Sri Lanka - Our first day in Colombo

  Colombo, Sri Lanka Tuesday, July 1, 2014

We arrived early in the morning but we were all like zombies after a sleepless night on the plane so we all slept for a few hours. We woke rather late and after we had got ourselves sorted and settled we walked down to the beach even though it was getting dark - you can't be near the sea and then not look at it! The beach had lots of nice looking bars and restaurants along it so we found a table for our first meal in Sri Lanka - Pasta & Prawns! Becki got into the spirit of it and had fried rice. Wow you should have seen the portion sizes. The next morning we headed off to find breakfast and found a fabulous spot on the beach for fried eggs, toast, freshly made guava juice and a proper cup of Ceylon tea in a proper English tea pot! Perfect! The waiter here asked us if we were going to the turtle sanctuary and we said of course - where is it? After a brief stop at the railway station for our tickets to Galle Tomorrow, we headed off down the railway line and along a bit of beach desicrated by the tsunami of 2004 to OurTurtle Conservation Centre. Milan was in charge and was very informative about the turtles he had there describing how you improve their chances from a 1% to 90% survival rate by letting them grow a bit before releasing them. We gave a donation on top of our £2.40 entrance fee and the lovely surprise at the end was they let us each take one of the baby turtles that was ready for release, and set them free ourselves. What a wonderful first day! See our turtle releasing video at http://tinyurl.com/Turtlemovie Jody's Uncle Ray (hello Ray) is a lyricist and is working with a young talent in Sri Lanka named Sheaam DeenWe had promised to look him up whilst we were here so Jody rang him to see if he was free at any time. He said he was performing that night and did we want to come along? Of course we did. So he came and met us at our guesthouse and drove us to Qbaa (pronounced Q Bar - Caroline you will get this without us explaining it). It was a very modern, air conditioned bar which was lovely. However, we weren't allowed in. Or more to the point Bryan wasn't. He'd come along in his shorts and this bar was posh - it had a dress code. So Sheaam who is like most Asian men - very slim - offered to lend Bryan a spare pair of trousers. Good job he had a long top on because there was no way they were going to do up! Anyway we had delicious food (more pasta for Jody, a fahita for Bryan and Becki stayed with the Sri Lankan style for more rice) all accompanied by Sheaam and his band on the stage. They were really good and we could definitely see him on Sri Lanka X Factor. Good luck Sheaam   [gallery columns="4" ids="5646,5647,5648,5649,5650,5651,5652,5653,5654,5655,5656,5657,5658,5659,5660,5661,5662,5663,5664,5665,5666,5667,5668,5669,5670,5671,5672,5673,5674,5675,5676,5677,5678,5679,5680,5681,5682,5683,5684,5685,5686,5687,5688,5689,5690,5691,5692,5693,5694,5695,5696,5697,5698,5699,5700,5701,5702,5703,5704,5705,5706,5707,5708"] Comments