It was 3 PM when pulled into the café and when we arrived it was empty. In Sri Lanka, many of the restaurants were called hotels; the café we were in was called the Rest Hotel, though there was not a bed in sight. Lunch was held in stasis, buffet style, in a row of unheated chafing dishes. Hoping the Ayurvedic therapy detox prepared me for anything, I scooped up as much food as my plate could carry, rice, potato curry, vegetables, dahl and dried fish. If I was going to poison myself with food, heated by the Sri Lankan sun, I was going to go out full bore. The food turned out to be quite nice.

Brave from our lunch, Hoài Anh insisted that we buy buffalo curd from one of the vendors lining the highway toward Tangalle. She was brave. The curd, fermented in a ceramic vessel was heated by the sun and flavored by the persistent exhaust of passing cars.

By this time in our journey Hoài Anh began seriously negotiating the price of everything. She kept saying that she and Thắng were running out of money. She bargained our $1.50 lunch down to a dollar and brazenly negotiated the buffalo curd vendor clutching her two wide eyed children, down to $2.00 for a container of curd and bottle of honey syrup. That evening, when we reached the beautiful Lagoon Paradise Beach Resort (www.lagoonparadisebeachresort.com) in Tangalle, Hoài Anh nearly refused to stay when the room price with breakfast did not go below $28.00 per person for two rooms. The list price on the Lagoon Paradise Beach Resort website was $200.00 a night. While I would not spend $200, our first offer from the management was $50 a room.

I could have spent a week relaxing by the pool or strolling the grounds of the Lagoon Paradise Beach Resort. The resort sat on the edge of a lagoon that was connected, though a series of bridges to the beach and the ocean. On the beach there was a cabana, the waiters served food and drink there or at one of the many umbrella-covered lounge chairs dotting the beach. I had a beer watching the sunset, typing these words into my ipad. The beer, the heat, the sound of the ocean and quite possibly the day's Ayurvedic therapy, forced me to bed early, even before dinner and the buffalo curd we planned for desert had to wait.