2017 Sri Lanka – Tangalle
3rd February 2017
Our next stop was a beach hotel near Tangalle for four nights. Sri Lankan architects being fairly new to tourism and short of money seemed to embrace the fashion of using polished concrete as a finish. To save even more money they left out the polishing so a lot of the buildings looked like they belonged in a Russian holiday resort. I honestly didn’t know whether our hotel, Asana Beach House was unfinished or needed renovation as the only good thing about concrete is that it has a timeless quality. 
Even the bedside tables and doorless wardrobes were made of concrete. I must admit they were very quick to fix things. I told them the toilet seat was broken so they solved the problem by taking it away and leaving us with the bare porcelain. It wasn’t quite the fix I had in mind but at least it stopped me from falling off the toilet mid-sentence. It was all good fun and was my favourite place so far as the location was perfect and we had a lovely little terrace with a hammock. The sea was only a short walk across a lawn and we fell asleep every night to the sound of waves crashing onto the shore.
The water was lovely and warm and the sea very rough so swimming consisted of jumping up and down avoiding the impact of the waves. At sunset, we went for a walk along the beach and were accosted by a man who ran a beach hut restaurant. It was tiny and with virtually no facilities, not even a fridge. I would normally be weary of eating in a place like that but we arranged that he would go to the market the next morning and buy us a fish to barbecue for lunch the next day. That with some rice would be safe enough to eat. The next day we did nothing but lay on the beach and the fish lunch was superb. The owner was going to buy us a grey mullet which was not my favourite fish but he ended up getting a barracuda although unless it changed shape during the cooking process I had my doubts. Who cared? It tasted great. We asked him if he could get some crabs for the next day and he quoted us quite a high price for one kilo of crabs which we accepted. Next day he served us two crabs which were nowhere near one kilo but they were tasty and fun to eat using a rolling pin to crack the shells.
To make a change and to maintain a shred of tourist credibility we went to see the Temple of the Something or Other. It was a 20-kilometre drive and once again involved climbing a lot of stairs which we were used to by now. At the top was a cave with paintings and lots of Buddhas inside and a nice little viewpoint. A few people were sitting there waiting for the sun to set which due to some clouds was a non-event.
Having done our tourist duty we were ready for a curry and as we felt we could trust the tuk-tuk driver (he was one of the managers of the hotel) we asked him to take us to wherever he recommended. He took us to a nice little crowded restaurant by the sea where the owner, after hearing we wanted Sri Lankan Curry looked at us like we were crazy. He only served seafood. So there was our Sri Lankan hotel manager who had no idea where to get a good Sri Lankan curry. He and the restaurant owner entered into a long conversation about where to take us like we were the first tourists in history ever to want curry.
We were driven a couple of kilometres to a very basic restaurant set by the side of the main road and considering it was completely empty we were a little concerned. The owner was very friendly and spoke good English and the first thing he did was show us a thick book with all the people who had eaten there in the past. It was packed with people singing their praises, many of whom said it was the best curry they had eaten in Sri Lanka so I was confident it would be ok. It was a family-run business where his mother-in-law cooked and his wife helped to serve. The owner bought out the beer I ordered and crouched down so he was literally pouring it under the table. Anyone looking at him from a certain angle would have thought he was pissing into a glass. When the glass was full he placed the bottle on the floor and asked me to leave it there because they didn’t have a licence. If the police came I had to tell them that I bought the beer somewhere else. Thank you very much. If that happened I would have the choice of getting the owner into trouble or lying to the policeman and getting myself into trouble. Sorry mate, but if there is a raid, you are on your own.
So there we were in an empty restaurant in Sri Lanka with plates set on a Scottish tablecloth with the owner, his wife and child standing by the side of our table watching us eat. It was a bizarre evening and an excellent curry.
Most of the time we had the beach to ourselves and even our own palm tree to sit under. Every time we appeared, a couple of dogs came for a cuddle and sat with us all day. 
It was a large crescent-shaped beach with golden sand and fishing boats scattered along the shore. Up to that point we had been pleasantly surprised at the lack of mosquitos that Tripadvisor had warned about. I bought two expensive repellents and hadn’t used them at all. On the first day at Tangalle, we noticed a lot of red marks on Federika’s legs which didn’t bother her so we assumed they were from sand flies. The next day mosquito bites started to appear on both of us and by our last day, we both had hundreds of bites which were itching like crazy. We had mosquitoes in Croatia but I rarely got bitten so it was strange that they should suddenly start attacking. This was the first place neither of us wanted to leave but it was a relief when we did in the hope that the next place would be mosquito-free like all the others we had been.
While having breakfast on our last day in Tangalle we got chatting to an English couple who had just arrived at the beginning of their holiday and the woman was panicking because she had forgotten to bring her blood pressure medication. The hotel manager made a note of the drug she needed and told her not to worry. Half an hour later he returned with a box of the pills and a bill for £3.50. In the UK there was a prescription charge of £8.40 on all drugs and as they were subsidised by the NHS I assumed the actual cost was a lot more. I decided that when we got back to the UK I would write to the NHS in my capacity as consultant with a flat fee of £9.50 which compares favourably to the £10,000 an hour they usually pay for consultants. I will advise them to buy all their drugs from Sri Lanka. It will save the NHS millions of pounds a year and I will earn a nice little £9.50 in return. Why had no one thought of it before?
2017 Sri Lanka
