Negombo - cricket and buffets

Drinkin' gin...not much else to do
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Negombo exists for two reasons. It has a stunning beach of perfect golden sand that goes on and on for about three or four kilometers. And it is about twenty minutes from Colombo’s international airport so is a perfect place to stay at the beginning or end of a trip to Sri Lanka.

However, as in all things in life there is a price to pay for such convenience. The downside of Negombo is that it is package holiday land gone mad. The entire four kilometers of beach are lined with hotels that service the "all inclusive" crowd with all the horrors that come with the deal such as endless buffets, organized anything (boat trips, day trips, bus trips, temple trips, elephant trips… etc) designed for people that made the effort back in their home town to book the holiday but have no intention of making one now they are here. In fact one of the strangest things about Negombo is that it has one of the best beaches in Sri Lanka (in fact one of the best beaches I have ever seen) but absolutely no-one uses it but prefer to lounge around their hotel pools instead. It is a strange sight to see swathes of stunning sand and perfect sea completely empty and unused.

Deserted Negombo Beach
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Despite all the above, we decided to stay in Negombo for the last few days of our time in Sri Lanka for two reasons.

We were getting increasingly nervous of the political situation and had already skirted around some very serious trouble (see earlier blogs) and decided to run to the safety of a tourist enclave where hopefully we would be safe (the Tamil Tigers have no history of targeting tourists).

Secondly and far more importantly, we had agreed a complete change of our travel plans and decided to blow the budget on a week’s scuba diving in the Maldives, what madness, and this meant spending a week on board a boat and unfortunately Madam gets seasick. This means she will have to take tablets while we are on board, however, we are already taking Malaria tablets which the seas sick tablets would interfere with. So we needed to get out of the Malaria zone as quickly as possible so we could stop taking the tablets before we boarded the boat in Male. Negombo fitted the bill so off we went…

After three weeks of backpacking and negotiating hotel prices, bus journeys and meals three times a day it was a real treat to crash at a nice hotel with a pool and not have to think about pretty much anything for five days. Browns Beach Hotel fitted the bill perfectly and whilst we were surrounded by "leather skinned old chavs" (I think was the phrase we decided suited our fellow guests best) and were forced to eat buffet three times a day…what the hell! We took to the culture like an Essex girl to stiletto’s and lounged around the pool with the best of them, drank beer and ate burgers and club sandwiches.

Also, by a wonderful co-incidence the test between India and Australia was on this week which did nothing to encourage us to do anything. In fact there were three days when we didn’t even leave our cabana until two in the afternoon after spending the entire morning watching the cricket..bliss! The only decisions we had to make was whether to eat, sleep or sunbathe (once the cricket was over).

We did "break out" a few times for our sanity and wandered up the road to try eating somewhere different. One evening we treated ourselves and had dinner in the local five star hotel which was fun but otherwise there is nothing more to tell you.

We ate, swam, drank and lounged for five days…and we loved it!