MY SRI LANKAN JOURNEY BEGINS

WEATHER: Hot and sticky 31C

So I had 3 nights and 2 whole days in Negombo before I meet my group on Sunday afternoon.  The resort seems to have everything I need and I think I will just enjoy the chillaxing time while I can.  By the weather we have had since I have been here has been really sticky, humid and that will make the tour that more challenging for all involved.    

Sri Lanka officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is an island country in the northern Indian Ocean off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent in South Asia. Known until 1972 as Ceylon, Sri Lanka has maritime borders with India to the northwest across the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Strait and the Maldives to the southwest.  As a result of its location in the path of major sea routes, Sri Lanka is a strategic naval link between West Asia and South East Asia.  It was an important stop on the ancient Silk Road. Sri Lanka has also been a center of the Buddhist religion and culture from ancient times, being the nation where the Buddhist teachings were first written down as well as the oldest continually Buddhist country.  Sri Lanka boasts a diverse range of cultures, languages and religions. The Sinhalese people form the majority of the population; Tamils, who are concentrated in the north and east of the island, form the largest ethnic minority.   Sri Lanka is a republic and a unitary state which is governed by a semi-presidential system with its official seat of government in Sri Jayawardenapura-Kotte, the capital. The country is famous for the production and export of tea, coffee, gemstones, coconuts rubber and cinnamon, the last of which is native to the country.  Sri Lanka has been called The Pearl of the Indian Ocean.  The island contains tropical forests, and diverse landscapes with high biodiversity. The country lays claim to a long and varying history of over three thousand years, having one of the longest documented histories in the world.  As of 2011, Sri Lanka was one of the fastest growing economies of the world.

My first day was spent doing a blog entry in the comfort of my air-conditioned room and I decided to forgo breakfast.  Breakfast was included in the room rate, but I just couldn’t be bothered getting up before 10am so I decided to get a blog written and just head outside for lunch.  There is a great restaurant on site and if the food is as good as last night’s dinner there really is no need to leave in search of something better.  There is free Wi-Fi at the hotel, but only in reception and the restaurant, but the reception guy said to try my room anyway as I may still pick up a signal.  Well he was right, but I am not on the hotel network but on somebody else’s.  It isn’t the fastest connection but it lets me do what I need and if I need to download anything I will save that for the hotel network at the restaurant.   

Housekeeping knocked at 11.30am and I told them they really didn’t need to clean my room and they seemed really nice and asked if I needed water or any new soap and as they were speaking to me one reached out and touched my hair.  You would think that they would have seen enough western tourists here that my hair was nothing new here.  It was a sweet gesture though and then I asked about laundry and they said I had to check with reception about that.  Lunch was delicious and they have a faster internet speed down there, so I downloaded a few songs and got some information for my next blog.  I took a walk around the resort, took a few photos and sat in a deck chair that was in the shade of the palm trees and read my book for a few hours before returning back to the room, another blog and I hate to admit I also had a nana nap as well.  Dinner was back to the restaurant and I continued to read my book and I have now stopped being so paranoid about being on my own now.  Firstly who cares what people think and I’m not sure what has changed but I am feeling confident in a new environment when it normally takes me a few days to adjust and get my travel groove on.  Maybe I have been on the road long enough now and with my new beginning in Ethiopia I am going to have to be more like this, out of my comfort zone and just getting myself out there.

With my Sri Lankan sim I bought at the airport yesterday I have free access to news updates and this morning I got an update that an airplane had crashed in Nepal and all 19 people inboard had perished.  How sad and I am happy to report I knew of 3 people in the area at the time.  Shaun and Karen-but they are now on the road, Kim got back last week doing that exact same flight and James messaged to say his flight was delayed this morning leaving Everest base camp due to the accident and they weren’t told the full story till they got back to Kathmandu which was probably not a bad thing and then I knew some-one that was looking at booking that tour and he would have been on that plane if he had decided to go.  The world works in mysterious ways that is for sure.  I was looking at doing a scenic flight from Kathmandu but this has made me a little wary, but Mark posted that it apparently was a freak accident as they hit a bird and the engine caught fire-talk about bad luck.  I’ll see how it goes when I get there in 4 weeks’ time.

I popped my washing in at lunch time and asked how much it would cost?  They outsource it, so she really couldn’t give me a price, but I asked if it was expensive and she said not and I did have to get it done so I left it with reception and she said they need 1.5 days for it to be done, so I would have it back tomorrow night.  That’s fine, I had some clothes and I also had time.  It will be great to have some clean clothes again. 

  

My second day I figured if the food was that good for lunch and dinner, I should check out the breakfast spread.  When I sat down at 9am the manager came over and asked what I wanted.  Ummmm not knowing how it all worked as there was a buffet of fresh fruit and breads and muffins I figured I could do all they myself, but then he asked about an omelet, bacon or sausages….ahhh now you’re talking, so I asked for 2 fried eggs and some bacon and I was going to make my own bacon and egg sandwich and wash that down with some tea and a juice it was definitely worth getting up for.  A large group of what seemed to be school children arrived just before lunch and they headed down to the beach and then they came up to use the pool.  There has to be something said about 100 kids all laughing and splashing in a pool and at one stage throwing a ball around.  It must have been a convention or get together of some sort as they also had arrival drinks and a buffet lunch organized. 

I uploaded a blog as I needed to add a picture and then before I knew it I was composing a message that I was individually going to send to every single Facebook friend to make them aware of my plight to raise money for my charity to bring clean drinking water to a village in Rwanda.  When I was telling sandy and Shelly about how I hadn’t had many donations they mentioned that they hadn’t even seen the blog or the posts on Facebook which made me think maybe a lot of people hadn’t and hence my mission to send one out to each friend.  I hate it when I get group messages on Facebook firstly and I think individual ones are a little more personal even though I hadn’t personalized the message specifically.  It was going to be a BIG job to send 1015 messages as it was, let alone personalizing them all.  FB don’t alphbeticalize your whole friend list anymore, they only show 25 per letter, so I went this way first and then I had to go off memory and use the generic list to send the remaining 365 friends.  I sat at the restaurant till 2pm and the computer was flat as a tack, came back to the room to charge and then sat for another 3 hours to finish off the list.  So in total it took me 7 hours to send all the messages off and already I was reaping some reward with 8 donations coming through and from people I hadn’t spoken to for a while.  So it was a nice surprise and if that is all I hear from, for me it was still worth the effort.  Another thing with FB now is you can see when your message has been read and a lot of them still hadn’t been read, so it is early days and I hope that everyone will be able to help, even just a few dollars and we will have that water system in Rwanda before we know it.  Again the link and information can be found at http://mycharitywater.org/bernies-odyssey-for-clean-water

I went down to dinner at 8pm and even though the official arrival day and day one of the tour is tomorrow there must be people here for the tour and I tried to inconspicuously check all the diners out.  I also had a view of one of their function rooms that looks like it was set up for a wedding and the trees had all fairy lights attached to the trunks.  This place is a busy hive of activity and for an Intrepid Hotel is far better than I would have ever expected.  I am just not sure on the power point situation as there seems to be only 2 points in the room which the TV and the fridge have and they are also some funky 3 pin points that none of my adapters seem to fit but I did find a UK point in the bathroom which is not ideal for electronic devices but I didn’t have any other option.  I wonder if this will be an ongoing problem for the next 2 weeks?  Back to the room after dinner and I thought I better get all my crap sorted and on my side of the room as my roomie would be coming at some stage tomorrow.  I hope I get some-one nice-14 days can be a long time if you don’t get on with your roomie and I didn’t want to start on the wrong foot with my stuff everywhere.

So that was my last night on my own and I look forward to meeting everyone tomorrow night.