Spent yesterday in the sea and on the beach and it was glorious, probably best day I've had here - so, so good to be in the water. After 45 minutes squashed into a sweaty, noisy, smelly bus which careered along the roads in typical Sri Lankan style )feels like being at Alton Towers without a safety harness!), we got to Weligama, a sleepy town which is very undeveloped and off the tourist trail. Because there aren't any tourists here at the moment, when you go to the usual tourist spots, you get a fair bit of hassle because people are really desperate for income. So it was lovely to find a beautiful beach and clean ocean with a little resort where the owners were just friendly and hospitable and there weren't endless troops of handicraft hawkers/beach boys/drugged guys!
We hired surf boards and a boogie board and spent a few hours messing around in the ocean. We had thought about getting surfing lessons but decided against it as was fairly pricey. To be honest it was so good to be in the water, swimming and bodysurfing the waves that I was quite happy to just do that for hours! We had lunch and drinks and sunbathed and read and then headed to Unawatuna for sunset, dinner and beer. Unawatuna is the "party town" of the South Coast and it's pretty seedy, but we ended up having a good time. Got home close to 2am which is way past my usual Sri Lankan bed time!
Feeling a little bit fragile today but nothing that rehydrating won't fix. Had to be up fairly early for a cookery lesson from Mala, who runs the kitchen at the guest house. She showed us how to make dahl, coconut sambol and a couple of vegetable curries - I already really love Mala's cooking but now will appreciate it all the more, having seen the labour that goes into it!
Have also got cricket lesson this afternoon from guest house family kids, which will no doubt be highly entertaining for them as I've never held a cricket bat in my life!
Off up to Panadura tomorrow, which is about 2 hrs on bus from here - going to do initial bit of work with women who are tryng to get community facilities developed for housing scheme (see previous post). Am looking forward to it as feels like something I can get my teeth into a bit more than current NGO I'm working with.
Got news today of foiled suicide bomb attack in Scotland which combined with London bomb scares has made me feel sad and frustrated with world. Violence all so pointless.
Love to everyone x
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