18 To Colombo and home.

Helen writes,
We arrived in Colombo very quickly really. The road from Bentota to the capital is a fast one, at least when compared to the rest of the island. The buses are driven furiously and much less likely to give way or make space for the swarms of little tuk-tuks that we'd grown used to elsewhere.

En route to the hotel we stopped at various shops to collect our souvenirs to take home. In one, Malcolm was able to find some underpants in what he thought were his size but back at the hotel he soon discovered they were more pouch than pant!.
Our favourite shop was once again, the famous “Barefoot”. This was in the same place as it was 20 years ago when we first visited Sri Lanka but has considerably grown over the years since our last visit. Then we had bought a few toys for the babies, to give them an echo of their original home as they were growing up. Now the vibrant colours of the soft toys were the same as we remembered but the range of toys for sale had changed and expanded a lot.

May bought a selection for herself and her friends. She also bought some beautiful sarongs after much concentrated trying on and mirror checking.
Malcolm, Roshan and Neil did a little bit of desultory shopping but soon sidled off to the adjoining café for a spot of tiffin.

 Meanwhile, May and I shopped on!

We arrived at the Galle Face Hotel at lunch time but to our complete dismay our rooms weren’t ready!

 Neil stayed with us while the manager busied the staff to find us somewhere. In the event they only had one pre booked room allocated for us so May and I were upgraded into a super deluxe room - YES!

The hotel is a really interesting place. In many ways it is redolent of the old colonial days of Ceylon.

The Galle Face Hotel circa 1890

It is as different from a modern chain hotel as it is possible to get. It is definitely idiosyncratic and sometimes requires a bit of tolerance on the part of the guest but its authenticity more than makes up for that. We could easily have spent much more time there.

The Galle Face's legendary doorman K.Chattu

It is a popular venue for weddings and in the three days we were there we saw six separate wedding parties. They were very varied, some were traditional Sri Lankan affairs whilst others were considerably more westernised, even to the extent of loud discos.

We ate our dinner each evening under the night sky in the hotel’s Sea Spray restaurant where the sea lapped inches from our feet and the local fish was delicious.

 

We liked the cocktails too and often we would like them again ... and again.

In our short stay in the capital May and I somehow managed to hire the most hopeless Tutut driver in the city, who managed to get completely lost in his home city, or so he said. Luckily I had my guide book so I could tell him where we needed to go. He was very cheeky and after finally arriving where we wanted to go, tried to charge us double fare. I gave him the previously agreed amount but he shouted at us as we got out of the cab and we hastily sped away down the street.
We visited the Natural History museum and National Art Gallery. This was quite disappointing as the exhibits weren’t labeled and so we didn’t really know whose work we were looking at.
After all that excitement we needed to relax and we went to the hotel spa and had a fantastic massage then we had a swim in the hotel's sea water pool.

We felt that we’d have liked to stay much longer in the capital as it is such an enthralling place and we’d not even scratched the surface but early on Monday morning we had to head off with Neil to the airport. We felt quite sad having to say goodbye to Neil. He’d been a good guide and a reliable source of information. He’d helped tremendously in the search for the children’s birth families and we’ll never forget all that he did for us.

Our delayed flight home was a nuisance to say the least. May felt ill and needed to lie down and take it easy. Luckily Malcolm’s business class ticket allowed him into the business class lounge and he decided to ‘buy’ the rest of us into that haven of luxury.
So we spent the five hour delay quite comfortably in the comfy chairs and had a surfeit of complimentary food and drink to keep us going.
May was able to lie down on a special chair cum bed in a darkened little cabin and Roshan had a free ayurvedic foot massage, both of which helped pass the long wait for the flight.

At last we boarded the plane home. It was crammed full with every seat taken.
In economy we were cramped and uncomfortable. We tried to sleep but it was impossible.
Roshan asked, ‘how much longer?’ at least twice an hour during the ten hour flight!
Malcolm was once again pampered and cosseted in entirely undeserved comfort and lapped it all up as if born to it.

When we finally landed at Heathrow we whizzed through customs and our car was already waiting for us on the road outside the terminal.
After a few difficult moments trying to fit our much expanded luggage into the car and then after an uneventful and speedy drive back to Brighton we were soon back in our own home and comfortably snuggled in our own welcome beds, with the adventures and pleasures of the last three weeks firmly embedded in our tired but very happy memory banks.

This has been a landmark event for our little family and one that will stay with us for the rest of our lives.