Last September I visited Sri Lanka on the Singapore Airlines #squadSQ trip. I drove all over the island nation with a guide zipping to and from places like Colombo, Sigiriya, Dambulla, and Kandy. The second last stop on this whirlwind road trip was Galle.
Kandy Tea Plantation
Being a road trip though, we make several stops to make it a bit more interesting. The first stop of the day was at a tea plantation not far out of Kandy. Unfortunately, it was just a tea factory and I didn’t really spend any time actually in the actual plantation around trees or anything. I did see a stack of machines producing the tea leaves and did learn a little about the tea making process. It was pretty amazing that there are so many different varieties and qualities all from the same type of tea tree.
Afterwards I had a black tea on the house which, as far as tea goes, was actually really good. I’m no tea expert, I’ll drink my black tea with milk and enjoy it, but I generally couldn’t tell one English breakfast from another. But this one was noticeably better. I drank my tea and bought some tea to take back home.
The Drive South
Galle is located on the south of the Sri Lankan island. It is close to Unawatuna Beach and just a short drive from Mirissa, which is known for Coconut Tree Hill. It was a good few hours away from the tea plantation so my guide and I had a good few hours before we hit anything exciting. We passed Colombo and the drive south from here was the lushest I’ve seen yet. We actually got on the freeway where we could finally go 100km/h and tuk-tuks and bikes were not allowed. It felt like the population is much sparser down here but I’m sure that’s because we are bypassing it all on the freeway.
Since I’m pretty done with buffets for a while, I asked if my guide to please take me somewhere different for lunch not a standard buffet full of tour bus tourists. It’s not that the food at those has been bad, and it hasn’t been expensive. I just want to see how locals eat and order from a menu rather than a bain-Marie. We stopped at what he called a service centre, which was just a food court with a car park by the freeway. Similar concept to in America, and to a lesser extent what we have in some places in Australia. I got some sort of fried rice with chicken in what tasted like a sweet and sour sauce.
Galle Fort
We arrived at Galle at around 2 pm and headed straight to the Fort. Galle is built around an historic fort that has shifted control between the Dutch and British over the years, depending on who ruled.
My guide parked and we had a walk through the Dutch Methodist Church and the British All Saints Church. The sun was out in force by now and it only took a few minutes to realise I needed to cream up and fast. The two of us walked out past Black Fort which gave a lovely view out to the north and east of the harbour.
Without Thushith, I walked down to the (former) Dutch Hospital, which is now made up of restaurants, (so I’m not really sure where the Dutch go to hospital now). I considered grabbing a beer but I’m running low on cash dollars and I said I’d meetThushith in 45 minutes a walk away. I walked down Hospital Road to Galle Lighthouse and around past the Meera Mosque.
Sri Lanka has really surprised me with their religion. It really is the poster child of co-existence and a lot of countries could take note on tolerance here. This is one example, within this one fort, within a few hundred metres of each other is a Methodist church, a Church of England, and a Mosque. In Kandy, there’s a Hindu temple and a Buddhist temple within the same walled grounds, and this is not the only time I’ve noticed that Hindu and Muslim temples are on the same piece of land. Every timeThushith speaks about a religion other than his own (Buddhism), it is with respect and understanding. Meanwhile… well to get into comparisons here would be unproductive. Back to Galle.
Walking Tour of the Galle Fort
I walked down to Flag Bastion and took a few photos of the area, and even though it was bright, I was really happy with how the photos were coming out. There’s nothing worse than an overcast day that just blows the exposure on every shot. The Flag Bastion is one of many bastions around the fort, this guide to Galle Fort goes into greater detail. I hopped in the car and Thushith drove us up to the clock tower (built in 1882) near the main gate.
Up on the wall, there was an amazing few of Galle International Cricket Stadium. The stadium didn’t look like much, I’d compare it to Number 1 sports ground in Newcastle (which will mean nothing to most people reading this). Basically, there was a small stadium and for the most part, the ground was surrounded by a small mound on which people can stand to watch for about 200 rupees.
That description is important because Sri Lanka will host international cricket test matches here, and it will only fit a few thousand. Wikipedia says the capacity is 35,000 but I’ll believe that when I see it. Thushith said that people will come up to the Fort gate with folding chairs and watch because it’s actually a pretty sick view of the ground from here. I mean, a view like that this at the Sydney Cricket Ground would run for like $50 and here they are just watching from a public place. The fence around the ground was just chicken wire so even if you watched from there the view would be pretty good.
Turtle Sanctuary
This concluded the tour and we headed back north out of Galle, up the coast toward Bentota, where my next hotel was situated. On the way we stopped off at a turtle hatchery where turtle eggs are buried and hatched, and after 3 days the baby turtles are released into the wild as nature intended. The centre also acts as a rescue centre for injured turtles that have been injured by boat propellers or fishing line.
There were a number of turtles that sadly only had 3 flippers and were being rehabilitated to be re-released back to the wild. When the turtle is received the water level of the tank will start low and they will slowly increase the water level until the turtle is able to swim to the surface with its remaining 3 limbs to breathe. They looked a bit sad, because some of the turtles were huge, but it’s good that they are being cared for. This was another example — much like Pinnawalla Elephant Orphanage — where the animals are being cared for, but they sell tickets to tourists to fund the operation. The entrance fee for this one was a mere 500 rupees, or around $5, which was more than worth seeing some baby turtles and supporting what looked like a pretty noble cause.
A couple of minutes from the hotel we stopped at a wine store in Bentota so I could avoid paying mini bar prices. They are called wine stores because for some reason they aren’t to allowed to be called liquor stores, even though they sell all kinds of liquor like any good liquor shop. Weird. Anyway, Tujit was telling me about a few variants of Lion that the brewery do including an 8.8% version of the lager and a stout. I got both plus a strong ale and then impulse bought a bottle of Arrack.
Arrack is a spirit distilled from coconuts (what else?) and is popular in Sri Lanka. I haven’t tried any yet, but I pointed that looked kinda fancy that had a label of about $10 on it and I said to the guy “hey is that arrack any good?” He replied “yep” so I said, “I’ll have one of them as well”. All up the 3 beers plus the Arrack cost me 1680 rupees, or around $14.
[For the record, the prices that I am being charged on my Bankwest Mastercard are soooo much better than the rate I got when I bought physical cash money from Travelex. Travelex, if you’re reading this, go and get stuffed with your crappy rates. Even the time I took money out of an international ATM cost me less than buying real cash money over the country.]
Taj Bentota Hotel
We arrived at the Taj Bentota Resort and Spa around 5:30, which is the earliest we have arrived at any so far. As usual, I was welcomed by someone senior, this time it was the executive chef, who lamented the fact that I arrived so late. I agreed with him, but with 6 hours of driving plus sightseeing and content creating for Singapore Airlines, unfortunately, there’s not a lot I can do about this.
Unfortunately, this is not a grand tour of Sri Lanka’s best hotels, that’s just a happy byproduct. The hotels I’ve stayed in, the Taj Bentota Hotel and Spa inclusive, have been pretty special though. I’ve been treated like absolute royalty by everyone involved from the welcome staff, to those at the restaurants, the guys at Aitken Spence (I got a personal phone call from the General Manager today actually), and especially the guys at Singapore Airlines.
Getting to the hotel early was nice. I cracked a beer on my balcony and watched the sun go down, then panicked because I wanted to take some photos of it but hadn’t yet. Then I went for my usual wander and took a few more golden hour photos around the pool.
Dinner was at the Shack, which was a seafood a la carte restaurant on site, one of three in fact plus the buffet. It’s an outside restaurant, with tables set up on the lawn and under the roof of the shack for those wanting a touch more shelter. Dinner was by candlelight and was 4 courses, not including the bread basket, but definitely including a single, crumbed prawn as an hors d’ourvres, greek salad, pumpkin soup (my favourite!) and then the fish that I had chosen from the display on ice. I chose red snapper because I know this to be a delicious fish and it was absolutely divine. It was cooked to perfection in what I guessed was a garlic white wine sauce. There was a trio of dips on the side which it hardly needed plus a lime because, well, who doesn’t love lime on their fish? And on the side of that was steamed vegetables and potato. Easily, easily, the best dinner I’ve had on this trip so far.
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