At exactly 340 am we were woken by a quiet rapping on the door. Bob opened it to find a beaming Mr. Tennakoon offering a tray of tea and the news that some of his Newmarket racing tips had come home winners. Satisfied that we were awake he retreated into the darkness, giggling to himself, as he headed off to prepare breakfast. Half an hour later we loaded the bags into the back of our sleepy driver's Tuktuk and after a sincerely grateful goodbye we were given our...

In the morning light I watched a chipmunk scurrying across the branch outside our window making an angry chattering noise which was quite out of character for the rest of the tranquil garden. The smiling Mr. Tenakoon soon called us down from our balcony for a traditional Sri Lankan breakfast and warily we descended, following him into his house. Seated on the terrace our freshly woken tastebuds and stomachs were assaulted with string hoppers (Sri Lankan noodle ne...

Bob only added a few overnight bites to her catalogue, apparently preoccupied with the slats dropping out from under her side of the bed, leaving her with a very specific orthopaedic mattress, to which I remained oblivious. We breakfasted outside, making friends with the very entertaining house pooch who seemed determined to earn itself a beating by digging holes in the freshly raked sand. Our TukTuk ride to Trinco was beautifully cool and the small villages we p...

Bob's mosquito count now totalled over 80 which made for a frenzied breakfast of scratching, steroid cream application and disbelief at my relative untastiness to the critters. Fortunately Alex dispensed a pack of antihistamines which soon hit the spot but checking out was still interspersed with random bouts of scratching as we headed down the drive on our heavily laiden TukTuk. We arrived down the coast at our last minute booking and inwardly groaned. We were ...

The mosquitos feasted on us overnight and by morning we both resembled measles victims. We had breakfast at the hotel and could feel the temperature rising as we boarded our TukTuk, dodging through the army of cows who blocked the road en-route to the dive centre. 'Dive centre' was possibly a slightly generous name for the ramshackle building in the grounds of a budget guesthouse but the staff were fantastic. We met our dive master Asa and got kitted out before m...