2nd September - Arriving in Colombo, Sri Lanka
It was a long uncomfortable flight for 10.5 hours. The morning flying over Sri Lanka looked absolutely beautiful with lush green jungle covering the island. We landed at mid day and went through immigration with a breeze as we had bought our visas online beforehand. We tried to find a cash machine as we couldn't get Sri Lankan rupees in Guernsey or England. We found a cash machine but could only withdraw 200Rs (£2), that's not going to get us far. Luckily we had some US dollars so we exchanged $100 and got a taxi to Negombo for Rs1500 (£7).
Negombo is a 20 minute drive from Colombo airport and is a small beach resort. Driving from the airport is looks a lot like Thailand, there is a main road with shacks and shops all the way along and it HOT and humid, a good 28 degrees!! We had pre-booked Goldi Sands Hotel. On the outside it looked lovely but we saw our room and it was awful. We had twin beds not the double we had booked and the bathroom looked like it was falling apart, complete with wobbly toilet! We asked to see other rooms but there were no other standard rooms so we looked at a deluxe which basically just had a massive balcony but was still in the same condition so we decided against paying the extra $15 (we even bartered down from $20) but it wasn't worth it. It was very over priced as we paid £125 B&B and we are stuck for 3 nights.
We looked around the hotel and the pool looked nice at least. We sat on some loungers on the beach for a little while before the rain quickly swept in over the bay.
We moved into the restaurant and had our first Lion beer (which is awesome) and watched the mad waves along the beach.
That evening we headed out along the street which has lots of little restaurants and hotels either side. It was chucking it down so we stopped at the first restaurant we found, Oysters, and had our first of many rice and curry and a water for 2365Rs which wasn't great and expensive! Hopefully a better day tomorrow.
A la perchoine
Jodie and Shaun
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