Sri Lanka June 2025 Part 1

Day 1 (6 June) – Perth-Singapore-Sri Lanka. It is back to the international travel for us, off to Sri Lanka this time. The whole thing went very smoothly, with a bus and train trip to the airport, which is the first time since the train line opened that we have left during civilized hours, and a very quick flow through the formalities of immigration and security. Christine did get carted away for an extra scan because she had a knee brace on, but she didn’t get the full body frisk she was hoping for.
The Singapore Airlines flight to Changi was as good as any economy class can be with a good standard of food and a very generous red wine serving. The in flight movies are becoming tiresome though. As we have found with other airlines, you get around 3 minutes of ads before a show starts, which means if you surf through a few choices before settling on one, you can be subjected to the same pointless set of ads each time you change your mind. Then the announcer keeps interrupting the movie to advertise their in-flight duty free shop. It helps to have a few backup things on your own device.

Negotiating our way through Changi airport was easier than many other times because we were true “transit” and didn’t have to do immigration. It was only a short walk to the skytrain link from terminal 3 to Terminal 2 and we were soon settled in for the 2 hour wait for the next plane. The aircraft was big, but packed to the brim and many passengers had 3 or 4 items of hand luggage. How does this happen? We are always so careful to follow the rules but we are a minority it seems. With a time change coming up in Colombo, we adjusted our watches and tried to ignore the fact that we would really get there around 3am and had a small meal on the plane, refusing the main offerings. Then it was more dozing, watching stuff on the seat back screen and being aware of a gradual but persistent loss of mobility and feeling in the legs. Somehow we made it and got through Sri Lankan immigration and customs with no issues. They make a big thing of having an Electronic Travel Authority system where you have to go on-line and fill out lots of stuff only scammers should know. The main part is paying the $US52 each. Of course, Australians are visa free entry, you just need the ETA. The guy at the immigration counter didn’t even read it.
We were met by our driver, Nilanka, and taken a short drive to our stay in Negombo, the Optimum Residences. It was very late when we got there so we were shown straight to our room and we collapsed in a blissful sleep.

Day 2 (7 June) – Negombo – We expected to sleep late but ended up being first to breakfast at 8am. Able to scope out the surroundings in daylight, we found the Optimum Residences to be composed of two buildings of rooms and one large family home and office all set in beautiful gardens. The breakfast lounging area is next to a lovely swimming pool, with another outside our room. The rooms are basic, clean and comfortable. Breakfast was a wonderful buffet of mostly local foods and fruit, with enough variety to satisfy most tastes.

With breakfast out of the way, Nilanka arrived and we planned our day. Still needing some catch up sleep, we opted for afternoon excursions and we spent the morning in the pool or dozing. We were surprised to find the AFL matches on TV via ABC Australia so we watched Geelong demolish Gold Coast.
In the afternoon, it was off in the car to find an ATM. All our money is on a card (Wise) which has international currency exchange built in. We had very little in the way of Australian cash and no Sri Lankan Rupees. Concern set in when we got knock backs from three ATMs, uncertain as to whether the fault lay with our card or the ATM services being offered. Finally, we found a money changer and changed a $A50 note to give us something. Then we tried a supermarket where we could try out the card with purchases. No problem. Just cash withdrawal did not work.
Moving on we went down to the beach area, quite crowded it being a Saturday, and tried a restaurant with the card. Again no problems and they suggested that we try the ATM down the road, which was probably more tourist oriented. To our great joy, it issued us some cash. The bulk of our purchases will be with card, but cash is still needed at times.

We spent a lovely couple of hours at the beach side restaurant, sampling some delicious cuttlefish, a not so good but still filling local dish called kottu, like a noodle stir fry but with sliced up roti substituting for the noodles and, of course, quite a bit of beer to wash it all down. There was a lot of activity on the beach, with volleyball games and food trucks. The sea was quite unsettled but there didn’t seem to be much interest in swimming. As the restaurant began gearing up for live music and young people, we found our driver and headed home, happy that we were solvent again.

Day 3 (8 June) Negombo – It was a very early start with Nilanka arriving at 5:45 to pick us up to go to the fish markets. The early start is because they only run until around 7am, to ward off the heat of the day. They were amazing markets, with a lot of quality fish on display, all recently caught. Most fish were the same or very similar to our own northern species. There were a lot of bonito displayed and a few very large yellowfin tuna. Prawns were also a feature, from tiny river shrimps to large fresh tiger prawns. We saw no squid at all, but a great many cuttlefish. Apart from the obvious smell of fresh fish, the place not difficult to put up with, as many Asian fish markets are, probably due to the lack of dried fish, which is at a different market.

We walked onto the nearby bridge to watch the local fishing. It was well organized. The tide was running out hard and each fisherman had a little container attached to a cord to hold their live baits. Most used rods and reels with a simple rig to run a live bait down into the current. We saw one happy guy cart off three very large mangrove jacks towards the markets and there was also a beautiful barramundi around a metre long tied up on a cord and swimming in the current to keep it alive and fresh. It is a sign of a healthy fishery, with so much available in the markets and still available to catch locally.
Then it was back to the guest house for breakfast. We have researched many of the offerings that were unfamiliar and we found that much of the breakfast was made up of Sri Lankan street foods, pan roll, string hoppers, pittu and sweet pancake. Everything we tried was delicious and not too spicy, although I think the chili had been wound back a bit for the international guests.
The rest of the morning was spent relaxing in the pool before the Eagles – North Melbourne match. We watched the first half in our room then moved to the restaurant for lunch and to continue the game. The staff rushed around to get the TV working and to place an air con unit in front of us. We were in heaven, despite the eventual score. We feel like royalty sometimes. The staff can’t do too much and always with a big smile.
In the late afternoon, Nilanka picked us up and took us to Angurukaramulla Temple, a large Buddhist Temple complex that had an amazing visual display depicting the life of Buddha and the growth of the religion. Negombo is largely a Catholic city, but Buddhism will be dominant as we move on.
Next, it was the site of the old Dutch fort, much of which is now used as a prison. The original fort dated from the 1600s and built by the Portuguese, destroyed and rebuilt by the Dutch then taken over by the British. It is a story repeated throughout Asia.

Nearby is the fish drying area, where a big expanse of flat beach is devoted to drying fish on reed matting. It is heavily salted and sun dried, before packaging for distribution around Sri Lanka and beyond. There were anchovies, scad, mackerel and tuna being dried. Remarkably, the smell was quite bearable. I was amazed that the whole thing wasn’t a mass of birds feasting on the fish, but apart from the odd egret wolfing down some, the crows left the fish alone and there are no gulls anywhere in sight. I think it is the only place in the world I have been without gulls of some form.
We cruised the beach area again, very crowded on a Sunday evening, with many locals out in their finery. We stopped at a restaurant called Fish and Chips, partaking in a wonderful prawn curry and crab curry each. The main dish was supported with bowls of sambal, fried onions, potato curry and another sauce we couldn’t identify. Very, very delicious and rather messy to eat. We left feeling full. The evening was spent watching the Men’s French Open Final.

Day 4 (9 June) Colombo and Hillanka – We are on the move. The decision to stay three nights at Negombo was a good one. While the city itself is not a “must see” place, the chance to really relax after a very hectic few months has been good and the Optimum Residences is a fantastic place to stay.
It seemed to take an age to get out of Negombo, fighting tuk-tuks, motorbikes and pushbikes all the way. The lines on the road seem to mean nothing. It is not uncommon for several vehicles to make a new lane straddling a double white line. It isn’t a matter of the odd near miss, everything is a near miss. We have not seen any actual contact to date. Once on the motorway (toll), the 30 odd km to Colombo soon disappeared.
Colombo is a mix of old, messy, crowded and grubby, along with ultra modern stunning high rise buildings and wide open plazas down on the beach front. Our driver took us around all aspects. At one stage, we got caught in a traffic jam due to a Hindu parade, part of a festival. We toured the Huge Gangaramaya Buddhist Temple. While the many carvings and buddhas were stunning, the thing of special interest was the collection of donations made over the years and stored for display. People donated something of value as an act of devotion. Nothing is sold, but everything is displayed. There were a couple of 1930s Rolls Royces, numerous mounted elephant tusks, some mazing ebony furniture with ivory inlays, a whole showcase with Rolex watches just piled in and a ridiculous amount of jewelry. There was even a case of guns that looked like a weapons buy-back program.

The Colombo Museum was interesting. It is laid out in a chronological order, starting with pre-history and working through to British colonialism. What I learnt was the extent to which the Dutch rule had an influence, lasting over a Century and having a significant impact on architectural styles and furniture fashions still in use today. We stopped briefly at Independence Square, a monument to the end of British rule in 1948.

Getting out of Colombo and heading south proved harder than Negombo. The traffic was insane but eventually, we made it to the Ahungalla area on the beach and stopped at a Turtle Conservation Project. There are many of these operating and appear to be a tourist thing at first glance. However, the logic makes sense. Five species of turtles nest regularly along the open beaches of the coast. The eggs were hunted for food to the extent that actual hatchings and natural attrition due to predation could not keep up and all species were threatened. The system now is that there are many hatcheries set up along the coast, and people can dig up the eggs when the nesting is observed, take them to a hatchery and get paid for them. The hatchery places them in temperature controlled sand pits and releases the hatchlings in darkness to promote survival. As well as this, they take in injured turtles until ready for return to the sea. It was interesting to see fifty or so day-old hawks bill turtles all on the seaward side of their pond trying to satisfy their natural instinct to reach the ocean.

We stopped for a short while at a monument built by the Japanese in memory of those lost in the Tsunami of 2004, which resulted in over 30,000 deaths in Sri Lanka alone and many more in Indonesia and Thailand. The site was where a train was inundated. The pictures on display brought back memories of those very sad times.

 

 

A short distance away was the Madu River mangrove complex, a huge expanse of shallow water teeming with life. We took a “boat safari”. These tours annoy us. They are always horribly over-priced and we see far less than the average day in Shark Bay. However, this was a surprise. Within minutes, we were up close and personal with a large water monitor swimming across the river. Then we started spotting the numerous brilliantly coloured kingfishers, being lucky enough to see one snaffle a fish from the water. We saw many white-breasted sea eagles, darts, egrets and amazing tiny terns, that followed in the boats wake and dived to grab any small fish disturbed by the propellor. It was all action. The boat stopped off at an island where cinnamon is grown. We always thought it was the outer bark taken, but it is an inner layer of bark that is carefully sliced off, as demonstrated by an old man. The smell is amazing. Another interesting feature is that the river is criss-crossed with large ropes strung at the water level. These act as speed bumps, because the boats are forced to slow and raise their outboard motors to get over them, thereby reducing the wash that causes bank erosion. All in all, it was a fun tour and worth the money.

By the time we settled in the Finlanka Hotel in Hikkaduwa, we were all in. We dragged ourselves to the beachfront two hundred metres or so away and ate an unsatisfactory meal (our first poor meal in Sri Lanka) at a waterside restaurant and consumed a very satisfactory beer. Early to bed.