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Published: December 29th 2016
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We had a midday-flight booked and luckily we left early for the airport because we spent 20 minutes in a nose to toe traffic jam. Apparently some government official was heading to the airport so lots of streets blocked to allow them passage.
As with all things in India sitting and watching life go by thows interesting scenarios your way. As we were sitting in the International departure area a customer of the coffee shop wanted to use his credit card to pay for his breakfast. The coffee shop owner used his cell phone to contact his mate in the domestic departure area, separated from the international by some closed glass doors. The card was passed through a gap in the doors and taken to the other shop which had a window that could be seen through. Various hand signals to complete the transaction and the card and receipt passed back through the gap in the doors. Thoughts of PIN security, airport terrorism etc run through my mind but in India they are just things that involve rules that need bent a little.
The flight over was only 55 minutes on SpiceJet, an airline like Air Asia where you
pay for every benefit, or not. We didn't opt for the in flight food or the extra leg room. The airline hostess thought we looked a bit uncomfortable because he did offer me a seperate seat down the back. I must admit I thought I was going to need a seat belt extension but just managed to clip in.
Landing in Sri Lanka again after 20-odd years bought back very many good memories. When I was last here the country was in a state of civil war, the New Zealand cricket team had stopped their tour due to a bomb blast in Colombo.
Early impressions are its progressed significantly and we are looking forward to discovering it again.
We took a bus into town and headed for the train station to book some rail tickets for the next day. It felt like an episode of the amazing race as the 15 or so back packers on the bus all headed in the same common direction. Shelley and I got about 6th so didn't win any immunity pins?.
Train ticket in hand to Anuradhapura on the 3:55pm Reserved 2nd class train tomorrow we checked in to our
Restaurant entrance
Shelley was almost on the train tracks taking this photo hotel after another exciting Auto Rickshaw ride.
A colleague at work had given me the name of a popular upmarket sea food restaurant on the beach, Beach Watiya. We emailed a reservation request which got accepted so after a shower and a rest while waiting for a very impressive thunder storm to pass we got a meter taxi to take us there. Arriving we encountered the restaurant on the other side of the train tracks right on the beach. It proved to be a great night out. The owner showed us a photo of him with Stephen Fleming when we mentioned we were from NZ.
We slept well that night, probably helped by the bottle of Chilean Chardonnay.
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