2017 Sri Lanka – Matara
30th January 2017
We went by taxi to Matara, our first beach resort. It was a beautiful house and unusually well-built with quality materials and fittings. There must have been some confusion with the word “restaurant” in Sri Lanka as it was not the first hotel we stayed at that claimed to have a restaurant but didn’t. It didn’t bother us as we usually preferred to eat out anyway. He recommended a walk along the coast path to a place called The Doctor’s House run by an Australian. It was one of the weirdest cafés I had ever seen. It was a large open piece of land with makeshift chairs everywhere and at the back they had some basic rooms for surfers. There were multicoloured tables and chairs, hammocks, platforms of wood hanging by ropes from trees where people could lay and loungers of every conceivable shape and size. They only served pizzas but by now we were starving so we ordered one which was excellent. [sg_popup id=”17718″ event=”inherit”]
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After lunch we went to the beach but it wasn’t great for swimming as there were a lot of rocks so we had to make do with paddling around in the rock pools. That night we went to a lovely little beachfront restaurant that was part of a hotel. A Scottish girl greeted us at the door and after taking our order we got chatting. She told us that 13 years earlier she had booked a room at that hotel for one night, had met and fallen in love with the owner and had been there ever since. Rarely had I seen someone so happy and content.
After dinner, we returned to The Doctor’s House where they had live music. The place was full of people sitting in the multitude of mixed seating as well as cross-legged on the grass. The only available seating was two giant bean bags which was surprisingly comfortable even though I spent most of the time hanging off the edge and Federika had to summon help to get me out. The band was locals playing a weird mixture of Bob Marley and Sri Lankan reggae. They were terrible and it sounded like each of them was playing different songs at the same time but we loved them. They played just for the love of it and didn’t care what people thought of them which was as it should be. I worked for so many years playing music I hated, just for the money. The drummer was sitting on a box, playing it between his legs with just his hands. I heard a bass drum somewhere but couldn’t figure out where it came from. He even bashed the cymbal with his hand which couldn’t have been very comfortable. The result was a full sound from a kit that was entirely homemade except for the cymbal. It was a great night and I was again reminded that it was often the most unlikely of places that held the fondest memories.
The next day was devoted to sun worship or to be precise, sunshade worship with a break to devour a large red snapper smothered in garlic, ginger and soya sauce. At night we went to The Doctor’s House again which I was sure would be my favourite place of the whole holiday.
That area of Matara was idyllic but there was so much rubbish on the road to the restaurants. I assumed there was no rubbish collection or people had to pay for collection so they took the free option of throwing it in the bushes.
2017 Sri Lanka
