Day 11 - Tuesday 29th January

There were no early morning commitments today and so we were able to sleep in. We went across to the hotel restaurant for breakfast just after 8:30am. Once outside, we noticed that it was warmer than most mornings on our holiday - it was already 25C.

It was good not having to rush breakfast. I had an omelette from the egg station cook and had time for two cups of coffee.

We heard that Neil had told someone in our group that part of this morning's outing would include a visit to a sacred site. Therefore, several of us had to change from shorts to ensure that our knees were covered. At least he told us today and we could avoid the problem we had at the sacred sites yesterday.

Neil had given us various times for our departure this morning: 9:30, 9:45 and 10:00. The most recent one we heard was 9:45 but when we got to the reception area, we found out that it had changed to 10am again. Apparently, the chef was coming with us and his shift didn't finish until 10am.

This morning's outing would be an optional 3km walk to a nearby village to observe local culture. Most people had decided to come on the walk but a few decided to stay at the hotel to relax and have a swim.

When we set off, the receptionist had joined the group as well as the chef. The first part of the walking journey was on the dirt road that we'd driven along before in the bus. Then we got onto narrower paths.

After a while, we came across a hut near the rice fields and stopped there for more than half an hour. The farmer answered questions for us (with Neil translating) and then offered us local food and drinks.

Also present were the farmer's wife, small daughter, sister and another man.

The walls of the hut seemed to be made with dried mud and had a timber structure with a metal sheet roof. There was a timber ladder leading up to a bedroom above the hut. Several of our group climbed up to have a look.

We had the opportunity to walk into the farmer's field where we came across a man cutting down the tall grass. Brian offered to try it for himself and borrowed the implement.

The farmer stayed with us as we continued on our journey past various waterways and a large lake. Several times, the farmer waded into the water to retrieve water lilies with which he and the chef made necklaces for us to wear.

They had to help us going down some slopes and across narrow streets until we reached a religious area. There we took off our shoes and hats before being shown into the chapel and other buildings.

Further on, we came to the village where they sat us down on plastic chairs and cut up coconuts in front of us. This coconut juice seemed sweeter than the ones we had enjoyed several days ago.

Village people stood around and watched. One woman was carrying a very small baby.

By this time, we had almost come full circle and we walked back along the dirt road to our hotel. We were back by about 12:45pm - even earlier than Neil had promised. By this time it was over 30C and there were threatening dark clouds above the hotel.

It had been an excellent excursion giving us a much better picture of how people live in this part of the world. A morning well spent.

Lunch was scheduled for 1pm but it turned out to be 1:20pm. For a change, it wasn't a buffet. We sat at a long table and the staff brought dishes of food to the table. Once again, most of us had Lion lager. Suzy had a G&T.

Looking out on the grass beyond the pool, we could see monkeys playing on the lawn and jumping into the trees - sometimes being chased by one of the dogs. It became obvious why the staff insisted on keeping the doors and shutters closed in our rooms to ensure the monkeys did not run off with items from the room.

The rest of the day had no commitments and so we were free to go back to our rooms. Some people enjoyed a swim in the pool.

Just after 7pm, we went to find the rest of our group. As we expected, they were in the lounge on the bridge above the driveway enjoying a drink. We ordered a couple of glasses of the house red which was a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon.

Then we moved downstairs to have dinner in the restaurant. Once again, we were at tables on the lawn outside the restaurant. They had set out three round tables for us with candles.

We asked the wine waiter for a bottle of the house red that we'd just had upstairs with two glasses. He didn't understand. He kept on coming back to ask us again. He was convinced that we wanted two more glasses like we'd had upstairs. We kept on repeated "full bottle" without success. This pantomime continued for about 20 minutes and he returned to us about a dozen times before we eventually got a bottle of wine. It almost certainly wasn't the wine we'd had upstairs. He apologised and said his English is not very good to which I said my Sinhalse isn't too good.

It was another enjoyable buffet dinner with excellent chocolate dessert.

Because of the candle-lit lighting, Suzy kept using the flashlight app on her iPhone to see what she was eating. I was just happy to eat whatever ended up on my fork. Once again, the hotel general manager was hovering making sure that guests were happy.