. We got back to MEF at about 9pm on Sunday night, which only left Amie 24 hours to pack and prepare herself for the 'Captive Elephant Conference' in Oakland, California. Luckily she is extremely well organised and we even managed to squeeze in a visit to the Pinnwala Elephant Orphanage on Monday before she left! (Photos in the next blog!) Now she's gone and it
seems a bit weird being in her room without her, but I only have 5 days left here before I'm off to Singapore! Eeep! Where has the time gone?!
Right, I'm off for dinner! Will update again very soon.
Much love,
Streets.
xxx
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