Sri Lanka - Leaving and Negombo Beach
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After climbing Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka, our plan had been to sleep a few hours in the morning, then take off for Negombo Beach near the airport. Despite getting up at 2 a.m. and walking through the night, neither of us felt tired, so we packed up our bags instead and got into our taxi van. Somay (the driver) said it was a three hour drive but it turned out to be about six and we hadn’t booked a hotel. Luckily Carmen’s netbook was stuffed full of movies, so the boys were content watching Polar Express and the Bee Movie for the hundredth time.
Our driver wanted to drop us at a hotel closer the airport since he said there was nothing to see in Negombo. Since we were staying three nights, we insisted on the more competitive hotel market of Negombo where there would also be shops. On arrival in Negombo we located an internet café and created a short-list of favourite hotels. The first one was Paradise Beach Resort but they were booked solid the following night. Luckily they had a cancellation the following day and we didn’t have to move.
We rented a moped for three days and soon found our driver was right: there’s not much to see in Negombo. Ethan and I did come across upon about 30 fishermen hauling an enormous fishing net onto the beach. They had obviously been at it for several hours. By the time the net was on the beach, with several shouts of “Hoy – aa”, they had a massive haul of tiny fish (and garbage) to distribute and sell the rest at the nearby roadside stall.
We went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner that night and there were a surprising number of mosquitoes, so I popped across the road to buy some citronella. When I came back, there was a large tea pot on the table and a couple of tea cups. Since I hadn’t ordered tea, I was a bit confused but the waiter was nowhere around. I poured the ‘tea’ and found it to be a thick dark liquid that tasted like beer, and in fact was beer. I know now that on Poya days in Sri Lanka it’s not legal to serve beer at the table, so they serve it in tea pots instead to disguise it. The beer in the teapot, “Sinha stout”, turned out to be one of the strongest I’d had for a while, and it was several hours before my head stopped reeling; I also woke up with a hangover. Beer seems to have an enhanced effect in the tropics.