Mount Lavinia Hotel

... that we have to endure during the process. By the time we reach our air conditioned office we are all of us sweaty, uncomfortable and distinctly unsociable. This is the second time in my life that I&#8217;ve been grateful for air conditioning.<br><br>The &#8216;glamour&#8217; of the assignment is diminishing rather rapidly and is further worn away by the loos in the office: one Western style and one Asian style loo, neither with any paper and no ...

... the shop owners were actually suprisingly very honest and never tried to rip me off with the prices of things, the things were so cheap I didnt even need to barter. I managed to get a small mask for £2, it is hard to barter when prices are like that. When driving in and to Hikaduwa you could still see the effects of the Tsunami. Some houses and buildings were still stood runied and driving past you could see graves of the people ...

... statues,etc..It reminds me a little of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. There also is a big lake which provides water for an irrigation system which is over 2000 years old and still in use.There's a good museum here with artifacts and statues.Sarath drives me between the different sites and tells me some of the history. There are 2 kinds of monkeys around. I also saw a mongoose cross the road twice and we nearly ran over an 8' black rat snake.On the way back towards Kandy we went through ...

... she said was the spiciest she'd ever had - served with luke-warm pasta. Andy.....well, requested Spag Bol without cheese and without mushroom........ After a while they came and asked if tomato sauce was alright with his meal.....confused? We were. They ended up bringing to the table a plate of luke-warm plain pasta and a little silver dish filled with Ketchup. Andy queried this as nicely as possible - they thought he didn't want onion or ...

... and took me a few rounds until I knew how to play it properly. We ended up at Mihiri's relative's place where we dropped off Mr. Silva, Johanne and the wedding gifts. We arrived at the Hilton pretty late, and gave each other time to freshen up before dinner. Dinner was a full-on Sri Lankan meal, which didn't hold off on the spices. It was great food and even better company. The night ended too soon, but we were all tired. We walked back into the lobby ...

... her I had to help rub mud and dirt on her (the director did not want her clean) I have no idea if the film is in Sinhalia or English but I shall be going to see it anyway as its not every day that you can sit in a cinema and say "I know that elephant" On Monday we caught the AC bus back to Kegalle , this time as we got on at the bus station ( avoiding airport mad tuk tuk driver like the plague ) we got the 2 seats at the front ...

... for food. It's right on the coast and has only recently been opened again after being rebuilt as it was nothing but a stack of bricks after the Tsunami. We decided to walk the 10minuute walk to good old "food city" as we have been very lazy. The road we walked across was where the Sunday market used to be and where 7500 people lost their lives when the Tsunami hit. You just can't grasp it as you walk along - to think of the devastation and panic that there once was. I also didn ...

... to mention some. It was really depressing and when we bought one guy a beer and he started telling us about his son's medication running out and then started crying, I had really had enough. Off to the loo I went to leave Kev to deal with it! That's what husbands are for apparently!!! And I knew he wasn't as weak as I was. After 4 nights we left Hikkaduwa and made our way to Unnawatuna the next beach. This beach was my favouriet and because it was the ...

... we should have opted for some other experience of Sri-Lanka. By then, it was too late for other choices. I comforted myself with the thought that as with other mountain climbs, the pain would pass but the beauty would remain with us forever.      Going down, we encouraged ourselves as we followed the numbers on the light posts from 130 down to 1.  It was a little past 9:00 a.m. when we reached lamp post number 1 but to our dismay, there ...