We started our first morning here with a wonderful breakfast of croissants, fruit, cheese and ham and endless coffee. The hotel caters for all tastes so if we’d wished we could have had curry for breakfast yet again! We all however unashamedly chose the European options. All those who had been on the tour contributed to a collection as they arrived for breakfast and by the end of the meal we’d gathered £150 between us in sterling as a “thank you” for Sunil and Susantha. (If you can amass sufficient hard currency here you are allowed to open a western bank account which gives a better rate of interest.)
Neil is staying at the hotel with us tonight, sharing a room with his friend Ali from Oxford. All the overseas guests have now arrived from Canada, Australia, France, Italy, Germany, Holland and of course England. We were a big, happy crowd at supper this evening where the restaurant catering staff generally made a complete mess of everyone's order even though they carefully took individual orders for our special pre-wedding dinner of seafood or steak this morning. Ian had to wait for over an hour for his steak. We reckoned they’d sent a man across the river with a hatchet to bring back a buffalo as it wandered along Galle Road amidst the traffic! They meant well however and had supplied sitar players to serenade us. Generally I think we were all enjoying ourselves too much to be particularly bothered and we have the feeling that it's rather the way things function here anyway.
So in general, a lovely time was had by everyone, with the possible exception of Neil who was too keyed up about tomorrow to properly appreciate the fun. He’s also got rather sunburnt this afternoon playing handball with his friends in the hotel pool. I hope it’s calmed down by tomorrow.
There is not a great deal to do in this idyllic tropical paradise, so we decided to walk along the white sandy beach with our toes in the Indian Ocean as far as the Taj Exotica where the wedding will take place tomorrow. Ian, Margaret and I wandered in as if we were quite accustomed to such grandeur and ordered lime juice by the pool. It was cool and pleasant. Crossing the main foyer of the hotel a little later we were astonished to bump into Neil, Jeev and Kalinga who were delivering flowers ready for tomorrow. We just happened to pass through whilst they were there! They then left to deliver everyone’s wedding clothes to Ceysands – none of us had wanted to carry them around on the tour with us - and we walked down from the Taj through Bentota to Aluthgama on the Galle Road.
We stepped out through the glass doors of the hotel, held open for us by a uniformed doorman, into the waiting arms of taxi and tuc-tuc drivers fighting for our custom. It was quite beyond their comprehension that three white people might prefer to walk thank you.
Then the “hello how are you, nice day” touts and wannabe guides started to swarm. Five or six of them were all independently pestering us at the same time, wanting to show us their “very nice town” in their unique, Sri Lankan manner of total make- believe mixed with the patently obvious. “This is hospital” we were informed as we passed the Bentota Surf Hotel. “You cross road here”, as we passed a zebra crossing. Whether or not we wanted to didn’t seem to matter! Time and again attempts were made to lead us into “good short-cut” (to where?) Then Ian waved our map under their noses. “You got map” they observed. Next we tried completely ignoring them. Fifteen minutes later they were still following us, pointing out the obvious and inventing the rest.
The railway line divides the holiday paradise on the seaward side from the real world of the local people on the other. The contrast could not be more marked. Every little open-fronted shack – they couldn’t really be described as shops – wanted us to enter to look. Mainly they sold vegetables or spices. The chilli powder tubs were seething with red ants! No wonder it was such hot stuff!
Many of these stores had open barrels of tiny sprats stinking in the hot sun just feet away from the open main drain of Galle Road. As we approached, clouds of black flies rose from the barrels. Dogs clambered in and out of bins and plastic bags of rubbish. A cow lay in the road and goats ran amongst the street stalls. There was dirt, dust, rubble and filth everywhere we looked. I cannot understand why cholera isn’t rife. Asian music blared from the interiors of the shacks. In the midst of it all people queued in the blazing sun for a hot crowded place on one of the local buses to Colombo.
Funnily enough, here in the real world we were pestered far less than in the tourist areas or around the Taj. We were objects of curiosity but the ordinary people generally accepted us at face value. They were eager to invite us to buy their goods but did not seem intent on cheating or deceiving us.
We walked the half mile length of the main town of Aluthgama and continued on to the German owned “tea shop” we had visited on our initial visit to Bentota with Jeev and her family when we first arrived. Here Margaret treated us to an enormous plate of curried “short eats” with bottles of iced water. It was wonderful. Unpretentious but clean, full of local people and served by charming waitresses. The total bill for the three of us was 250 rupees (about £1.40)
We returned back along the Galle Road and turned off down to the landing stage for the boat back across the river to Ceysands. Here we saw a smallish monitor lizard slide slowly into the water and swim gracefully away, more at home in the river than on land. The rest of the afternoon was spent playing handball in the pool with the young wedding guests who seemed very happy to accept us into the game. Marc turned up, having travelled the length and breadth of Sri Lanka. He seems to be having a great time and fits in well with everyone here. He was a great asset in goal during the water handball.
We all collected our wedding clothes from Darren who’d taken delivery of them all from Neil and Jeev. We then drove the poor hotel staff demented as we moved an iron and ironing board from room to room around the hotel. I’m sure they’d have ironed everything for us if we’d asked but none of us wanted to risk accidents with clothes for a special occasion. If we did it ourselves we couldn’t blame anyone.
The Sri Lankan mind appears to work rather differently from ours. Generally it seems not to have a very good grasp of logic or lateral thinking. It's something we’ve noticed on a number of occasions with the hotel staff since we’ve been here, although they are all very friendly and helpful. You ask for an iron to be sent to your room and you get an iron. You then request an ironing board to go with it! Knowing the rooms are not supplied with either, logic might suggest the two would be useful together! In each room there is a hairdryer but the plug is not compatible with the socket and there are no adapters in the rooms. You buy twenty stamps at seventeen rupees each. It takes
three staff and a calculator to work out the bill and the stamps have to be individually counted from the sheet, whereas we’d mentally see it as four rows of five. The same sense of insecurity and reasoning affects the way meal orders are taken with multiple chits to be signed for individual items rather than everything being added to the same bill and the lot signed for at once. (AND each chit is signed in triplicate!)
This manner of thinking was continued at supper this evening. We all enjoyed the evening very much but there was general chaos with the meals and the bills because of staff misunderstandings, either with each other or with our requests. The strange logic continued after supper too when we were offered complimentary bottles of wine! It was a lovely gesture but totally mistimed as several of us had already paid for bottles to have with the meal!
At 7pm we held a “council of war” in our room where Neil talked through with Darren, Ian, Margaret, Kate and Rob, and me our roles in the wedding ceremony tomorrow. Whilst we read through and discussed the notes Jeev had prepared for us someone came in to make our bed look beautiful for the night with temple flowers. There were four of us sitting in the middle of the huge bed as we were a bit short on chairs. He carefully tucked the sheet in all around the edges and smoothed out the pillows whilst we continued our discussion! The bed routine couldn't be missed for once! It was his job and he had to do it no matter what!
Well it’s midnight. In a few hours we will take the ferry across the river and a taxi to the Taj where we will change and have the official photos taken before the wedding at exactly 10.36am. Jeev has a couple of friends who have volunteered to hide inconspicuously amongst us to push and prod us into the right place at the right time. Wearing saris, being half our height and with considerably browner skin I’m not sure how inconspicuous they are likely to be! Ian’s now learnt his speech in Sinhala. It’s all a very strange feeling. I must get to bed now. I hope Neil is sleeping okay, he’s so wound-up!
