sasri2016 – Hotels in Sri Lanka

I stayed in various hotels during my trip, like most travellers in Sri Lanka do. Only rarely travellers just go to one or two sites in Sri Lanka, during their stay. If visit would be only for one week, then it might be ideal to just see two important and very different kind of sites.

List of hotels where I stayed:

• The Ocean Colombo (Colombo, 3)
• Riverside Cabanas (Mirissa, 5)
• River Front (Tissamaharama, 4)
• Vista Rooms Peacock Reach (Tissamaharama, 4)
• Jetwing Kaduruketha (Wellawaya, 4)
• Riverfront Hotel(?) (Badulla, 1)
• Wink Field (Nuwara Eliya, 2)
• Sunny Hills Residence (Kandy, 4)
• Hotel Sigiriya (Sigiriya, 5)
• Sea Zone Hotel (Nilaweli, 3)
• Amaranthe Bay (Uppuweli, 4)
• Supun Arcade Residence (Colombo, 4)

City and my personal rating (1 – 5) for hotel in parentheses, in above listing.

The hotel and location that I liked most, was Mirissa beach's Riverside Cabanas. It had great service and I loved Mirissa as a location. Hotel isn't actually 4 or 5 star hotel, but it has wildlife straight at the backyard, which compensated a lot for what was missing in the room's amnesties.

Second best hotel would be Hotel Sigiriya. It had all that I could have wanted, though dinner was too expensive. Location is fabulous, premises are good, service is great and I have to give extra bonus for Land monitors running in the hotel's grounds.

I could have spent a whole week in both of these hotels. It wouldn't be a problem at all. And basically either one of these could have been a winner. They are different kind, as Hotel Sigiriya is more expensive and splurge kind of a hotel, while Mirissa's Riverside Cabanas was cheaper, but did things very well, specially when comparing with price.

sasri2016 – Travelling back to Finland from Colombo

Had an alarm waking me up today at 00:01. It was a darn hard to get up, after only 4 hours of sleep. Though yesterday's dinner was totally worth it, that wake up did eat some from my sleeping time. Have to tell you about it... I wanted a restaurant from as close to hotel as possible. From reception found out that there is a restaurant at the rooftop of hotel building. Nice! No need to go dancing in the rain, to get to the restaurant... ehh, well I did need to go a little bit in rain, because rooftop restaurant is not covered. Security officer of hotel escorted me to restaurant and a waiter of restaurant then helped with umbrella for me to get to buffet room to see their list. Chef came to introduce foods and to reply to my questions (which I had quite many). I found food that I wanted, even though prices were quite expensive, but I still had rupies left and not many places to use them anymore, so it was fine. I didn't want to take dinner to my room (which would have been the obvious choice, while having a rooftop restaurant and thunderstorms right among us (I don't say above, because clouds were really low and thunder was straight over Colombo). Chef and waiter agreed to my suggestion, to bring a table and chair under one corridor roof, which was only place in restaurant's serving area, where it didn't rain. So I ended up being only customer in rooftop restaurant, having great food and amazing lightning show all around me. It was kinda better show than many movies are! And I had the pleasure of enjoying a great Spicy Vegetable Broth with buns as an appetizer and Indian Biriyani with chicken (raita and Chutney included, of course). Though I didn't get my pineapple fruit juice, until they had already brought the main course to the table, I really enjoyed this fantastic event.

Back to wake up. This hotel was surprisingly good. This was first hotel to actually make the wake up call. I had ordered it in two other hotels during my stay, but never got the wake up call. That is really lousy work from reception. I had ordered a taxi from hotel to take me to the Bandaranaike airport. It's about an hour drive, so I ordered it for 01:00 o'clock. Driver was there ready, when I made my checkout and we got to the airport just fine (it took pretty much that 1 hour, even as there was almost none traffic, so during the day, it would have needed more time for travelling to airport).

Other option for my layover in Colombo, would have been airport hotels (there seems to be some) or staying in Negombo, which is much closer to airport, than Colombo. But because I founded a good sale price for this hotel “Supun Arcade”, I thought it's better to go there. Another reason to go there was that I knew that I could use PickMe to easily get to places I already knew about, if I wouldn't take so much sleep. Sale price of that room would have been 57 €, but I had collected hotel.com's rewards and used them, so I paid only something like 12 € for that stay.

Now I am at the airport, already checked into flight and waiting in lobby to get into plane. It's going to be rough way back home:

1. 4h 40 min flight to Abu Dhabi, then 1h 25 min layover in that airport
2. 5h 30 minutes flight from Abu Dhabi to Berlin Tegel airport, with 2h 25 minutes layover in Berlin airport
3. 1h 55 minutes flight from Berlin to Helsinki airport
4. then taking a bus from Helsinki airport to railway station
5. next to take a Onnibus from Helsinki to Turku
6. and about at the beginning of night, I should be arriving at Turku and then to take a local bus to my home and to finally meet my sweetheart.

sasri2016 – Walking to the Wellawaya town

I started to feel, that my back needs some walking. My back needs to get relaxed, after the hard tuk-tuk drive to Ruwana Falls, Ella and Nine Arched Bridge.

So I decided to take a walk from hotel to Wellawaya town. Of course it's hot here... so walking 4 – 5 kilometers isn't actually a walk in the park, when temperature is something between 33 – 35C. Local kids always started to yell “Hello”, “Hi”, “Where are you from?” (the typical sentences, when you have nothing else to say, or you don't know anything else in English). Kids were alright, but dogs and some people weren't as good. Two guys, in about thirties, started to follow me on the other side of street. Then other one asked, if I want to take a photo. I asked about what? His reply was: “take a photo of me!”. I started laughing. Couldn't help it. Soon after this they stopped and went somewhere.

When I did finally get to the Wellawaya town, I immediatelly stopped for a lunch in a local restaurant, full of local people. It just made me smile, when everybody stared me, like I would have landed from outer space (or into the Star Wars Cafe, where a human is the stranger). Food was actually quite good. Sadly one of the curries was spiciest dish I have had here and I simply couldn't eat it. It just was too much and I knew, my stomach would be happy about choosing not to eat it.

Sweat started to flow so badly, when I finally started to cool down in restaurant. And eating a spicy food doesn't actually help, when you are sweating like a pig to be slaughtered. After I had finished and I started to feel better, I moved on to walk inside Wellawaya town. Towns are very different to what you experience in tourist areas. Most people notice you, some smile at you, some give you bad glazes, but it's hard to see anyone, who wouldn't notice you somehow. All children stare at you. Well, maybe I look so strange by looks in general, as some kids back home stare at me too, so maybe it's not totally because of my westerner/white looks.

I walked around the city. Asked for those blades in couple stalls in town, that I saw being used for slicing food for Kottu (see my earlier post about Ella for link to video) - and I found out they were named “Kottu blades” - logical! But none of the stalls had them.

One of my objectives for this town visit was to get into photo studio, to print couple of my photos. When I asked advice from couple of shops, I did get some information and finally one help did able me to find one photo studio. They didn't much talk English, while two ladies were very much trying to help me. But the owner guy, didn't talk to me at all and didn't look too positive about my presence. Some Sri Lankan people are very helpful and kind. This is the most part, but there always seems to be the other side, that either just gives you bad looks - but they still might end up smiling to you - but then there are those whose hate you can easily sense. These last ones you meet only in towns. My experience is limited, as my experience is limited to Colombo, Wellawaya and Badulla.

Back to the story... owner of that photo studio didn't talk to me, but left off. Then I looked to ladies and asked what is going on and they told me to just wait. Owner went to get me a tuk-tuk and told me to go to another shop. So then we went... like 200 meters with tuk-tuk. ;)

There I was now in another photo studio. This one could print my photos, if I donwloaded them to their machine. I did this and then they started to print. Well their big printer machine failed and started giving - just too familiar beebing sound. I waited and there came an annoying guy, who tried to ask me where I am from and what language I speak and sort of stuff. I was already a bit down from waiting those photos and from starting to understand that this wouldn't work and that I had walked into the town for nothing. (Well nothing is not right way to say it, because it did good to my tired back). I gave up and argued with tuk-tuk driver about taking me to my hotel. He was probably the most annoying being that I have met in this island so far. Trying to agree the price for tuk-tuk to my hotel and he just said, “okay” and kept waving his head.

I have came to think, that head waving does mean like “okay”, but to tourist it mostly means trouble. They do that when they don't want to say something or when something is wrong, or they just want to accept thing as it is. Price for way back to hotel wasn't that bad 300 rupies for 4 -5 kilometers is not that bad (I think official tuk-tuk price is like 50 rupies per kilometer). I do tip people a lot, specially concerning that I am travelling with a budget, but this guy just was too annoying for me give any tip. It felt like wasted day.

sasri2016 - Badulla (in Finnish)

Saavuin Wellawayan hotellista sovitulla autokyydillä Badullaan.
Hotellina on Riverside Hotel. Ainoa hotelli joka tälle kaupungille oli vapaana hotels.com:sta. Voisin sanoa ettei tosiaan ole hyvä hotelli. Huone on huono ja likainen. Mutta sen kanssa pystyn vielä elämään. Senkin voin vielä sietää, ettei liinavaatteet ole puhtaat, mutta tuo kärpästen määrä suihkussa, viemäriaukon viereisellä seinän nurkalla on jo vähän liikaa. En yleensä ota tämäntasoisia hotelleja,  vaikka aika halpojahan nämä ovat. Mutta kun tämä oli ainoa tässä kylässä. Päästyäni huoneeseen, lähdin samantien tutustumaan kaupunkiin. Yhtenä syynä oli hervoton bassorummutus ja huonoista kaiuttimista, aivan liian lujaa rätisevä intia/länkkäripoppi.

Kun tulin takaisin kaupungilta (jossa söin reissun huonoimman aterian ja hikoilin kuin pistetty porsas), jämähdin sängyn päätyyn vilvoittelemaan ilmastoinnin ihanaan syleilyyn. Enpä osannut juuri muuta tehdä, niin rupesin lukemaan Kaverin matkakertomussähköposteja. Se oli ihan viihdyttävää ja kaveri on mainio tarinankertoja, joten välillä jopa unohdin jumputuksen ja viilentymisen myötä olotila muutenkin helpotti.

Päivässä oli kyllä muitakin kovia pettymyksiä. Olin aiemmin keskustellut Wellawayan hotellin kanssa, että lähden tänään check-outin yhteydessä Dambullaan ja siinä matkalla käyn tee-plantaasilla. Näitä on kehuttu netissä paljon ja se sopi hyvin reissusuunnitelmaani. Kaikista varmistuksista huolimatta, tee-plantaasilla oli portit kiinni ja vartija ilmestyi ovelle, kun kuskini tööttäili hetken. Vastaus kuului, kaikki on kiinni ja avaavat vasta keskiviikkona... käyrä otsassa sai aika kohtalaisen nousun ja kuskikin ymmärsi yskän, avauduttuani asiasta riittoisasti. Ennen lähtöä olin varmistanut asiaa hotellin respanaiselta , yhdeltä työntekijältä (joka oli hyvin kartalla asioista) ja tältä kuskilta. Paluumatkalta sieltä vastaan tuli parikin tuk-tukkiaja, jotka varmaan mielellään käärivät rahat tyhmiltä turisteilta,  jotka ovat menossa tyhjään tehtaaseen. Omiin kustannuksiini tämä ei vaikuttanut (koska pysähdys oli matkan varrella ja kyyti oli maksettu Badullan mukaan, mutta olisin suunnitellut reissun toisin, jos olisin tiennyt että se on tänään kiinni. Tee-plantaasilla vierailun oli kuitenkin tarkoitus olla yksi reissun kohokohtia ja nyt se jäi väliin. Oletettavasti saan ostettua Colombosta teetä kotiin vietäväksi, mutta ei se kauheasti lohduta.

 Sinäänsä tämä ei ole paha, vaikka varsinainen likaisuys ei tästä kuvasta näy.

 

Suihkuverho ei ollut  ihan kuosissa

 ja siis noi mustat pisteet on kärpäsiä tai jotain vastaavaa... tuli mieleen että onko täällä pistetty joku nauta lihoiksi ja rämppeet viemärissä houkuttelee kärpäsiä.

 En koskaan ole ajatellut olevani kovin rajoittunut, mutta näyttää olevan vaan niin, että piti taas matkustaa oppiaineen itsestään.

sasri2016 - Day trip to Ella from Wellawaya by tuk-tuk

Today was time to take a tuk-tuk and drive to Ella, from Wellawaya.
I wanted to see Ruwana Falls, Nine Arched Bridge and Ella as a city.

To my surprise, Ella wasn't actually a city. It was totally a tourist location, on a hilly spot. So first we went up a long way, with the tuk-tuk and then we came a lot down, when getting back to Wellawaya. ;)

In between we stopped to Ruwana Falls. This is a nice place, if you want to get a refreshing moment, or just your feet wet. I didn't go to water, because hadn't really prepared for anything like that.

When we got to Ella, did some shopping and driver asked for directions to Nine Arched Bridge. I think the visit to Nine Arched Bridge was worth the effort, but it did actually require some effort. I don't know if my driver was just given bad directions from locals, but our route wasn't too comfortable and he didn't dare to drive the tuk-tuk all the way (well you even can't drive it to the very end, but one tuk-tuk came past me, when I was getting back higher to the point where he was left).
Ella is at the altitude of 1041 meters. The old tuk-tuk was having quite a time with the ascending road. Sometimes going was so slow, that I could have slept there at the back seat (could you imagine sleeping in a normal tuk-tuk drive at these chaotic roads?).

About shopping - old truth came up again - try to find a local shop/market place, where locals do their shopping and buy things from other shops only after that. I forget this almost on every trip and when I found a good local, common market (like Tesco's Big-C in Phuket) I start to remember this. But anyway, some things were like half the price, that they would have been elsewhere. Though it's a bit annoying, that everyone starts to stare at you in the market place, because they are not used to tourists in those places. Cashier girls, in the market place, were school age. That seems as odd to me, as seeing someone older than my grandparents, serving food at Wendy's in Florida. (Well, my grandparents are dead, but I don't mean that Wendy's has undead serving food.)

We stopped for a lunch at Ella. There are not too many places and couple restaurants seemed better than others. I ate Kottu (was spelled Kohthtu here) with Chicken and cheese again. I couldn't even eat it all. My body has probably got used to these smaller dishes, which are also much lighter, than food back home. And Kottu is actually quite heavy. Gladly this didn't have potatos in it.
I got a video of making my Kottu dinner. Asked from waiter, if it's okay to take a video of chef making the food and he said it's totally fine.


Next I am going to have a dinner at hotel's restaurant. They have a'la carte -list also, so I think I am going with that, as chef's menu didn't seem that much appealing to me (and price is over 2400 rupies for that menu, well this is a splurge hotel, so it comes with the territory). A'la carte dinners were more like 1000 rupies, which is pretty much what upper scale dinners here should cost. Like in Tissamaharama and Mirissa's beach restaurants, in better restaurants dinners and lunch costed about 700 - 1000 rupies, depending on the type of food that you order.

sasri2016 - At Wellawaya (Ella)

I arrived to Wellawaya yesterday.

Everybody has been saying that Ella is beautiful and oh, yes it is!

This is stranger place by climate, because you have hot days but cooler nights. So it's not that hard to sleep during the night (by temperature).

I stay in Jetwing Kaduruketha hotel. This is most expensive hotel in my trip, but it currently has 61% seasonal sale, so I took it.

This is a chalets kind of hotel. These are like better versions of bungalows.

Last night was a bit too much of a jungle for me. I needed to change chalet, because roof was leaking to the floor (gladly not to bed). So staff moved my stuff to another room and now this hasn't been used for a little time, because spiders were living by the toilet seat, bugs running around and so many beings at ceiling of the building. I have an araknophobia, so it's really not that great, to see too many spiders.
    When I started to get to bed, I saw a praying mantis in the space, between ceiling and wall (where they have no protecting net, to stop insects, bugs or critters to crawl into the room). It was exciting to see such a creature, going to hunting position in your own room, but at the same time, it's too big crawling thing, to have in your room. I don't remember what they eat, but I hope they eat spiders.
   There were some nice gekkos in both of these rooms (more in the original, leaking room), which I really love. Also some really small ants invaded a small place of the floor and they cleaned one bug's carcass so effectively, that it's hard to imagine anything like that.
There were so many noises here, that it was hard to get to sleep. Crickets, toads and all kind of creatures making the sounds of jungle together.
It's very clear that you can't sleep without mosquito net in here. And net needs to be on all the time.

This morning was really nice, when I got up. Went to balcony and a cow is feeding there and it's buddy egrets was there with it (once was standing on the cow's back). A lot of green parrots flying around. Saw some beautiful and big butterflys passing by. Peackocks also showed them finally; I heard them all night yesterday, but couldn't see them.
I also saw a some kind of long tailed "weasel" to go in the trees. It wasn't like a monkey, but it moved like one. It had a long and furry tail. Got some - not so good - pictures of this thing.

Now I go to shower and then I go to breakfast.

sasri2016 - Travelling from Mirissa to Tissamaharama (from Matara by bus)

This was interesting travel. This wasn't that awful, as the train drive from Colombo to Weligama, but I wouldn't call it easy either.

First I reserved a tuk-tuk from The Riverside Cabanas (my hotel) to take me to Matara, where the bigger bus station exists. Then he helped me to get to the correct bus (that wouldn't have been any easy, specially with this heavy luggage).

Bus was much better from the inside, than from outside.
They don't have airconditioning, but they do have a good boom system! ;)
Video running some Sri Lankan music festival videos and music coming from loudspeakers - that wasn't actually as bad you might think.

But... in some point roads do get rough and driver is going fast. So then you might even get sick. I don't (like ever) get sick for driving, but this was a good test for that. It doesn't make it any easier, that you don't get any pauses in 2,5 hour trip (which seemed more like 3 or 4 hour trip in my watch). I got a need to take a leak after an hour of travelling in the bus, so it's really not comfortable to be on those roads, in a bus that you can't stop without leaving and there's no toilet. I don't know if AC buses do have toilets, but they don't go in this part of the country.

Bus did have a small compartment at the back of bus, so I could get my big rock sack to the back of the bus. That made many things easy, though I was quite a worried about it when leaving Tissamaharama station.

There are several sales people in some stations of the bus, but they don't stay in the bus during the trip.

Seats are small and therefore I bought two seats (well, one seat from Matara to Tissamaharama costed 137 rupies, so it's somthing like 0,90 euros and I travelled that long and therefore made sure to have the space for my other (smaller) bag besides me on the seat (even smaller bag didn't fit to upper shelves.

Always remember to give your seat to clergy, if you are sitting in the front of the bus.

Bus classes:
- AC bus
- Long haul bus (this I was travelling with)
- local bus (don't go there with all your luggage... or at least I didn't try that one)

sasri2016 - Food in Sri Lanka

So far (until Monday 4.4.2016 night) I have eaten following foods:

• Breakfast with some western and Sri Lankan foods (The Ocean Colombo hotel)
• Rice and Curry with chicken (Food court in Majestic City, “Suna Dewli” restaurant at Mirissa Beach, I & I restaurant in Mirissa)
• Kofta (Sugar Bistro, Colombo)
• Chicken enchilada with some french fries (Food court (ThaiExpress) in Majestic City)
• Calamari Roti (“Amarasinghe” restaurant at Mirissa)
• Grilled Fish (“Amarasinghe” restaurant at Mirissa)
• Cheese Kottu with chicken (Pilawoos street restaurant in Colombo Galle road, “Amarasinghe” restaurant at Mirissa)

Cheese Kottu from Pilawoos at Colombo and Kofta at Sugar Bistro have been kind of highlights of food so far.

Though they are totally different style as Sugar is fine-dining place at poshier part of Colombo and Pilawoos is a roti place/street restaurant at lower part of Colombo. Kottu was very big and filling, while Kofta was quite small. It was still enough to make the hunger go away and it had SO amazing taste!

Yesterday (Tuesday 5.4.2016) I had an awesome vegetable rice & curry at Amarasinghe restaurant, just besides my hotel Riverside Cabanas. There is one hotel, ExtremeHost -hotel between Amarasinghe and Riverside Cabanas. This is also a good addition for Riverside Cabanas, to have such a good restaurant nearby. By the way, I noticed food menus here on the hotel's pillar at the lobby. I asked from concierge about the menus and he said that because it's now already an off season, no need to make food. All people just go out to nearby restaurants.

I also ate fried rice with seafood for lunch yesterday, at I & I restaurant. It costed something like 460 LKR (about 3 euros) with small sprite making 70 LKR from that price. It was okay and nice to have a lunch, that wasn't so spice, for a change.

sasri2016 - Ceylon tea

This is my first meet with my own bought ceylon tea.

First tea I brought on this trip were already on my first visit to Majestic City in Colombo. There was a some kind of a luxury tea shop (with probably high prices, but seemed still okay to get something even for budget traveler). I bought a pack of five different Ceylon teas, eached packed into their own package, so I could taste them. Packages were colored like this:

• Red: Nuware Eliya
• Brown: Matale
• Black: Ruhunu
• Blue: Dimbula
• Green: Uva

I had no way to make them (as they were sliced tea leaves, that were not in a ready to use tea bag) in Colombo hotel, although I had a tea/coffee maker in my room there. So in Mirissa hotel, I asked them to make my breakfast tea from “Uva” package and gave it to them night before.

When I got to breakfast next morning, they made the tea pan from my Uva tea. That was surprisingly light and not so dark tea. I simply loved it! Adding honey to this tea, would probably suite like fist into the eye.

I did the same procedure next day (last night actually) and I am now at the breakfast, in the hotel's lobby.
This time I gave them Dimbulla tea (from the blue package). This is not as good as the Uva tea. This is also milder and not so heavy as ceylon tea often is. I don't say that this isn't okay, but as Uva was so amazing tea, this was kind of a disappointment after that one.

- Updated at the end of the trip -

I still like Uva tea most. Though one tea, which probably was flavored, was quite good. It had sugar in it, but combination was strangely working. I did get it as a surprise offering from Bala at Sea Zone hotel (you can read about it in my Nilaweli post).

People mostly use Dilmah tea bags here, which I really don't like that much. I think that some people in Finland might like it. Too dark and strong for me. It doesn't offer the light sweetness at all, but only the sour part. Like one acupuncturist said to me, I eat too much sour things and should eat more things like salad leaves. 

Did you know, that China had six necessities of life, which palace could not tax? These were firewood, rice, cooking oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar. Guess which was the seventh necessity added to the list? Yes, tea of course.

sasri2016 - First days in Mirissa

Mirissa is a tourist destination, small village by the sea with a nice beach. You get the goods and bads, that come with that. It's laid back, its cheap, but its harder to find what you want and Tuk-tuks charge here typical overprices from foreigners. Sadly PickMe didn't find any tuk-tuks or cars from here, so I needed to pay the tuk-tuks the foreigner price.

The Mirissa beach.

Beach is nice. The western part (on the right side) has waves for surfers and eastern part has lower waves, so if you don't like them, you don't have to be swimming in waves.

When I went there, right after I had arrived to Mirissa, the storms were coming. I didn't really mind that so much (I am on vacation and I am used to these showering rains in Asia during my previous trips). I went to check the lunch at the beach restaurant (“Suna Dewli” or something like that) and sit down to the plastic chair, under the plastic roof on the beach.

When I got my foods, also got the rain. The plastic roof almost kept the rain and I could finish my lunch at that table, but after eating I moved to open space, under the restaurant. Oh I enjoyed the restful moment, seeing the kids running at the beach and mothers trying to catch them. A big local guy from the restaurant, went swimming while semi-wild dogs of restaurant/beach followed him to the water – this was probably quite a sweet sight to women on beach, like the lady on the table next to me. I actually think she did photograph with her cell phone, while the guy came from the sea with dogs following him. ;)

I kept sipping the sprite I ordered and reading The Way of Tea – enjoying my mundane existence once more.

The hotel.

Riverside Cabanas is not that big hotel. It's located besides a small river (at least its not that wide in this location). And on the other side of the main road, than the beach is. So its kind of further away from the beach, but its really not that far away. Of course it could be nice to have a direct access to beach, but this hotel has a nice touch and feeling.

Now that I am writing this, my original reservation would be ending today, but last night I reserved the room for two more nights, because I like it here. That probably tells a lot. Well the crazy heat in these beach sites is quite something to me (and probably for many scandinavian people), but I have started to take daily naps during the hardest heat.

The Whale Watching trip.

Trip was kind of nice. It costed 4000 LKR (+ 200 LKR for tuk-tuk back to hotel, as only the pick up from the hotel was included).

Main point being, that neither of these two boats (they said that there were 6 boats in total going out that day to see whales), that were sailing close to each other, found any whales. So that was really disappointing. The heat is quite much on the boat, but gladly I was wise enough to get a seat from the lower deck. I would have been fried on the top floor. I did get sun burn to my arms, as forgot to add sun block to them. Legs were fine, because remembered to take care of them.

Blue whales and sperm whales live in 20 nautical mile area, at the site where we traveled. There is one more whale type that randomly travel trough this same area, but then of course you need to be very lucky to see them during the trip. It was about 6 nautical miles from Mirissa harbour to get to that area, where they live.

Those creatures are so huge and it would have been so amazing to see even one and to even be so lucky to get a picture of it. They are on the surface only for half a minute or something like that and come up to the surface once in 15 to 45 minutes (that is when they have to come up to breath). But sadly we didn't. We saw dolphins on three occasions. On first two occasions we get to take some pictures of them. Third time it was so small group and they dived deeper when the boat got closer to them. Second occasion was a group of 300 to 500 dolphins and that was a nice sight.

I have seen dolphins from a catamaran trip with my wife, in Spain (Costa de Sol). I think this was a bigger group, but on that catamaran trip, we were able to follow the dolphins for a long time and it was really easy to take video and so many photos of those lovely creatures.

I ended up sleeping for maybe ¾ of the return part of the trip – I think they poured some sleeping powder into the sweet tea that was offered in the beginning of the trip. ;)

Then a couple on their honeymoon came down from the top floor and a Sri Lankan tour guide, sitting besides me was their guide. They were here for one week and were originally from Switzerland. We shared a lot of our experiences from Sri Lanka and asia with each other. They have had a great, going around this island in a week. They suggested a hotel (something like Pakshan) from near the Sigiriya site, which they clearly loved a lot (hotel and Sigiriya).

There was a very good deck guy handling the lower deck. He aided me a lot to stay on feet while I was focusing to take pictures of the dolphins. It's actually not that easy to stay on two feets, while boat is little rocking, you try to focus the objective of camera to dolphins and still see the whole picture, where the next dolphin is going to jump. Couple of them did really do really nice jumps, with a jolly turn-arounds during the jump. But that was so random, that it wasn't possible to catch a picture of them. I asked about a fishing trip from this deck guy and he said he could do it for about 16 000 – 17 000 LKR (about 113 €).

Am I happy about the whale watching trip? Yes, I am. It was nice trip and got to see dolphins. If there would have been rough sea, it might not have been so good – but well maybe then if we would have seen the whales. If I would have got seasick, then it certainly would have not been worthy of the effort.

Wrote this during my breakfast at the hotel lobby (Tuesday morning, 5.4.2016).

sasri2016 - Travelling to Mirissa

Oh yeah – this was an experience! You might think a train travel is just one day amongst the others – but not that sunday in Sri Lanka. “Everybody” was travelling. Trains were totally overcrowded and there is no passenger control (except when you get out of the train at destination train station). So there was like ¼ of people in train not having seats. It took at least half an hours for train to start moving from the platform and the air was standing still. So everything was as it should be – too many people, too much heat, no air conditioning or air flow, (my smaller backpack did fit to the shelves over the seats, but...) big Deuter backpack didn't. So then I was standing in the middle of old train wagon, surrounded by people, having my big backpack in the middle of alley and sweating more than normally in sauna (well temperature probably was closer 40 C than 80 C, so I kept my clothes on ;). Then all kind of salesmen started to sell all kind of things at the alley. That's probably a good business, but it was annoying when the train was so crowded and no space for them to pass by. They had really hard time to walk past me (I was probably one of biggest guys in the train and had my backpack laying there in the narrow alley).

Later, when the train got moving, it started to get easier. While air flow was established by moving train and more people did get off from the train, seats became available and the heat wasn't so bad anymore. Then I also got a seat for the last part of the trip, as most people left at the Galle station.

I am writing this (and post before this) at the “lobby” of the Riverside Cabanas -hotel. Its already past midnight and grasshoppers are jumping to the table, and singing by the river. No monkey (or much of dog) sounds. Strangly more quiet evening than last night. Well, sound of air conditioner's outside unit keeps me well aware, that we are quite well out from the actual jungle.

Fan is blowing, so mosquitos keep (somewhat) away. But I am starting to feel “the pressure” of nightly jungle and I don't want to start a fight with the monkey for my eyeglasses... so better to stop now and get to my room. But have to say, that temperature is now great (25 – 27 C) and night is beautiful.

sasri2016 – In Colombo

I stayed in The Ocean Colombo. It was okay hotel. Room was okay, not bad. Service was okay.

Colombo itself as a destination.

It's not that bad city. There are higher prices (see my comments below about the prices) and traffic is what it is. Moving wasn't that hard, if you use PickMe and get to travel hassle free (hassle free as no-negotiation for tuk-tuk price - getting bad english speaking drivers to drive you to hotel, that they don't know - is not hassle free ;) ).

There is a poshier part of Colombo (at the northern part of city, close to Pettah) and then southern part of the city (this is my limited vision, based only on two nights visit there – so more experienced travelers probably have a say to this – but this was all I needed for my visit). My hotel was in quite good position (crossroad of melbourne avenue and marine drive). Of course those poshier and more expensive hotels are in better suited location for many things, but I appreciated the close proximity of Majestic City (walking distance or short tuk-tuk drive in middle of the day).

I really loved the Sugar bistro at the poshier part, for having a happy hour (buy one, get one for free) and a totally awesome Kofta for dinner.

Mid-day in Sri Lanka is very hot (for me as Scandinavian). Temperature of 33 C is at the top of my “comfort” zone (well comfort is somewhere under 28 C, so maybe I call it “survival” zone). If you are going to walk around the city in mid-day, think twice. It's good way to see the city, but the amount of sweating when walking in that temperature is compared to tuk-tuk “airconditioning” - for me ordering tuk-tuk with PickMe was easy and cheap enough way to travel around the city.

Pettah market is kind of the worst market scenes I have been. It has bad sides of Thailand markets, with hassle and it probably has a lot of robbers around tourists (heard, not seen). I ended up buying one piece of shorts, but they were not that cheap, after the bargaining. Starting prices were crazy (my 300 LKR – theirs 2400 LKR), but I wasn't as comfortable bargaining harder at the late night (almost closing time) in Pettah, as I am in Thailand, so ended up paying almost double of my target price. Well, less than 7 euros for brand shorts, that even fit my big size, wasn't that bad deal (though haven't tried them on yet :).

Majestic City is a shopping mall, with a lot of watches, jewellery and clothing shops. It also has food court at the bottom floor and a grocery store “Gargill's Food city”. I ended up buying two shirts and a couple of teas from a tea shop there. Otherwise I used food court for fresh juice (from desk called “Roots” and couple times lunch food from other desks).

Note! If you own a DinersClub -credit card, you should be aware that the only locations where DinersClub -credit card works in Sri Lanka, are in Colombo. There are 5 ATMs, that you can use to withdrawn money from DC credit and one of them is inside Majestic City (only one I found). Those are Commercial Bank's ATMs.

Massage.

I always try to get a massage in the beginning of the trip and at the end at least. On this trip, my plan is to get one massage per week. So I called the reservation of the hotel, where I could get a massage. They transferred the call to the third floor and a guy with very poor english answered. I though they transferred the call to kitchen or something. So I called again and this time he explained that there is a massage on the third floor of this hotel. So I went there and the price for one hour Thai massage was quite high (my opinion, again), 4500 LKR (about 31 €).

Massage room was simple and a bit shady by lighting, but the lady who did the massage was very authentic and as I recognize and remember the moves that belong to Thai massage, she did about all the common moves of normal (non-dirty) Thai massage. It took about 50 minutes, so not true 1 hour, but comes with the territory.

Prices in Colombo: It's a capital (though not the official one) of Sri Lanka, so you should expect higher prices, than most of the other places.

Tuk-tuk drivers are asking way too high prices from foreigners, for a budget traveler. That's why PickMe service comes so handy. You just need an internet connection and that app installed to your mobile device (you can probably do it also on a computer, but app is very handy). With this app, you say where from you are going to be picked up, what kind of a car you want (default is tuk-tuk, there is also a mini car and normal car options). Then you specify if you pay by cash and app gives a rough estimate about the price of the trip. Prices always come by meter and you can actually check the progress of your travell in app's map, while you are in the vehicle. After the trip, it also asks you to give driver stars and a comment (it's not necessary). Sound quite like Uber, doesn't it? And I did love it all the way. Would want to have this in Finland too and especially with the same prices. ;) Travelling from melbourne avenue to Fort Railway Station (Pettah), costed about 460 LKR with a normal car. Driver was very helpful and guided me how to get to the train and correct platform, for my train trip to Mirissa... which is the next episode.

Couple notes about The Ocean Colombo -hotel:

• Breakfast price is steep, about 1300 LKR
• Travel agent was blaming me later, that I didn't reserve a car from them, to get to Mirissa or something like this. People had written this kind of stuff in TripAdvisor, so it was to be expected; if you don't like pushy salesmen, then you will not like this guy (well he is not that pushy, but blaming for not ordering is bad enough)
• Laundry service was normal priced (IMHO) and worked well, except they lost my sock and then blamed that it wasn't ever in the laundry bag (which I of course had checked before giving the laundry bag); but I would use that again
• I never got to get to the roof top bar, but it might have been really nice; later I did regret that I couldn't make it there to take some photos and to enjoy later evening breeze there.

sasri2016 - Travelling into Sri Lanka from Helsinki (well actually from Lieto)

Trip did begun 18 hours ago (30.3.2016 22:50 in Finland). Time in Finland is now 16:53 (31.3.2016) when I started writing this in Airberlin plane. I have no idea what time it is here, where we are flying now. This second flight – from Berlin to Abu Dhabi – will take about an hour still before the landing, so ten hours of this flight and 3 hours at Berlin (weird terminal B) and 5 hours of travelling and waiting in Finland has been completed so far.

When I saw the flight map from this plane's nice touch screen (that are in front of all seats – points to Airberlin for that), I understood how much wrong direction the first flight to Berlin did go. Actually the flight from Helsinki to Phuket takes like 10 hours to Hadabad in India and now we not nearly as far as that would be and I have been longer time in air.

Feelings for the start of the trip? Well now they are quite good. I haven't eaten too much, but still okay (well I should have eaten bigger lunch than what they offer in these flights and I am already late in dinner), but I estimated that I have slept like 6 hours on this flight. Well, I didn't sleep at all last night, so tiredness will catch you in some point and this was a good flight to have it. Everybody knows, that flights are not good places to sleep, but longer flights are better than airport floors or busses (tried those both when I went to Helsinki airport). I was in a quite bad shape when first flight started to land, body didn't like the non-sleeping theme and carrying the heavy luggage at Finland and my belly also started to get messy. Those got fixed at Berlin airport, even though the breakfast was totally overpriced in that cafe (eg. quite small class of juice was 3,50 €).

I am glad that I had heard from my collague, that Berlin airport is strange. Otherwise I would have seriously suspected my own navigation. You need to go with bus from plane to terminal where plane has landed (yes, that's normal), but then you need to exit the building and transfer to terminal B, which is a different building and you just walk out of the terminal C. Distance is not that long, but it's strange that there is no indoors walkway between those terminals. Then I also needed to go to passport control and another security check-in at Terminal B. After I got to those gates (B20 and B21), I didn't see any toilets in that small waiting area. Someone really didn't think this through! But well, I still got to say, that I appreciated the one hour free WiFi connection at airport. And for once, the WiFi's main page was useful, it had the same listing as boarding screens show on wall. So it was possible to check those boarding times and flight statuses from your browser, while connected to that free network. Good idea! Hope this would be taken to use in all airports.

So next there will be landing to Abu Dhabi's airport (heard that it would be world's biggest?). Then there's going to be change to next flight, from Abu Dhabi to Colombo, Sri Lanka. It should take about two hours to change to connecting flight and I have planned to run to some burger or other food stop for quick meal. If everything goes by the book, I should be landing to Colombo's airport (which is closer to Negombo beach than Colombo) something like 03:35. Then it takes about an hour to get to The Ocean Colombo -hotel from airport. When I arrive to hotel, I have travelled about 28 hours - I'll likely be quite done in that point.