Unawatuna, Sri Lanka

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I woke up feeling quite groggy but after a shower and breakfast I soon came round. I spent the rest of the morning writing and drinking coffee. Later I got myself packed up and ready to move again. Only about 5 kilometres South East to Unawatuna this time! I had a nice surprise when I got the bill from Mrs Khalid. She had not charged me for breakfast or coffee or any extra taxes, which I was expecting. I gave her a box of Pot Pourri for her kindness and hospitality. We had a chat about each other’s family and she told me about her son’s studies.

I took a tuk-tuk to Unawatuna. There was not much time to check out the landscape on this journey down Matara road but long enough to see the replacement and repaired buildings along the seafront that had been destroyed by the wave. I found Nooite Gedicht, my next hotel. It is just off the main road and set in a large colonial era house with a fully developed allotment and a pool of sorts. There is a well renowned Ayurvedic clinic here as well which I will frequent for some sort of treatment. I was shown to my room, which was quite large, if a bit dusty. I quickly unpacked, rolled a couple of smokes and headed out to the beach.

It is a ramshackle ½ mile walk down Yaddehmullah Road to the beach passing tourist shacks selling provisions, swimwear, cookery lessons, Ayurvedic massages and boat trips. The road reaches almost to the water and the beach is a half-mile moon crescent curve, with about 5 metres of sand reaching up to the sun loungers that are attached to various food shacks behind. More prominent in the left and right distance are the palm trees that surround the very compact beach

I had some food and then stretched out on a lounger for a few hours and listened to some tunes. After a while a Guy who I had been told about came along and was selling some postcards so I stopped and chatted to him for a while and bought some. He was a real skinny, wrinkly old man with a moustache and no teeth. The British ladies I met at Khalids had recommended him to me. The beach at Unawatuna was fairly small and there were not too many people around. I spent a lovely couple of hours sizzling under some serious sun and enjoying some tunes.

Another bearded guy with a large fuzz of hair came up with a fresh coconut for sale. I bought this and he cut it open for me.

Later on in the day I went out to a yoga class held at ‘The secret garden’ hotel. It was held in a small circular covered monument that opened out into the hotel gardens on each side. The yoga was not too strenuous compared to the hot yoga that I had done before in the UK but by the end of the session I felt extremely relaxed. An Australian woman who is working the season out here held the session. She presented herself as very new age and tactile. She would hold the back of your legs or rest her arms on someone’s bum, whilst supporting them in the posture. It was a bit annoying really. The class had about 10 people in it.

After the session I got chatting to a girl called Anna. She is over in Sri Lanka working on an aid project in between a degree course and an MBA. She studied American studies at Edinburgh University and Berkeley in the USA, which is quite impressive as it is a good University. We had a few beers and a Pizza and one or two smokes and it was a pleasant time. She told me about a party that might be going on later as we walked home but I didn’t fancy it. My head had started aching from the combination of sun, yoga and beer so I headed back to Nooite Gedicht guesthouse and drank an extremely refreshing pot of Ayurvedic tea.
and took an early night. I have arranged to meet up with Suminda tomorrow at 11.00am at The Secret Garden Hotel.

I woke up after an amazingly deep sleep and headed down to the beach for a breakfast of Papaya, Mango, Pineapple, Banana, Fruit Juice, Tea, Omelette and Toast and Marmalade and relaxed in the sun for a time until I was due to go and meet Suminda. Surprise, surprise she was not there! I gave her a call but her mobile was switched off. I thought back to when I phoned her yesterday and we had made the arrangement. Suminda had not sounded that confident in getting here. I had presumed it would have been easy for her to get a Tuk-Tuk over here but she is probably not used to it. I will try and give her a call later and see if we can meet up before I head north tomorrow, up to Deniyaya and a visit to the Sinharaja rainforest with Palitha Ratnayake.

I decided to head back down to the beach and enjoy the sun for the afternoon. Such a novel experience, sunbathing in early December! A man with amazing tattoo’s came by with a python and a monkey on a lead in a pair of tartan trousers. I just relaxed in the sun listening to my minidisks for a few hours trying to cultivate a tan. I went back to the hotel for a cool down and a shower and then headed off to the yoga class again. The class was a bit fuller than yesterday. All full of westerners though. A lot of them seemed to know each other and were young students who had been working on the aid project. It felt a bit cliquey. There was an older guy there who flexed and preened himself and held court about his yoga experience before the class started.

I had a strong feeling of wanting to be quiet and not get to know these people. To me it felt shit, all that cool vibe, you may as well be in a bar in your hometown. I am not here to see these countries from a cosy western group perspective. I get excited by my travels of approaching it from the point of view of just me and hopefully different cool individuals I meet along the way. I do not expect or want to take the easy option and just fall in with the crowd in the next few months. That is not to say that I don’t want to meet different people, I do. I want to meet travellers but also, if I can, genuine local people along the way. So far in my 1st week in Sri Lanka, when I think of Sanjay, Suminda and Sunil, I think I have been able to do that.

After the class finished I avoided everyone and just walked on down to the beach. I found a bar and ordered a beer. I sparked up a smoke and relaxed and pondered my plans for the next few days. I have ordered a tuk-tuk to come and collect me from Nooite Gedicht at 13.30 tomorrow for the 2-hour journey north to Deniyaya. I could get the bus but I am not sure of the times and I do not want to arrive in Deniyaya after dark. Unawatuna has been good. I have enjoyed the beach aspect and it is such an attractive shaped beach, but it is very compact and fairly quiet.

Sri Lanka has been devastated by the actual Tsunami but also by the knock on effect in reducing tourism in this year, the 1st after the Tsunami. It is amazing that many of the hotels and guesthouses are open. I did think twice about coming to Sri Lanka but all the people I spoke to said that most of the destinations I wanted to travel to on the coast were back up and running and extremely keen for travellers to come again. This represents one of the main hopes for regeneration. Looking about at the local hoteliers, drivers and shopkeepers I could not notice, but was definitely aware, of how many of their colleagues or family members would have been here this time last year but were not now.

I walked up to the bar and noticed ESPN on the TV just about to show Liverpool V Wigan. I chatted to the barman who said he was looking forward to the match so I ordered another beer and a really excellent homemade Pizza and watched Liverpool beat Wigan with Peter Crouch finally breaking his duck with an excellent goal. I headed home after this and had another Pot of Ayurvedic tea and read until I fell asleep.

I woke up nice and early and had some breakfast and then went to the Ayurvedic office for a consultation. Nooite Gedicht is renowned for having one of the best Ayurvedic medicine treatment centres on the south coast so I am looking forward to this. The female doctor sat me down opposite her on the other side of her desk. She looked me up and down and checked my pulse and immediately informed me that I may have a haemorrhoid problem in the future and that I should avoid acidic foods like Pineapple, prawns and tomatoes. Well, it was a concise diagnosis! You have to pay for this diagnosis if you want to have any treatments which seemed a bit of a rip off.

I then agreed my treatments, which were a body massage and a steam bath. I was taken into a cubicle and given a plastic Mac and a pair of disposable pants to put on! I undressed and tied it round me. It was a little like a surgical gown. Then I lay out on a hard bed and two young men oiled my body with coconut oil and gave me an excellent, vigorous massage. Of course, I would have preferred a couple of women to be doing the massage but the blokes were fine. The two of them kind of got a rhythm going and were working in time, one on each side of my legs, arms and body both sides. It lasted for about 30 minutes.

They then began to prepare the steam bath. This was most impressive and reminded me of the spas that I had been to with my elder brother and his family in Japan. I had to climb up onto a wooden slatted bench. It was covered in large, dark green, herbal leaves and two very large metal chambers of boiling water were placed underneath the wooden bench I was seated on, enclosed like a cupboard. The steam then rises up through the holes in the bench and reacts with the leaves and the patient. It was slightly claustrophobic but pretty powerful and I had to concentrate on breathing deeply to keep my body temperature at a reasonable level. The two nurses left me to it and I enjoyed. I felt relaxed and energised after I got out and was packing my stuff away and getting ready to leave Nooite Gedicht. I settled the bill and my Tuk-Tuk driver arrived at 13.30pm to begin the journey north up to Deniyaya. Southern Sri Lanka had provided me with real variety in terms of food, guesthouses and the people I had met and I am hoping for more to come in the next few weeks.

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