Arrived!

Hmm. Not sure whether I can continue with this blog for much longer. Apparently, the Great God Google has determined that I am not where I usually am and has reset my password via my mobile phone. As most of you know, I don't use a mobile phone. Don't like 'em. Enables governments AIs, wives and corporate managers keep tags on you. So, when I log off on this post I may not be able to log back in to my Google account again.

Anyway, just reporting a safe journey without having to scrape my brains off the cabin ceiling. Reports of my TIA may well have been presumptuous. Could well be a cornea defect instead -- keratinocus, maybe. (Thanks for the driving ban, NHS!) In fact, the whole operation went quite smoothly. Taxi arrived @ 1600 GMT Totton precisely. Oman Air took us to Muscat and thence to Colombo in good haste (7 hours to Muscat; 2 hours transfer; 4 hours to Colombo -- all with a roomy 34 inch leg room and state-of-the-art entertainment system and probably the cheapest fares I could find on the Net!). A nice Sri Lankan gentleman was waiting for us at customs and drove us to our hotel along their brand new Expressway (only opened last month coincidentally in time for Prince Charles to preside over the Commonwealth Conference: it shaves an hour off the usual three and a half hour trip from the airport to Hikkaduwa). Door to door, it took around 24 hours which tends to explain why I left my debit card in the airport ATM after counting out my first batch of 20,000 Rupees.

Well, actually, 23-and-a-half hours as Sri Lanka has a strange English-like law that adds a half hour to the usual 1 hour International time zones. We plonked the bags in the room and proceeded in the tradional fashion to the hotel bar that was set in the garden next to the beach drinking £1.50 pint-bottles of Lion beer whilst listening to a couple of guys on a saxophone and Spanish guitar mutate "Hotel California" in a pleasant, laid-back, hippy sorta way.

In case the Google God forbids me access again, I'll record one last experience. Breakfast was a many and varied buffet that included the obligatory Sri Lankan curries after which we'd discovered the Germans had nicked the sunbeds from outside our door to the sea and put towels on them. War has been declared but that's another story. As there effectively was nowhere to sit in the hotel gardens by around 10 we explored the manor. A mere 100 metres down the beach we found two enormous turtles in the shallows merrily snatching up passing lime-green pieces of seaweed while being pictured by a handful of tourists ankle-deep in the reef waters. You'd have to pay a fortune for that to be staged at SeaWorld.

Now that's why we came, I realised!