Golden Beach Hotel Negombo

... was every type of sea creature you could ever imagine available there! Bad idea to go in flip flops though, my feet were black by the time I left! The rest of the town was a bit of a let down though. The church was nice, but I didn't enjoy being propositioned by a random man in a side road next to it.<br><br>My last day I spent just bumming around, picking up some souvenirs and getting ready to head off elsewhere ...

... tea time. after checking in, we were straight into our swimmers and we hit the pool. the hotel is a bit frayed around the edges, after all it is nearly 40 years old, but the staff are amazing. there are so many of them you keep tripping over them, and they can't do enough for you. apart from a walk into the village one evening, and a brief trip into the local town yesterday, up ...

By this time Sri Lankan food had paled considerably but we were on our way to Bangkok and decided we could thole one night at the Silver Sands and simply eat - Short Eats. This is the excellent Sri Lankan custom of the baker cum restaurant which sells its own products and all fresh. There are filled buns like the sweet buns you used to buy in Scotland thirty years ago covered in pink icing or coconut, these are a little different they have a curried fish mixture inside and they are ...

We stepped off the ferry and found our hotel within ten minutes. The Real Inn has only recently been opened so is in excellent condition and they were amenable to negotiating a discount. Our contact is a local businessman and one of his businesses operates from premises leased from the hotel so he managed to get us a rate of $55. The more usual rate for a small hotel in Malle is $70 and above; prices are never quoted in Rufiyaa. The one downside to the Real Inn is its drains ...

... received direct government aid, despite the millions of dollars pouring into the country. The government's main contribution to the disaster itself appears to be the enactment of an infamous 100m rule (in January 2006), which forbade those [previously] living within 100m of the coast from rebuilding their houses on their previous sites. Officially, this was designed to protect those living around the coast from the possibility of a second tsunami, although many see ...

... here, we won't go into it too much but we got first hand experience of paying an off duty police officer who was our driver for the day on a trip out, 2000 Rupees, who then decided to say we hadn't payed him!!!!!! He didn't get anymore money, we made our point loud and clear!!!! Learnt a bit about the Tamil Tigers too, they want control of the north and East of the Island, and the fighting with the Sri Lankan Military is very alive, and it does concern the locals, but we ...

We have eventually made it through a church service without either me or Gordon fainting! It was a proud day! It's an Anglican church that we go to, led by Pastor Victor. I would say there are regularly about 20 people attending. I've noticed quite a lot of young people and all the kids just run around outside. I'm also starting to recognize the children that come to Smile at church so it's good to see some of them there. It's ...

... as predicted, i even had a little drive of the elephant myself! That afternoon we drove up to Sigiriya, an ancient capital of Ceylon, where the mighty Sigiriya Rock was. Its an absolutely stunning sight, the Asian version of Ayers Rock, a lump of rock that towers nearly 700 feet up ...

... We need questions that make us change. And we need to invite people who are living the realities. Lieve: If we agree on a theme, why not have 3 or 4 people write, then send out the papers to others who will write, and then others who will figure out a good process, so that we are in discussion before we come. Julia: We need time as a group to imagine here, now, together. If we go on like this for ten more years, nothing will be different, and no action will have taken ...

... off the otherwise mandatory service charge. Next! Surfer's Break cafe: This opened for breakfast at 8.00am, so we went along the next day so we could try the muesli (it seemed to be part western-run so we had high hopes and indeed their chocolate brownies the previous evening had been delicious and enable us to recover from our double-mistake pizza/pasta fiasco). Unfortunately, it seemed that you could only have muesli if the person who ...