With the air miles that we had accumulated from our Bangalore-Colombo-London-Colombo-Bangalore trip in Sep 2009, we found ourselves eligible for a free Bangalore-Colombo-Bangalore ticket each. So taking advantage of a long weekend and some essential office work for which I had to visit Bangalore and Cochin, we could plan for a six day trip to Sri Lanka by taking just 3 days leave.
We all left Delhi on 24 Mar morning and spent that day at Bangalore in my Mother-in-law's house as it was a holiday. The next day while I attended to some office work, Sreshta and Ira visited Celebrity Paradise at Electronic City (where we used to stay while we were in Bangalore) and met up all Ira's earlier friends and their families.
In the evening, the three of us left for the airport to board our late evening flight to Colombo. It was almost like déjà-vu of our Europe trip beginning but the difference was this flight was earlier and reached Colombo by 1030 PM. By the time we cleared immigration and were ready to board a taxi to Goldi Sands Hotel, Negombo; where we were scheduled to stay two days; it was past 11 PM.
In the immigration queue we happened to meet Bob Steiner and his wife who were also heading for a beach guest house at Negombo. They needed a taxi as well; so I suggested that we share and save half the cost and Bob was in agreement.
On this trip, we surprisingly did not cater for any local currency whatsoever; I was somehow sure that we can use our credit cards for everything and exchange Indian currency for Sri Lankan (even that I had very little) when we had exigencies. Little did I foresee that in Sri Lanka like many other developing countries one had no alternative to cash to pay for services like using a taxi.
Luckily for us Sreshta was carrying the left over cash from her solo trip to London in Jan 10 (shopping special; on shoe string though...) and that was some 135 Pounds. She also had her travel card with her which had some more balance cash left in it.
When we exchanged 80 pounds @ 164 SLR per pound and were loaded with more than 13000 SLR; it made us realise the value of a strong currency firsthand. I arranged a taxi to Negombo for SLR 1100 (that's a very well negotiated price I believe) and the taxi was big enough to accommodate all five of us and our considerable luggage. While the taxi counter had said that it would be a non a/c taxi due to my well negotiated price, the driver had no issues switching on the a/c and even at 11:30 PM it was warm and sultry enough for us to appreciate the need for the a/c.
We had a nice chat about Bob and his wife's work lives as well as ours. In less than half an hour we reached their guest house and Bob promptly gave me SLR 550 making all efforts to dig into his affairs to get the exact change than settle for giving even SLR 20 less. We wished them well, exchanged email id/phone number, asked them to visit us at Delhi/Gurgaon when they come north and moved on to Goldi Sands Hotel.
Hotel Goldi sands offered me one of their two newly renovated rooms @ 60$ a day, which was the corner most room on the second floor. Part of the view from the spacious balcony overlooked the neighbouring houses; in one of the houses, one evenings I could see crowds gathered on the adjacent road to watch afar some cricket match on the colour TV in the house. Some view was covered by thick coconut foliage as the room was at tree-top height. But in the balance of the view we could see the decent lawns separating the hotel building from the sane and beyond it the sea about 100 mtrs away. It was the first time we were staying in a beach side property and we were pretty happy; with those thoughts we called it a day somewhere past midnight on our day of arrival.
On waking the next morning we were all eager to hit the sea. But we had woken up late and being on half-board plan (breakfast and dinner included in room rate), we wanted to tank up properly on the breakfast. By the time we got ready in our swimming gear and with sun tan on it was close to 9:30. We went down for breakfast and sat there trying everything out from the fairly elaborate menu till it was time to close the breakfast at 10:30. It was too sunny to go to the water anymore. So we hung around the beach chairs under the shady coconut grove; Ira played in the sand while we tried to read some books we had with us. We also joined her in making sand piles and pits with her new plastic beach set (a bucket, a shovel and a forked sand comb).
It was pretty warm; rather hot and I was wondering if we were too late in visiting Sri Lanka in end March. Soon Ira spotted the blue water (the hotel swimming pool) nearby and wanted to jump in there. We joined her under the hot sun in the cool water of the pool. Ira continued to be the great water fan she had demonstrated she was; we had introduced her to water in the RSI Bangalore pool when she was about ten months old. When all of had had our fill of the pool, we retired to our room.
Being the top floor the room was radiating warmth from the roof and the AC was not very effective. It became somewhat better the next day after Sreshta reported the problem. We were indoors till evening and went down at 5 to check out the sea. We did that but realised that the sea had become very rough by then. So we spent some time doing more sand activity and returned to the pool. From there we moved for dinner and were ready for an early evening retirement.
The second day at Goldi sands was short because we had to move by road 3-4 hours to go to a place called Hikkaduwa towards the south of Sri Lanka on the west coast (Negombo is somewhere in the centre of the same coast line). We spent some time at the sea picking shells for Ira and making a fortified sand castle which she loved stamping on. We also had a good time in the pool with she doing a lot of tic-toe (tip-toe) along the shallower sidewalk of the children's pool. The taxi that was organised for may not have been the best in terms of AC effectiveness but the driver was certainly very amenable to all our requests although we had a challenging time communicating given his lack of English understanding (Tamil as well).
On the way we stopped at Kalutara to check a property called Tangerine with a view to spend our last two days for which the venue was not decided yet. Tangerine, although sprawling and elaborate, was also very old world and dingy. We did not take long to decide that we will give it a pass. We stopped by a local goods shop to pick up a wooden animal puzzle set for Ira and continued down south.
Coral sands is a nice property located bang on the most popular stretch of the Hikkaduwa beach and it is spread along the beach front. Thus, all rooms have a great view of the beach. The beach itself is of pure white sand and crystal clear water. The glass bottom boats which people use for seeing corals are all lined up in this part of the beach and the corals themselves are closest to the beach at this place (just about 15-20 mtrs into the water). As a result Coral Sands is a happening place to stay at, although it is unreasonably expensive (comparatively) @ 105$ a day (half board).
We quickly settled into our room and were out on the beach very quickly to exploit whatever little remained of the day after our long 4 hours plus drive from Negombo (which cost us about 55$). After playing a little in the clear water, we hit the pool as Ira was once again fascinated by 'blue water'. The water in the kids' pool was barely up to her chest (unlike the one at Goldi Sands where it only had a shallow side walk but much deeper center) and Ira was much more thrilled with this pool. She quickly went beyond 'tic-toe'ing to flapping her hands in the water vigorously, trying to float taking support of her arms on the side and then later sitting with one foot folded on another talking about numerous things including stories. And we took turns to swim in the adjacent adults' pool which was separated by a few feet wide and sufficiently long platform with shallow water (about 6 inches on which Ira could roll).
Dinner was uninteresting food wise but the setting was nice and comfortable. There was a live local band here as well playing ethnic music with ethnic instruments and going from one part of the restaurant to another. The night was beautiful and brightly moonlit; the view from our window was that of a picture post-card.
The next day we walked on the beach front taking turns with Ira taking in the scenic beauty and enjoying walking on the white sands with bare feet. We saw a turtle couple hanging around one end of this stretch of the beach; we learnt that they were fixtures there. We also had another round of play in the pool during which Ira walked the shallow platform from the kids' pool and jumped into the adult pool while I was inattentive for a few seconds. I quickly got her out before she could drink more than a gulp of water; but from this episode onwards she understood that water is not always a fun thing. Sreshta and Ira retired to the rooms to rest away from the hot sun while I pitched our portable small tent on the beach partly under a small casuarinas tree and braved the heat inside the comfortable tent. I moved in when the heat became unbearable by 11 PM or so.
Unlike the previous hotel, the AC in the room was effective at Coral sands. We rested a bit waiting for my friend Birdy to pay us a visit. He came with a colleague and after chatting a lot on myriads of subjects, we went to a nearby restaurant to have lunch. This restaurant was located about a couple of miles further south on another stretch of the Hikkaduwa beach. The food was nice and the setting comfortable. Ira was fatigued and sleepy but continued to humour us with not being very difficult to handle.
After lunch Birdie and friend dropped us back and we took a little rest till the heat subsided. He had got for us a pair of flippers and snorkelling gear which we put to good use and took turns to snorkel while one of us engaged Ira making her float in the clear water on her turtle float. We again fell back to the pool for more 'blue water', more flapping and sitting on kids' pool steps listening to stories. We met an American couple with four kids in tow; a eight year old son, another son of five years or so and boy and girl twins barely a year old each. They were doing a great job managing the kids but the kids were hurting all around- the second boy banged his head and chest on the pool wall while he was trying to run on the side, both the twins were uncomfortable; one was falling down from her sitting position on the shallow platform every now and then and drinking water. We met some British Sri Lankan families whose children, girls ages from 5 to 10 years, became very fond of Ira very quickly.
At the dinner table, we got a candle and a muffin; and made the musicians to sing 'Happy Birthday' for Ira; although her big day was actually a few weeks away. We also decided that for the next two days of our trip (for which we had not decided/booked where to stay) we would go to Bentota which was somewhere in between Negombo and Hikkaduwa. Taking Birdy's help we got ourselves booked for a room in Taj Exotica there @ 135$ a day. It was a tad expensive but we expected it to be that much superior as well.
After breakfast the next day and some more of everything in the sea and in the pool, we checked out from our hotel and took off for Bentota in a small sized Maruti Zen type local taxi. Earlier in the morning while going on a beach walk, I had arranged for a local taxi to report to us at the hotel by 12 and settled the fare for SLR 2500 (about 25$).
Taj Exotica at Bentota was a letdown for an expensive beach resort; it is an ancient looking property which actually is ancient , it is a long walk from the beach, and there is no reason beyond snob value why anyone who is visiting Sri Lanka and Bentota should stay there. By the time we were escorted to our rooms we were making up our minds and the quality of our rooms for 135$ a day and the view of the balcony sealed our decision. We quickly decided to go back to Goldi Sands which we thought was a value-for-money-property. I made a quick call to Birdie about the same and he could confirm availability of room at Goldi Sands. After having the welcome drink and leaving Sreshta & Ira to rest in the room, I took off on lightening speed to arrange a taxi and covered the half kilometre walk from the property to the road junction in hot sun to find a very good taxi for a good price - 35 British pounds. Luckily for me, that's all the balance cash I had with me in all currencies; not even a single Sri Lankan rupee more.
We spent the next two days at Goldi Sands in leisure. I discovered some 500 plus Indian Rupees in my possessions and converted them to Sri Lankan currency @ 1:2. Armed with that and her credit card Sreshta did some shopping around in Negombo market while I and Ira explored the local roads near the hotel; in the real hot sun we happily walked to the children's beach park to one end of the Negombo beach and during the return looked into all nice looking beach properties to check out whether they were any better value for money than Goldi or not - they were not.
After two nights at Goldi Sands, it was our day of departure from Sri Lanka. We had tied up with a local taxi from the taxi stand at the hotel to take us on a sightseeing trip of Colombo and then drop us at the airport for Sri Lankan Rupees 4000. We paid Goldi Sands @ 57$ per day; I could extract 3$ more discount from General Manager Mr Lal citing second stay in same trip - loyalty bonus..:). Lal also made it possible for us to swipe our credit card with the hotel for SLR 5000/- more taking a 3% commission 150/-. I paid 4000/- out of it to the taxi and kept the rest to make any purchases, if necessary. We loafed through Colombo with the driver talking incessantly; not about sights but about how he had seen most of Europe, how we could set up a mutually benefitting tourist business with him - we sending tourists to Sri Lanka and he sending to India, how we could get very badly stuck in Colombo traffic etc etc. We saw the famous Buddha temple by grudgingly paying SLR 100/- per person (God we thought was free for all..Alas not for the tourist in a foreign country!). We looked into a supermarket for any different goods but found the same kind of stuff that one finds elsewhere; however Ira liked a Winnie the Pooh which I was happy to buy so that we could spend something out of the balance Sri Lankan currency. Outside this place, we handed over the snorkelling gear and flippers to Birdy's boys and then headed for the Airport.
By the time we reached home at Bangalore, it was midnight and we had had enough of the sun, sand and Sri Lanka.
We all left Delhi on 24 Mar morning and spent that day at Bangalore in my Mother-in-law's house as it was a holiday. The next day while I attended to some office work, Sreshta and Ira visited Celebrity Paradise at Electronic City (where we used to stay while we were in Bangalore) and met up all Ira's earlier friends and their families.
In the evening, the three of us left for the airport to board our late evening flight to Colombo. It was almost like déjà-vu of our Europe trip beginning but the difference was this flight was earlier and reached Colombo by 1030 PM. By the time we cleared immigration and were ready to board a taxi to Goldi Sands Hotel, Negombo; where we were scheduled to stay two days; it was past 11 PM.
In the immigration queue we happened to meet Bob Steiner and his wife who were also heading for a beach guest house at Negombo. They needed a taxi as well; so I suggested that we share and save half the cost and Bob was in agreement.
On this trip, we surprisingly did not cater for any local currency whatsoever; I was somehow sure that we can use our credit cards for everything and exchange Indian currency for Sri Lankan (even that I had very little) when we had exigencies. Little did I foresee that in Sri Lanka like many other developing countries one had no alternative to cash to pay for services like using a taxi.
Luckily for us Sreshta was carrying the left over cash from her solo trip to London in Jan 10 (shopping special; on shoe string though...) and that was some 135 Pounds. She also had her travel card with her which had some more balance cash left in it.
When we exchanged 80 pounds @ 164 SLR per pound and were loaded with more than 13000 SLR; it made us realise the value of a strong currency firsthand. I arranged a taxi to Negombo for SLR 1100 (that's a very well negotiated price I believe) and the taxi was big enough to accommodate all five of us and our considerable luggage. While the taxi counter had said that it would be a non a/c taxi due to my well negotiated price, the driver had no issues switching on the a/c and even at 11:30 PM it was warm and sultry enough for us to appreciate the need for the a/c.
We had a nice chat about Bob and his wife's work lives as well as ours. In less than half an hour we reached their guest house and Bob promptly gave me SLR 550 making all efforts to dig into his affairs to get the exact change than settle for giving even SLR 20 less. We wished them well, exchanged email id/phone number, asked them to visit us at Delhi/Gurgaon when they come north and moved on to Goldi Sands Hotel.
Hotel Goldi sands offered me one of their two newly renovated rooms @ 60$ a day, which was the corner most room on the second floor. Part of the view from the spacious balcony overlooked the neighbouring houses; in one of the houses, one evenings I could see crowds gathered on the adjacent road to watch afar some cricket match on the colour TV in the house. Some view was covered by thick coconut foliage as the room was at tree-top height. But in the balance of the view we could see the decent lawns separating the hotel building from the sane and beyond it the sea about 100 mtrs away. It was the first time we were staying in a beach side property and we were pretty happy; with those thoughts we called it a day somewhere past midnight on our day of arrival.
On waking the next morning we were all eager to hit the sea. But we had woken up late and being on half-board plan (breakfast and dinner included in room rate), we wanted to tank up properly on the breakfast. By the time we got ready in our swimming gear and with sun tan on it was close to 9:30. We went down for breakfast and sat there trying everything out from the fairly elaborate menu till it was time to close the breakfast at 10:30. It was too sunny to go to the water anymore. So we hung around the beach chairs under the shady coconut grove; Ira played in the sand while we tried to read some books we had with us. We also joined her in making sand piles and pits with her new plastic beach set (a bucket, a shovel and a forked sand comb).
It was pretty warm; rather hot and I was wondering if we were too late in visiting Sri Lanka in end March. Soon Ira spotted the blue water (the hotel swimming pool) nearby and wanted to jump in there. We joined her under the hot sun in the cool water of the pool. Ira continued to be the great water fan she had demonstrated she was; we had introduced her to water in the RSI Bangalore pool when she was about ten months old. When all of had had our fill of the pool, we retired to our room.
Being the top floor the room was radiating warmth from the roof and the AC was not very effective. It became somewhat better the next day after Sreshta reported the problem. We were indoors till evening and went down at 5 to check out the sea. We did that but realised that the sea had become very rough by then. So we spent some time doing more sand activity and returned to the pool. From there we moved for dinner and were ready for an early evening retirement.
The second day at Goldi sands was short because we had to move by road 3-4 hours to go to a place called Hikkaduwa towards the south of Sri Lanka on the west coast (Negombo is somewhere in the centre of the same coast line). We spent some time at the sea picking shells for Ira and making a fortified sand castle which she loved stamping on. We also had a good time in the pool with she doing a lot of tic-toe (tip-toe) along the shallower sidewalk of the children's pool. The taxi that was organised for may not have been the best in terms of AC effectiveness but the driver was certainly very amenable to all our requests although we had a challenging time communicating given his lack of English understanding (Tamil as well).
On the way we stopped at Kalutara to check a property called Tangerine with a view to spend our last two days for which the venue was not decided yet. Tangerine, although sprawling and elaborate, was also very old world and dingy. We did not take long to decide that we will give it a pass. We stopped by a local goods shop to pick up a wooden animal puzzle set for Ira and continued down south.
Coral sands is a nice property located bang on the most popular stretch of the Hikkaduwa beach and it is spread along the beach front. Thus, all rooms have a great view of the beach. The beach itself is of pure white sand and crystal clear water. The glass bottom boats which people use for seeing corals are all lined up in this part of the beach and the corals themselves are closest to the beach at this place (just about 15-20 mtrs into the water). As a result Coral Sands is a happening place to stay at, although it is unreasonably expensive (comparatively) @ 105$ a day (half board).
We quickly settled into our room and were out on the beach very quickly to exploit whatever little remained of the day after our long 4 hours plus drive from Negombo (which cost us about 55$). After playing a little in the clear water, we hit the pool as Ira was once again fascinated by 'blue water'. The water in the kids' pool was barely up to her chest (unlike the one at Goldi Sands where it only had a shallow side walk but much deeper center) and Ira was much more thrilled with this pool. She quickly went beyond 'tic-toe'ing to flapping her hands in the water vigorously, trying to float taking support of her arms on the side and then later sitting with one foot folded on another talking about numerous things including stories. And we took turns to swim in the adjacent adults' pool which was separated by a few feet wide and sufficiently long platform with shallow water (about 6 inches on which Ira could roll).
Dinner was uninteresting food wise but the setting was nice and comfortable. There was a live local band here as well playing ethnic music with ethnic instruments and going from one part of the restaurant to another. The night was beautiful and brightly moonlit; the view from our window was that of a picture post-card.
The next day we walked on the beach front taking turns with Ira taking in the scenic beauty and enjoying walking on the white sands with bare feet. We saw a turtle couple hanging around one end of this stretch of the beach; we learnt that they were fixtures there. We also had another round of play in the pool during which Ira walked the shallow platform from the kids' pool and jumped into the adult pool while I was inattentive for a few seconds. I quickly got her out before she could drink more than a gulp of water; but from this episode onwards she understood that water is not always a fun thing. Sreshta and Ira retired to the rooms to rest away from the hot sun while I pitched our portable small tent on the beach partly under a small casuarinas tree and braved the heat inside the comfortable tent. I moved in when the heat became unbearable by 11 PM or so.
Unlike the previous hotel, the AC in the room was effective at Coral sands. We rested a bit waiting for my friend Birdy to pay us a visit. He came with a colleague and after chatting a lot on myriads of subjects, we went to a nearby restaurant to have lunch. This restaurant was located about a couple of miles further south on another stretch of the Hikkaduwa beach. The food was nice and the setting comfortable. Ira was fatigued and sleepy but continued to humour us with not being very difficult to handle.
After lunch Birdie and friend dropped us back and we took a little rest till the heat subsided. He had got for us a pair of flippers and snorkelling gear which we put to good use and took turns to snorkel while one of us engaged Ira making her float in the clear water on her turtle float. We again fell back to the pool for more 'blue water', more flapping and sitting on kids' pool steps listening to stories. We met an American couple with four kids in tow; a eight year old son, another son of five years or so and boy and girl twins barely a year old each. They were doing a great job managing the kids but the kids were hurting all around- the second boy banged his head and chest on the pool wall while he was trying to run on the side, both the twins were uncomfortable; one was falling down from her sitting position on the shallow platform every now and then and drinking water. We met some British Sri Lankan families whose children, girls ages from 5 to 10 years, became very fond of Ira very quickly.
At the dinner table, we got a candle and a muffin; and made the musicians to sing 'Happy Birthday' for Ira; although her big day was actually a few weeks away. We also decided that for the next two days of our trip (for which we had not decided/booked where to stay) we would go to Bentota which was somewhere in between Negombo and Hikkaduwa. Taking Birdy's help we got ourselves booked for a room in Taj Exotica there @ 135$ a day. It was a tad expensive but we expected it to be that much superior as well.
After breakfast the next day and some more of everything in the sea and in the pool, we checked out from our hotel and took off for Bentota in a small sized Maruti Zen type local taxi. Earlier in the morning while going on a beach walk, I had arranged for a local taxi to report to us at the hotel by 12 and settled the fare for SLR 2500 (about 25$).
Taj Exotica at Bentota was a letdown for an expensive beach resort; it is an ancient looking property which actually is ancient , it is a long walk from the beach, and there is no reason beyond snob value why anyone who is visiting Sri Lanka and Bentota should stay there. By the time we were escorted to our rooms we were making up our minds and the quality of our rooms for 135$ a day and the view of the balcony sealed our decision. We quickly decided to go back to Goldi Sands which we thought was a value-for-money-property. I made a quick call to Birdie about the same and he could confirm availability of room at Goldi Sands. After having the welcome drink and leaving Sreshta & Ira to rest in the room, I took off on lightening speed to arrange a taxi and covered the half kilometre walk from the property to the road junction in hot sun to find a very good taxi for a good price - 35 British pounds. Luckily for me, that's all the balance cash I had with me in all currencies; not even a single Sri Lankan rupee more.
We spent the next two days at Goldi Sands in leisure. I discovered some 500 plus Indian Rupees in my possessions and converted them to Sri Lankan currency @ 1:2. Armed with that and her credit card Sreshta did some shopping around in Negombo market while I and Ira explored the local roads near the hotel; in the real hot sun we happily walked to the children's beach park to one end of the Negombo beach and during the return looked into all nice looking beach properties to check out whether they were any better value for money than Goldi or not - they were not.
After two nights at Goldi Sands, it was our day of departure from Sri Lanka. We had tied up with a local taxi from the taxi stand at the hotel to take us on a sightseeing trip of Colombo and then drop us at the airport for Sri Lankan Rupees 4000. We paid Goldi Sands @ 57$ per day; I could extract 3$ more discount from General Manager Mr Lal citing second stay in same trip - loyalty bonus..:). Lal also made it possible for us to swipe our credit card with the hotel for SLR 5000/- more taking a 3% commission 150/-. I paid 4000/- out of it to the taxi and kept the rest to make any purchases, if necessary. We loafed through Colombo with the driver talking incessantly; not about sights but about how he had seen most of Europe, how we could set up a mutually benefitting tourist business with him - we sending tourists to Sri Lanka and he sending to India, how we could get very badly stuck in Colombo traffic etc etc. We saw the famous Buddha temple by grudgingly paying SLR 100/- per person (God we thought was free for all..Alas not for the tourist in a foreign country!). We looked into a supermarket for any different goods but found the same kind of stuff that one finds elsewhere; however Ira liked a Winnie the Pooh which I was happy to buy so that we could spend something out of the balance Sri Lankan currency. Outside this place, we handed over the snorkelling gear and flippers to Birdy's boys and then headed for the Airport.
By the time we reached home at Bangalore, it was midnight and we had had enough of the sun, sand and Sri Lanka.
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