Hello from Sri Lanka

Well we spend just over a week in Sri Lanka and think its easiest to just write one blog and tell you what we were up to, so here goes......

Our flight from Trivandrum was fairly uneventful, although Trivandrum airport is the oldest/smallest airport we have ever seen, our boarding passes were hand written....lol.After a nice 45 minute plane journey we arrived in Sri Lanka and were greeted by Joyce and Aruna and we made our way to Joyce's house.Sri Lanka is totally different to India, the roads are no where near as crazy, they actually have speed limits and traffic lights here and they have designated sides of the road, its not a free for all haha.Its also a lot cleaner and you barely see anybody on the streets or homeless.

We arrived at Joyce's house and it was lovely, our bedroom was massive, with a comfy double bed and a massive bathroom too, bliss.Nice change from some of the hotels in India!!The first thing we both did was empty our stinky backpacks, all our clothes were dirty and backpacks were desperatly needing aired haha.Was ace to have all our clothes washed and feeling clean again.

Joyce and Aruna took us out for tea to a local resteraunt and we took the table and chairs onto the beach.....literally.We were the only ones there watching the ships and the waves crashing, it was so relaxing and so warm.Also, a really good meal with Jonny having prawns again.....its becoming his new "steak".

One of the days we headed off to the turtle sanctuary close by, where they had baby turtles that were only a day old, heaps of other types of turtles as well as an albino turtle.The guy told us that they would be releasing some of the babies back into the sea at night so we went along and helped them.We got 15 babies and started releasing them into the sea, it was amazing.Some of them were a bit lazy and reluctant to swim away though haha, but we eventually got them all away, was so good to see them trying to swim away.

Another day we had a boat safari where we seen some crocodiles, lots of kingfisher birds and the 64 islands of Sri Lanka.It was amazing scenery, so relaxing as well.Aruna then took us to where the Tsunami hit in 2006, a lot of the houses havent been re-built and you can just see the foundations, there is a monument there for all the people that lost their lives, we didnt realise that 50,000 people in Sri Lanka along died in it, so sad.

We then set off to a moonstone factory, Sri Lanka is the only place in the world you can find this.We seen how they dig it out, wash it, cut it to size and make the jewerally, was really impressive to see.But....not quite as impressive as the jewerally shop they had.WOW...Shay was really in her element, she wanted to buy it all, but unfortuantly our budget could only stretch enough for her to buy a pair of earrings.The guy that showed us around, asked where we work and when we tried to explain that we have no jobs and are travelling he offered us jobs in his moonstone factory haha.....we had to refuse though, lol.

Gulle Fort was another place we went to see, we both really liked it here, it was right on the edge of the island and you were overlooking the Ocean.It was massive, never realised how big it was until we were walking around, really good to see though.

On our way home from Gulle Fort we stopped at a mask factory, where we seen how they make some Sri Lankan traditional masks, this again was really impressive to see and the finished products were equally impressive, we got a run down of what all the different masks meant and they all have different meanings......we were very tempted to buy one as we thought it would be a nice ornament for our "non existnat house" haha.

We spend one of our days at Bentota beach, it was so hot though, we ended up taking a nice long walk along the beach instead of sitting out in the sun, we came across a pool in one of the resteraunts that we spent the rest of the day cooling off.

Most nights we have been getting a take away form some of the local resteraunts "Golden Grill" we are now becoming regulars haha, and just eating back at the house ouside with a couple drinks, nice and relaxing.We have went out for tea a few nights as well, all the meals have been excellent, the food here is really good.

5.30pm every night has became our favourite part of the day as Joyce's security guard starts his shift , his name is "Kalu" or as we call him "Indie".He came in one night with an Indiana Jones hat on and the name has just stuck ever since haha.He speaks very broken english only knowing a few words, but he is very egear to learn as much english he can so he points to a lot of things and asks the english word.He is so funny at describing things that both of us end up in fits of laughter the whole night, he does some really good animal impressions, we took a video one night of him doing it, we sware its going to be a massive hit on YouTube, its hilarious.Kalu has a heart of gold, he arranges Tuk Tuk's for us all the time and stands faning us at night to get the mosquitos away while shouting "go misquito, go" haha, just a really nice guy.

One of the nights became rather eventful....our neighbour who doesnt speak much english seen a "snake" crawl under our gate and into the garden, she said it was a baby "Cobra"....great.Calou seen we were both a bit scared at this so went on search around the house with a flashlight and no shoes on, looking for the snake haha.He couldnt find it so we went out to get some tea, on returning "Indie" showed us he had spotted the snake, we could see its tail in a crack in the ceiling, so Aruna tried to smoke it out, something fell from the roof and "Indie" took a massive swipe at it with a machete, the funniest thing we have seen.He missed thankfully as it wasnt a snake but a water monitor....so after all that there was no snake but a Lizard.....haha, its been the story of Sri Lanka lol.

One evening Kalu came to work an hour early so he could meet us and take us back to his house to meet his family before starting his shift.He lives about 20 minutes away from Joyce even more into the jungle, his house consisted of two rooms, a living room with a couple of patio chairs in it, with a table and a poster on the wall of Buddha and there was the bedroom which was just big enough to fit a bed just smaller than a double bed in it.His family were very nice, he has a daughter who is only about 6 or 7 called Tamoodi.They showed us their back garden where they have a cow haha, Kalu is very proud of his cow and told us the story of how he bought it for 1,500 rupes (£9) haha.He also showed us the electric wires he has bought with his wages so that he can put electricity into his house, he was so proud.We took some photos of Kalu and his family and we have promised to post them to him, was so nice of him to let us see his house and meet his family.Made our day.

On our last night we decided to take a wonder down to the shop before Kalu arrived so we could buy some biscuits for Tamodi, we also wrote Kalu a thank you letter for keeping us safe at night.We put 1,000 rupes (£6) into the letter.When he arrived at his usual time we gave it to him, he was so happy and said that he was going to cry.Such a sweet man, we were very sad to say goodbye to him, definatly be writing to him and his family in the future.

Well that is our time in Sri Lanka, its been good to chill out in the sunshine for a week.We leave Joyce's house today at 3pm and get a train to Colombo then a bus to Colombo Airport and fly off to China at midnight, both very excited to start our adventures in China.

Want to say thank you to Joyce for letting us stay with her and doing all our washing, so nice to be heading off with a rucksack full of clean clothes :)

China.....here we come

J+B