Our visa was now nearing its end, so Amelia and I either needed to extend it or leave the country. The potential time and costs involved with extending our visas resulted in us browsing Skyscanner for a cheap flight. One place that'd never crossed our minds was the atolls of the Maldives. But to my amazement, flying to the Maldives from Sri Lanka was one of the cheapest options! And despite common belief, we found out that it is possible to stay somewhere other than a £2000 a night 'Water Bungalow'.
Because of limited ATMs in the Maldives, we needed to take USD. Exchanging a bunch of Sri Lankan rupees to US dollars wasn't without its problems though. According to every bank we visited, it would be impossible for a foreigner to exchange rupees, especially since a recent money laundering problem. Similarly in Hanoi with our teaching wages, we ended up having to make our exchange on the 'black market' (and this time at a better rate than the banks!). So after a bit of a predicament it was settled, we would fly to the Maldives on the day our visa expired.

For Valentine's Day we spent our day on the receding beaches of Hikkaduwa and snorkelling with curious turtles - bizarrely they swam right up to the beach to get hand fed seaweed by tourists! In the evening we splurged on a meal at one of the top rated restaurants in town. It was called 'J.L.H. Beach Restaurant' and to my delight Amelia was keen to share the 'seafood basket for two'! We've had our fair share of delicious seafood dishes during our travels, but this topped them all. The 'basket' contained lobster, jumbo prawns, tiger prawns, crab, tuna steak, calamari, octopus and clams! It was a sensational treat and cooked to perfection in a garlicky sauce alongside chips and salad. We demolished it all and agreed it was the best Valentine's meal we've had.

Hikkaduwa was another bustling beach destination, with its primarily Russian or ex-USSR masses sternly 'ruling' the place, it was far from our favourite. In hindsight we would've stayed longer at a quieter beach town like Weligama, but Hikkaduwa was close enough to the airport and far enough away from the smog of Colombo. Besides, it turned out to be a good place to make our daily exchange of maximum rupee withdrawal to USD.
We stayed with a lovely elderly couple roughly one kilometre inland. Although their place was out of the way it was the only affordable accommodation we could find. The lovely clean room we picked in their newly renovated guesthouse even had a balcony and four poster bed!

Our time in Hikkaduwa had a similar 'routine' - eat, blog, eat, exchange money, eat, sleep, repeat.
Finding locally priced food in Hikkaduwa proved difficult, but our guesthouse owners were happy to make us breakfast for a reasonable 300 rupees per head. In between meals we sorted money, walked along the bustling beach and blogged away. For lunch we would have takeaway rice and curry from one of the only cheap hotels in town. The inside of the 'hotel' was barely up to even our low standards - hence the takeaway preference! But the food was actually very good and happily served without salmonella!

To get from Hikkaduwa to the airport was fairly straight forward. The first leg of our journey was via train in a third class carriage to the capital. Then after a quick look through the sweltering markets in Colombo, it was onto a trusty old bus heading to the airport, for a flight to what would be our last destination on our 'Great Adventure'...