After returning to Negombo after our lil escapade in Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa, and after failing to complete the diving degree we aimed for, we still had a couple days left in Negombo before storming to new adventures.

We ended up in this rather decent hostel on the opposing end of Negombo beach from our previous accommodation. It had one feature that was more than welcome after all these days in Sri Lanka, Hot. Water.! If you have ever been without hot water for 3½ weeks, you’ll know exactly what I mean. The bliss! You prefer not to leave the shower for ages and ages, not before your pruning has pruning of its own. And as we found out after couple nights, the hostel also has this cute lil terrace up on the roof, just far enough above the noise of the street and far enough above the rooftops to see the ocean. Ofc the furniture was your basic plastic yard furniture, but even that did the job more than well enough when you went up there with a bottle of wine.

The last day of our stay in Sri Lanka, we visited central Negombo and it was just as sad as we thought it would be based on the description of the guide book. We got the post cards finally send though, some souvenirs bought and visited a semi highly regarded cafe and the local fish market. The cafe was definitely overrated from our perspective, it took well over an hour to get the sub-par chocolate cake, iced tea and ice cream we ordered – and as the cherry on top, the ice cream had been partially defrosted and frozen again. The fish market seemed somewhat more exciting with all the different kinds of fresh fish and crusteans on sale and with the large reed mats lying around loaded with drying fish.

And when the time to leave came, Sri Lanka showed its true nature once again, the airport was such a mess, even as we had already made our check-ins couple nights before. We had to go through not one, not two, but three security checks and the check-in desks opened (including the darn baggage drop) opened only five hours before the fight. This meant a lot of waiting for us as my flight left a few hours after Jennys. And even as we were supposed to have like an hour to grab a meal before Jenny had to board the plane, the monitors claimed that the boarding had started as soon as we passed the immigration – and it turned out that they were “boarding” the waiting room, past the last security checks and had to wait that hour there. So I was forced to wait alone in the hallway for several hours (as our waiting room did not “board” before 10mins before the actual boarding). During that time I also found out that the airport had a habit of changing the gate without informing the passengers about it, not that there were any info monitors in our end of the airport anyways. I gladly did not suffer that, but the passengers of a flight to India were herded into their new waiting room like “what are you still doing here, the gate has changed and the plane is boarding already” and this happened several times before anyone though of making an announcement about it… Well, never the less, I got eventually onto my flight and towards a new continent.