Our flight from Delhi was less than 4 hours long and yet seemed to go on forever. After serving dinner and turning off the lights, we tried to get some shut eye, exhausted from the lack of sleep the night before. Disturbing us from slumber were the group of Indian men sitting behind us, part of what we assumed to be a tour, and all of them talking loudly throughout the entire flight. Oh well, no sleep here! I had a few visits to the bathroom as my tummy troubles seemed to not want to forget India!
We finally arrived in Colombo at 10:15 pm and quickly made it through immigration (with an emergency run to the bathroom before going through!) and found our prearranged driver standing politely holding a sign with my name on it and "Galle Face Hotel".
We had decided to splurge a bit in Colombo and booked the 5 star iconic Galle Face Hotel, situated on Galle Face Green overlooking the ocean. A friend of mine from Australia coincidentally was in Colombo for the week for work and his client was putting him up there, so when we found that out we just decided to treat ourselves and stay in the same place.
We exited the airport and immediately were hit by the humidity! Such a big difference from the dry desert climate of Rajasthan! The next thing we noticed is that we could breathe fresh air - no thick brown smoke hung in the air! It was wonderful!
We made our way to a nice new car, with working seat belts and air conditioning and were asked if we wanted the most direct route on the highway (30 minutes) or the scenic route (1 hour). We opted for the fastest route as we were exhausted and my tummy was giving me all sorts of trouble! We got onto the road and were shocked by the sound of silence - no blaring horns. It was all just civilized. We felt as though we could have been in any North American city. At that moment we felt worlds away from India, not at all as though we were just in the country next door.
We were fairly close to the hotel, when the driver pulled off to the side of a dark deserted road, excused himself and got out to look at his tire. It was completely flat! A little hiccup. He called the hotel, and they sent another driver and we were back on our way, leaving him on the side of the road alone in the dark, pulling his spare out of his trunk.
The hotel was quite posh, and we soon found our way to our room. The room was quite nice with a full soaker tub in the bathroom, but unfortunately no view of anything! (Guess that's what happens when you book the day before). Still, it was heaven to us after leaving Delhi.
We went to bed fairly quickly, but unfortunately I was up every hour or so with tummy issues. Still, if there was a place to be ill, this was it!
The next morning I got up and met up with my friend Mark outside by the pool overlooking the ocean for a quick catch up. He was heading to Galle for the day with a driver his client had organized and had offered to take us with them, but we opted to just stay and enjoy the hotel and wind down a bit after a busy few weeks.
After he left I headed back to the room and enjoyed the wonderful hot rain shower. By the time Dave and I finally got outside for "breakfast" it was lunch time. I excitedly opted for a BLT sandwich, ready to try to put something into my stomach that wasn't spicy. I've never wanted bland food so much in my life! It was wonderful! I also read that King Coconuts were good for a sick stomach, so I ordered one of those. It was literally a giant coconut with a hole and as straw to get the coconut water. It seemed to never end!
King coconut
The sun was shining brightly and the pool looked rather enticing, so we decided we were going to go swimming so went back to the room to grab our suits. While we were back in there, the sound of the surf seemed to get louder and almost sounded like rain. I looked out the window and sure enough it had started pouring! Where had that come from? No pool for us....
Pool before the rain
Once it let up a bit, we decided we should leave the hotel (what, why?) and at least take a walk on the green and find an ATM. We walked out and it started raining a bit again. We continued walking, and of course were approached by a "friendly" man wanting to know where we were from. We chatted a bit and he told us he was a gardener for the Galle Face Hotel. He then told us there was a huge festival with tons of elephants just down the street (pointing the way). It sounded fishy, so we just politely said we would check it out later. He told us it was happening right now and that we should go right now, but he was going to go back to work (and he started walking away). He of course made sure he told us he didn't want anything from us, he was just a worker at the hotel. By this time it had started pouring harder, and we just decided we should go back to the hotel and get our jackets. We turned around and started walking back to the hotel. He was yelling at us that we were going the wrong way. We just waved him off and kept going back. Then we were approached by a different man telling us there was a big Buddhist festival in town with lots of elephants. Yes, we said, we'd heard. But we were going back to the hotel to get out of the rain. He walked with us trying to convince us to go back down the road, but we turned back into the hotel.
Back in our room we took off our soaked clothes, and I plopped myself under the covers. I decided that was enough venturing out into the rain and I was quite happy to just stay there. We were a bit curious as to what scam these guys were trying to pull, especially with the first guy having seemingly walking off. We even googled Buddhist festivals in case there was some truth and found no mention, so then we googled Colombo Buddhist festival scam and found a blog post by another couple who had stayed in the Galle Face Hotel who had been approached by a "Gardener" and eventually the gardener convinced them to get into a tuk tuk where they were taken to some crappy temple and shown a chained up elephant and then asked for loads of money. (He had also initially made like he was leaving them and going back to work).
Dave decided to take advantage of the gym and I decided to just take advantage of the awesome hotel room and sit in bed and read. We met Mark for dinner at the pool bar and I enjoyed another bland meal (it was awesome). Dave opted for a prawn curry. We said our farewells and went back to our room to pack up for Kandy the next day. (No 5 star hotel bookings for us there!)
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