Elephants on the Beach aka Sri Lankan Vacation

Where to begin? Well transportation. I had called our driver and negotiated a price and pick up time. He arrived much to my horror, initially, in a trishaw. Wasn't my idea of a two hour trip. I envisioned watching a movie on my netbook in air conditioned surroundings. Being that we hardly went any faster than 35mph or so it really didn't matter. We loaded up his trishaw and hit the road south.

It was interesting to see the landscape change the further south we went. We passed many towns with tsunami damage and both remnants of buildings and homes and shacks that people were still living in.

Another thing was the number of cows walking along the road, many of them. They are considered sacred by the Hindu's.

Our driver pulled off the road at a king coconut stand and treated us to coconuts to drink, very delicious and refreshing. The vendor then chopped the coconut in half and made a small spoon out of the coconut to scrape the meat with. We jumped back in the trishaw for the rest of the trip.

We arrived at Jetwing Tropical Villas right on time. At check in papaya juice was brought to us and our driver. The hotel staff gave us the hard sell for a $50 per person New Years Eve buffet, we passed.

Our room was of decent size, but sparsely furnished, make that not furnished? There was a closet but that's about it.

I won't go on about the hotel, everything else was booked up and they had rooms for only $60 per night with breakfast so we shouldn't complain. On the other hand we won't go back either.

My mission was to spend lots of time riding the waves on my boogie board, that turned out to be disappointing as the waves closed very quickly so what rides I did get were short lived.

The beach itself was nice, the atmosphere wasn't. You had vendors approaching you every few minutes being your sitting on a blanket or walking. They were easy enough to dismiss with a wave or “No thanks”, but the beggars sometimes tended to be a little bit more in your face.

We did get to enjoy a candlelit dinner on the beach, complete with mosquito bites every couple of minutes. The atmosphere was nice, but the menu's were pretty much all the same and lackluster wherever we went and the food overall was bland.

Oh, the elephant on the beach. Yes there was a man who offered elephant rides on the beach, also a guy with a horse, a guy who offered to take pictures with his monkey and or python snake. Pictures with the dogs were free.

We were glad to go on our last day. I settled the room service bill, not bad, around $38, considering $11 was for a dinner buffet I had (And wish I hadn't).

Opening the door the apartment and feeling the air conditioning was the best part of the trip.

Taco Rice and Cheese Redux

I've blogged about this before, one of my all time favorite meals, taco rice and cheese. I found this in Kinville in Okinawa. Honestly, it's probably nothing but cheap bar food to fill Marines belly's, but we liked it.

The classic taco rice and cheese is a bed of sticky white rice, topped with a healthy portion of taco meat, covered in shredded cheddar cheese. Aside from the States we have yet to fully duplicate that recipe.

In Montevideo it was the cheese. There was no sharp cheddar anywhere. Only white cheese.

Here, we can get the ground beef, but it's frozen Australian beef and it's already salted. Don't get me wrong it really is good tasting beef, but a bit hard to get the seasoning right. Again, no sharp cheddar cheese, but the white cheese we used fit the bill. On a health kick we used red long grain rice. I didn't think I would like it but it was very good.

On the side we had a bean salad with chopped bits of pineapple, onion, red and yellow pepper, jabanero mango hot sauce and coconut oil. All that was missing was some cilantro, it was till very delicious.

Now go out and have some taco rice and cheese!

Meat Sri Lankan (Expat) Style

Just finished eating a turkey burger, probably one of the few burgers I've had since I've been here.
We purchased it from the store at work, much like we purchase most of our meat. It comes from Australia, it's frozen and vacuum packed. There is a pretty decent selection, and the brats and other sausages are really great.

We had made an order for some meat and it was pretty expensive. The turkey burgers were individually sealed, nice, but they were also seasoned and had its fair share of filling. They looked small but surprisingly one burger each filled us up.

The grocery store does have a meat counter, but we have yet to purchase anything there. It's mostly chicken and mutton and ground mutton. The beef comes from Australia and again, it's expensive.

There are butchers at the local market, but judging by the smell we will never buy anything there, that and just walking through the place gives you the creeps.

The Food Feast

So we were on the way to the Galle Face hotel for sandwiches by the pool and book reading on the their little beach, or so we thought. We both mentioned that we were really hungry and the lunch buffet was still a good option, we would look at that.

We arrive at the hotel and head towards the buffet and notice that it's done up much more festive than usual. Then we notice the selection was certainly not the usual fair, and then I realized, this was a special lunch buffet.

I knew that this was not going to be priced on par with the usual lunch buffet, probably closer to double that price, but worth it. Unfortunately the hostess was not able to seat us at our usual sitting area with great views of the ocean, in fact many of the tables had reserved cards on them. She had to seat us at an overflow section but that was okay as it was the dining room area of the hotels fanciest restaurant.

The food selection was so great it was difficult at best where to begin, but I found a way! Amongst the many stations was a prawns and calamari tempura chef, pasta chef, omelet chef, Mongolian bbq chef, shaved chicken schwarma chef (Not like any pita you've had in your life), lamb and turkey carving, cheeses, salads, juices and that's not including the hot plate items on the other side, the dessert display and the ice cream chef with all of the gooey stuff.

We ended up staying almost three hours! Two main course plates, ate fairly slowly, coffee and desserts later.

I thought we would need a tri-shaw ride home but we made it!

And here are the pictures: Dessert plate, bread display, orange mousse in shot glasses.