Sri Lanka Part 2 – Galle to Weligama

Days  3 -5  Weligama

Despite the crappy night’s sleep I had (thanks, my furry long-tailed friends), I summoned up the energy to put on my running shoes and head out for a run around the walls. It was around 8 am, and already the heat and humidity was up there. Luckily there was a cooling breeze along the walls, which made the run bearable. It’s seems that Galle is a popular spot for weddings, as I passed several parties of wedding-goers all dressed up for photos around the old town. I guess they do the photo shoots early as it’s simply too hot after 9-10 am.

Having learnt our lesson from the previous day, we sagely ordered two tuk-tuks from our guest house owner, and found ourselves at the railway station in a blink. We bought tickets for the short train journey to Weligama, and sat down to wait. The ticket vendor had knowledgeably informed us that our train would leave from platform 2. A few minutes later, a train pulls into platform 1, and hordes of tourists stream past us towards the exit. “Hmmm….” I think to myself, “All these people are getting off here but the train is going towards Colombo? Doesn’t sound right.” I asked a passenger that had just disembarked, and they informed me that they had, in fact, just come from Colombo, which meant that this was our train, heading further down the line. So much for authoritative-sounding ticket vendors!

We sat at the back of the train, which was pretty empty now that the hordes had gotten off at Galle. The train got up to a fair clip, and the last carriage where we were sat swayed somewhat alarmingly from side to side. It was a bit like riding on a rickety old roller-coaster, but on the flat!

We got off at Weligama station, and witnessed our first tuk-tuk accident: the driver had been going too fast and swerved to avoid a bicycle. The tuk-tuk ended up on its side, but nothing serious. We then had to find two drivers to take us to our resort. The guys we asked had no idea where it was, which should have been our first clue that we had booked another lemon. We looked on Google Maps and gave the driver another name of a place nearby, and off we went. After a few U-turns and asking around, we ended up down a narrow alleyway (again!), and there it was in all its glory – The Grand Nest Resort.

Turns out it was a home-stay house in a small enclosed yard, and all the family (mum, dad, 2+ kids, and grandad!) were living in a sort of lean-to off the side of the house we had rented. The restaurant was an outdoor makeshift kitchen on the lean-to bit. Not sure where they all slept, but we didn’t want to know. The seating for the restaurant was a picnic table under a small canvas sunshade. The lawn was patchy, and a few sad-looking plants were strewn about the yard. Using the word “resort” to describe the place was pushing poetic license to its absolute limit. Things were about to get worse as the guy showed us around the accommodations of the “resort”….

No AC meant it was baking hot, especially the windowless excuse for a kitchen, which must have been 40 degrees plus! In a small trash can were a few half-dead cockroaches. The bathroom was very grimy and was is bad need of some new fittings and fixtures. There was a tiny bedroom downstairs, but it reeked so badly of damp and mold that I forbade anyone from sleeping there! Upstairs were two small bedrooms, with a small balcony. The view from there was worth a photo! (see below)

Sophie had resigned herself to our fate – we had booked and paid for THREE NIGHTS in this shithole! “Plenty of space though…” she said to me in a vain attempt to lift my gloomy mood. We decided to go for a walk on the beach to cheer ourselves up. We went back along the alleyway, past the entrance to a nice new hotel called The Surfer, where backpackers sunned themselves in loungers around a nice, cool, swimming pool. I could hear the groans from the kids. We walked past a few building sites, and a few derelict buildings, interspersed with random debris, and there we were: Weligama beach! It was actually quite a nice beach, this end being a lot less developed than the western end of Weligama Bay.

The stroll along the beach had somewhat lifted our spirits, and we managed to summon the energy to get a tuk-tuk back into town to do some grocery shopping. After all, we had a kitchen! We bought a huge box of Corn Flakes, bread and eggs for breakfast, along with veggies, cheese, butter etc. for sandwiches. We were sorted for the next 3 days for breakfasts and lunches. We had also found the beer store and bought six large bottles of Lion Lager, two of which were for immediate consumption upon our return to the “resort”.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing at the beach, and in the evening went walking along the beach to find a place for dinner. We found a nice quiet place with tables set on the sand, and enjoyed a nice dinner under the stars. The temperature was perfect, light winds, and the stars were out. How could we be miserable, sitting there under the stars, listening to the waves while tucking into excellent vegetable fried rice?

Our misery returned quite soon after we got back to our “resort”: the neighbours had decided to burn a big pile of leaves and god knows what. Dense smoke was billowing across our building, so we had to quickly close all the windows in the already backing hot rooms. Already exhausted from our lack of sleep the previous night, we all turned in early, hoping to get a decent kip.

Due to the suffocating heat in the rooms, none of us slept well, and to top it off, we were woken before sunrise by a cockerel followed by a muezzin calling to prayer. Luckily, overnight the kitchen had cooled down and we could actually go in there and make breakfast. Just as we were finishing our breakfast, we smelled smoke in the kitchen. I went outside to look, and the family had started a fire in the lean-to, and smoke was billowing out from there and also right into the house. Pretty soon the downstairs was full of smoke, so we decided to get our swimming stuff on and go for a walk towards the busy end of the beach, where the surfers were. Gregory mentioned to me that he had a bunch of mosquito bites during the night. I found that a bit strange, since we had mosquito nets in both rooms, and I had no bites.

We got to the surfing zone, and found a spot to sit. I decided it was a good time to walk into town and get some information on taxis to our next destination, Tissamaharama. After 15 minutes, I get a phone call from Sophie. It goes like this:

Me – “Hi dear, what’s up?”

Sophie – “I’ve just examined the kids. They are covered in bed bug bites! We need to get the hell outta that shithole immediately!”

Me – “Excellent idea, cherie! I’ll start looking right away.” (with a big grin to myself).

So, we both began to hunt for accommodation. Sophie called me a few minutes later and told me she had found a place next to the beach with a family room available for 2 nights. It was right in the middle of the surf zone, but it had a little fenced-off garden with tables and chairs in the shade. The place is called Bay View Weligama and it was like a palace compared to our “resort”! And cheaper too. We asked the manager to keep the room for us until we returned, and off we went, back to pack our bags and make a quick getaway!

We got back to the “resort” and realised that we had just bought 3 days worth of food, which we would have nowhere to put at the guest house (no fridge). It was about lunchtime, so we decided to have the mother of all lunches and cram as much food down us as we could manage, so that we would leave as little as possible there. We had a bunch of cheese and cucumber sandwiches, washed down with beer, and fresh pineapple and mini bananas for dessert. In the end, we left only the cornflakes, eggs, and the milk and butter in the fridge.

After lunch, we finished packing and had to make our great escape. This was going to be difficult, we thought, because there was always one or two family members hanging around the yard. We didn’t want to get into a long discussion with the guy either, so we aimed to leave like thieves in the night – silently and without fuss. We chose our moment well, because nobody followed us or said a word as we legged it up the alleyway dragging our cases and bags of shopping with us. Perhaps they were half expecting it? We jumped into two tuk-tuks and were whisked away to our new abode.

Our second and third nights in Weligama were much more tranquil and without incident. We actually managed to relax for a bit, before hitting the road to our next destination, the town of Tissamaharama, about 140 km east of Weligama.

In conclusion to this saga, we learned our lesson about not putting too much faith in reviews. We booked the “resort” on the agoda.com website, and the ratings came from there. If we had checked a different site such as TripAdvisor.com, we would have known something was amiss, since the Grand Nest Resort is conspicuously absent… To be fair, agoda.com refunded us two of the three nights we had pre-paid after we wrote to them and complained, so all’s well that ends well!

I will continue this series in Part 3 – Tissa to Ella. Stay tuned!