Carol has long wished to visit Sri Lanka, the teardrop of an island located off the coast of India, formerly known as Prince....oops, as Ceylon! We did a little research, contacted a tour company to book a car and driver, and looked into flights. We were thrilled to discover that our Singapore Airlines mileage was just enough to cover the flight including the leg from Hanoi to Singapore. cheap flights are great but free is better.
The schedule for some reason involves flying to Singapore, laying over for about five hours and then making the four hour trip to Colombo in order to arrive at midnight! A layover in Singapore is no problem as their rapid transit permits a quick and cheap ride to downtown for a meal. We visited one of our favorites, Brewerkz, which features a great selection of beer and a good burger. They have a unique pricing system for the beer, with the cheapest time being noon-3pm and the most expensive being after 8pm. Our server was considerate enough to warn us at 7:59 to enable us to give a last order before the increase.
We arrived in Colombo and were taken at around 1am to the beautiful Negombo Beach Hotel.
There seems to be some sort of cosmic rule that the quality of the hotel is inversely proportional to the time you have to enjoy it. We checked in, slept briefly and fitfully, walked on the beach, ate breakfast and left.
Our driver, Rohan, was reasonably jolly and not overly talkative, but he was more cautious than most and knew the island very well. The roads can be described in three words...worse than Vietnam! Carol felt like she was on one of those terrible amusement park rides but one that didn't end after three minutes! The roads wind and twist, are pitted with holes, and are not wide enough to accommodate two vehicles so that there is a lot of pulling over to let an oncoming car(or truck or bus) pass, making the journey about three times as long as the distance would indicate.
We left Negombo and began climbing towards tea country. Tea is the major export commodity of Sri Lanka and in the high areas it covers nearly every available inch of real estate. Rubber is also grown and we were able to see the rubber trees bagged to catch the precious liquid which is then 
transported to be processed.
When we are on the road, we often go with two meals and skip lunch. Of course Rohan needed a break from driving, so he stopped at the place where the film "The Bridge Over the River Kwai" was filmed. The location was selected because it resembled the area in Burma where the story actually took place. Burma, now known as Prince...oops Myanmar is not a very hospitable place with its 
military rulers and horrible record on human rights. There is a little restaurant where we were able to have a Coke and look down at the river. NO, Ira was NOT the only one whistling the famous "Colonel Bogey March!"
Of course everthing in life is relative and the terrible roads we were encountering were nothing compared to the path that led up to Castlereagh, the swanky bungalow we had booked for our two nights in tea growing country. Four former planters homes have been converted into guest quarters. It is possible to book a room as we did or an entire bungalow for a group. It is also possible to trek from one to the other and stay at each for a night or more. Carol had once read about staying at a tea plantation and Ira found this on the internet and booked it.
The rooms are spacious and luxuriously appointed, though they are not exactly modern as there is no air conditioning, no TV, no high speed(or other) internet. The steep tariff does include all taxes and service, breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner plus all beverages. Since it is located rather out of the way, this is a good plan as there are no restaurants and it takes a long time to get anywhere on these roads.
Of course it was pouring rain making Rohan's mood rather darker than the menacing clouds as we inched our way over the muddy, rock-filled path. He tried to get us to turn back but we urged him on and we finally arrived intact as was the car.
Most places in Asia provide accommodation for the drivers. Tea Trails had a place 7 km away but Rohan was able to talk his way into the house with the staff as he said it would be too difficult to move the car.
We resolved to spend our first day just enjoying the scenery and the food and drink. At Tea Trails(www.teatrails.com in case you'd like to see more)there are only four or five rooms in each bungalow so you must interact with the other guests. We were fortunate as there was an English couple and an Indian family(a couple, his retired parents and eight year old Liaan) who were extremely compatible. There are board games and books if you get tired of conversation so for a short stay you don't miss CNN and five year old sitcoms too much.
We were going to visit a tea factory but since it was closed for a holiday, we rode out to a couple of other bungalows and had lunch at Norwood, eight miles and about an hour away as the van crawls.
Lunch was actually delicious, though when the daily rain arrived, we had to go inside to finish our poached salmon. The chef consults with you before meals to discuss allergies, preferences, etc. When we first arrived, Damian the butler told us that we should treat Castlereagh as our home. Generally in one's home whoever prepares the meals doesn't ask but tells you what you will have and that is more or less the case although if you had a big problem, they would likely change things for you.
Tea Trails is certainly not for everyone, but for this short stay in this particular country ir proved quite enjoyable. We will let you know if there is followup from our new Indian friends. The older(we checked and they actually were older than your correspondents!)couple has been nearly everywhere but not as yet to Vietnam so perhaps we will be seeing them sometime.
Our next day was to be spent in Kandy, a smallish city with a few sights to see. We detoured through Nuruwa Aliya, located at over 6000 feet and stopped at a tea factory to learn how tea is processed, have a cup of their best BOP or broken orange pekoe and buy some tea to take home. There is one variety, silvertip, that costs 80 dollars for less than a pound! Perhaps it is really made from silver. We settled for a more modest offering and resumed our roller coaster ride on what 
they call a road.
On this trip, rather than his usual method of finding the best hotel, checking its rate and then finding what appears to be the best value that we can more or less afford, Ira opted for "charm." Tea Trails was more or less what we expected but "Helga's Folly" in Kandy, an eclectically furnished, weirdly decorated place run by the daughter of a former diplomat, proved to be more than Carol could handle. We were fortunate not to have booked a nonrefundable room and to have Rohan who called the office and within fifteen minutes had us on the road to what he described as a five-star hotel, the best in Kandy. The people at Helga's kept asking us what the problem was. We were reasonably diplomatic but the fact that there were no other guests might have tipped them off that their hotel was not necessarily the Ritz!
Actually our hotel was more like a decent budget hotel in the US, though the service was quite good and the food not bad at all. We went to a cultural show, kind of a touristy dance performance which doesn't nearly measure up to that of Bali or Cambodia. The costumes were colorful and the dancers 
energetic but probably the most excitement came from the thunderstorm that poured water on to the stage. We are not big fans of the fire eaters who also walk on hot coals, but they usually get a lot of applause.
On our last day, we had a few loose ends to clear up so we left after breakfast to visit the Temple of the Tooth. A large 
important Buddhist temple that purportedly contains a relic of the Buddha and no they don't floss it every day. In fact it is only shown every few years to a select company. Visitors are permitted to witness a ceremony and to view the gold casket in which the tooth is interred.
From Kandy we had a slightly better highway as we wound our way down towards Colombo, the capital. En route we stopped off at the Elephant Orphanage, a haven for elephants that have been abandoned. Established in 1975 with seven elephants, it now houses over 80 of the popular pachyderms. We saw them 
playing in the river, posing with goofy tourists,
and even being fed from a bottle!
There is not a whole lot to see in Colombo, so we shopped a bit and had a really good dinner at Spoons, located in the Colombo Hilton. For some reason we were given a lot of attention with the chef, who trained in France and Singapore, the manager and most of the service staff spending much of their time conversing with us. Of course, such food doesn't come cheap but it comes at a price far below that of Paris, New York or even Newtown, PA!
Our flight to Singapore left at 1:30 am arriving at about 7:30 after a 2.5 hour time change and a 3 plus hour flight. We don't quite know why they do this but as there is only one flight per day, there is nothing we could do.
We had decided to stay one day in Singapore for some shopping and relaxation so Ira was able to talk his way into the hotel where we cleaned up and then went out for badly needed coffee and a quick trip to a mall.
We had lunch at Brewerkz and then went to Kinokuniya, probably the world's largest bookshop. There are rows and rows of books on every conceivable subject and in many languages. It is quite an experience to browse and to see so many different books all in one place. Actually we didn't buy anything, partly because of the difficulty in narrowing things down and also because books have suddenly gotten extremely pricey, with most volumes going for over $20US, including paperbacks.
Instead of eating yet again at Brewerkz, we tried their wine restaurant, Wine Garage. When we stopped by to check it out, their executive chef/GM, Travis Masiero, an expat American, greeted us and chatted about the place. He came out during the dinner to check on us and to buy us a grappa afterwards. It was fun, although we can get similar food and wine in Hanoi, but not a burger and beers like Brewerkz offers.
After a night's sleep and breakfast, we took a cab to the airport for our 3 hour flight to Hanoi. The flight was overbooked and we were offered compensation to fly to Saigon and arrive a few hours later, but we preferred to just get home.
Sri Lanka was interesting, beautiful and a bit exotic and we enjoyed our few days there. As for returning, one never knows but our inclination is that we have in fact "been there and done that."
