In Hikkaduwa, we stayed at the Red Lobster. The logo out front was the same as the Red Lobster restaurant in the States. In Sri Lanka, restaurants were called hotels, hotels look like restaurants. It was a topsy-turvy world. Since it was Poya, the night of the full moon, it was against the law to serve alcohol so when I ordered a beer at lunch it was presented to me discreetly in a teapot. I felt like a lush but it was hot, I was near the ocean and I was thirsty.

For desert we broke into the buffalo curd purchased the afternoon before. In the past 24 hours a yellow film had crusted the top of the ceramic bowl. Manog told us that most people eat the curd soon after buying, most people. He smelled the fermentation twice before scrapping the off the top 1/8 inches of mold to reveal the white creamy curd below. Hoping, the ferment of my beer would kill the ferment of the buffalo; I scoped up a large bowl, drizzled it with the bottled honey syrup, and dug in. It was cool and tangy even after being unrefrigerated for a day. The honey syrup was not made of honey but from some tree with sap that tasted like honey. The syrup cut the tartness of the curd and I hoped it would, along with the beer, protect me from an evening of food poisoning. It did.

After lunch Hoài Anh, Thắng and I swam in the ocean with the rest of Hikkaduwa looking to escape the heat on this public holiday. I was nervous about my camera on the beach but no one seemed to notice or care. We waded in the salt water until the sun began to give itself to the horizon. The sunset that evening was one of the most beautiful on the trip, almost rivaled the sunrise, days earlier on Sri Pada.