Galle (bladder?)

We were out the door at 7:30 to head to the train station. I asked for a tuk-tuk to be flagged whilst we settled the bill. On going out the door the hotel car was ready to take us, we asked why no tuk-tuk but there was some conversation about price being the same but we just got into the car as time was more important than cost.

At the station getting the tickets to Galle - South-Western Sri Lanka was easy and cheap (180 rupees). For breakfast we went to a "hotel" and pointed at some things in the window to eat. I got a thick roti style bread that had spiced vegetables stuffed within it and also some other bread type thing with sugar on top.

At the the platform it got a bit confusing with a train coming in that was going somewhere else but luckily some local people pointed at us to tell us not to get on it. It was then a rush to get on the train to find some available second class seats (only 2nd/3rd on this service), which we did (although we both got aisle seats rather than next to each other). The train carriages themselves seemed well used and quite old, but not that bad (soft seats rather than the hard ones we had in Thailand). The journey took 2.5 hours (I probably wouldn't have wanted to stay on there much longer), we went over quite a lot of bridges, there were a lot of Palm trees and the occasional beach or river to look at. It was also our 3rd, 3 hour journey in the last 3 days (that's a lot of 3's!)

We were staying at a guesthouse run by a Sri Lankan family (Malanie & Chrishan*) about a 10 minute tuk-tuk journey from Galle, they were very happy and helpful from the minute I emailed them to make a reservation and were also very welcoming when we arrived. The grounds of the property were large and landscaped with a pond, lots of trees & flowers, the main building had 6 rooms and at the entrance was the family's home. It was away from the main town and was very peaceful.

After sleeping for a bit we got Chrishan to take us to the beach at Unawatuna (10 mins away). Back in 2004 it appeared in a list of the world's best beaches. It looks far from that now, the turquoise waters are now murky, and half the beach is a building site with machinery doing work on it. It was hit by the 2004 tsunami, and also had bars built right up to the tideline. Although this was illegal it was not enforced until a few years back when the government tore down most of the buildings.

We didn't get in the water but had some lunch (A lighter style Dahl coconut curry for me) and then sat around for a bit before getting some ice coffee and trying to head back. I tried to call the guesthouse as the driver didn't show up, but the number didn't work (I later found out that copying the number from a email and pasting it to call added extra numbers!). A local gem trader let us use his phone to call the driver (sounds like he forgot) and then invited us in to his shop to sit down. Because of the previous day in Colombo I assumed this would be the point where the favour turned into us being convinced to buy something but it was completely the opposite, we sat for about 25 minutes and talked about our trip, about Sri-Lanka and a few other topics. This chat and our guesthouse had given us much better thoughts of the local people.

We ordered a mushroom curry and a vegetable curry for dinner, but what we ended up with was a banquet for two, as it came with coconut sambal (they scrape the inside of a coconut out and mix it with chilli), popadoms (much more flavour than back home), some other kind of coconut curry, some other type of veg curry and butter rice (the rice grains here are very small, almost like risotto rice). We ate lunch really late so we ended up leaving far too much of it, they said it wouldn't keep until breakfast time either. For dessert I tried a Watalappan, made from jaggery, cardamom, cashews and eggs, it had the texture of a creme caramel - tasted good but didn't really taste the cardamon. Tash had banana fritters, the batter tasted the same as a donut mixture.

Later we found out that Chrishan does all the cooking so that's probably why he didn't remember to pick us up!

Bowls of rice; 52
Hours travelled; 102