Кусочек лета Piece of summer

AirArabian flew from Donetsk, new planes, very good. spacious and comfortable seats, but for a long flight you need to take a pillow around your neck, with screens where you can watch the flight route and the time until the end of the journey. Meals were paid, the prices are moderate, tea and coffee 1.5 dollars. But it's easier for a family to take sandwiches, fruits, snacks - you can still save well. Drinking is prohibited on board. In Sharjah, we quickly received transfer tickets, waiting for 3 hours is tedious, in a dirty hall, where there is a constant turnover of all kinds of peoples. The meeting side of the Turtesses, we were waiting on the bus for 1.5 hours for a guide, we were looking for our drunken stragglers. Colombo met with a chaotic left-hand traffic, from which, after such a flight, the mind went beyond the mind. We drove for 2.5 hours, constantly honking. We turned off the main road to the hotel - dirt and poverty are striking, as, in other matters, and all the way from the airport.

The hotel is small, clean and green.

Constantly clean, wash, paint, the staff is polite, smiling. But from oh high humidity whitewash-paint, apparently, quickly become unusable. In all rooms, strong dampness, and a characteristic smell, constantly kept the room for airing, although their empty rooms are always open for airing. The bathroom is relatively new, renovated, the furniture is wooden, old, but solid. The hotel was empty, so no problem gave a room for 1m. floor - which is very convenient - access to the lawn, to the pool, the ocean and the restaurant, as well as two sun loungers and two chairs and a table - cool in the evening. The beach is small, but due to the small fullness of the hotel, there was always enough space for everyone. Wooden beds, mattresses and towels are normal. A beach boy is always eager for a tip for bringing you a mattress-towel, and is content with 30 and 100 rupees. There were a lot of mosquitoes on the street, they jammed in the evening. Take sprays, the plate in the room was changed every evening.
The bedding was changed every day, decorated with flowers, on which ants crawled in orderly rows. Towels are also changed every day, but as they wrote, they are gray, if you are squeamish, take your own. It is also advisable to bring your own towels to the beach. to. if you are going to lie down on the sand near the ocean, you can’t take out hotel ones. There are no umbrellas on the beach, but there are full thickets, but you still need to take a cream with more protection than usual, especially for white-skinned ones. We are resistant to tanning, swarthy, we never take above 10, and then, being constantly in the shade, we were thoroughly roasted every day.

The food is monotonous, especially breakfast, but you won't go hungry. Everything happened. Sharp, but it happened, and generally bland. In general, normal food is quite for 3 *. Fresh in the hotel 350 rupees, outside the hotel in cafes 200. Beer in the hotel 450, in a cafe 300, in a store 160 rupees.
We took a tuk-tuk (price from 250 to 400, and some managed to go to Kalutara for 800) and went to the city for fruit and beer. Everywhere you have to bargain, people are solid swindlers, everywhere tuk-tukers get their rollback, even if you bargain well, remember that you were fooled anyway 
Coconuts - from 30 to 100 rupees
Mango - 200 rupees 1kg, 30 rupees 1 pc. in season, December is off season.
Pineapples - from 50 to 180 rupees
Papaya - 100 rupees 1 kg.
Bananas from 40 to 160 per kg, after the Sri Lankan bananas, we do not want to eat in principle.

We went to Kandy for a tour. We weren't impressed. We left at 5 am and returned at 11 am. We watched the elephants for only 20-30 minutes, saw the jungle in a glimpse, spent most of the time in the spice garden, tea shop and jewelry store, that is, wherever the guide gets a kickback. The botanical garden is beautiful, we ran around it.

My husband liked the temple of the tooth of the Buddha, they didn’t let me in - there was a skirt to the middle of the knee, an aunt-guard, with a face that hates white women, at the entrance she stared at what I was wearing and decided not to let me in.
Tea plantation - green bushes and exhausted work, exhausted women and their hungry children, still ask for money. As for us, our Carpathians and Crimea are more beautiful in landscapes. For general development, an excursion can be useful, but it is not worth the time and money spent - $ 62 per person. + waste on buying tea, spices and other things, especially if you flew in for only 7 days. The guys were in Halle - they were also not particularly impressed, everywhere they extorted thanks. In the evening, the guide asked the number of rooms 3 times to transfer to the hotel, to leave us dinner, we arrived, there was no dinner. Thanks to Dushyan-hotel guide from Turtess, och. a nice young man, called the reception, they prepared dinner for us within 20 minutes.
He also arranged lunch boxes for us when we left.

Locals: the line of rag-sellers lined up along the fence on the one hand and sellers of excursions on the other does not in any way conducive to a relaxing holiday. You go out to the ocean through the gate, they just pull, it’s unbearable. All odes to Dima or Nissa are purely personal opinions of individuals. We didn’t encounter Nissa, but we had to with Dima - from the beginning she sings beautifully, then she gets annoying, and when she realizes that you won’t agree to his conditions: you bring me people to a restaurant and on an excursion, and I’ll feed you at a discount and for free I’ll take him on an excursion, then you quickly cease to be his friend. We had an incident - his employee got drunk and threw himself at us with a stick, they didn’t apologize to us, they were also offended that we stopped going to them for dinner. Holy simplicity is worse than theft.

There were many more small nuances, I don’t want to be negative, let everyone decide for themselves where to go for dinner and with whom to go on excursions. We dined in a quiet cozy place, 300 meters from the hotel along the coast to the left of Paradise, do not be lazy to take a walk - it's clean, tasty, quiet, no one will soar you a hundred times for a day of excursions or massages, and for the price it is much nicer than nearby neighbors. They did an Ayurvedic massage there, like even a master with a diploma, but I was not impressed. 1000-1500 rupees whole body. And in front of Paradise, there is a very cool bottom by the ocean, the water is cleaner and smaller there, the waves are softer.

As already mentioned, the ocean is as controversial as the country of Sri Lanka. Here it will lure you, then it will spin you, then it will throw you ashore, and then again it will drag you into the abyss with terrible force. You won’t be able to swim there, just jump on the waves, get a full ass of sand and a bunch of joyful sensations.
But a couple of times the wave was so strong, they didn’t risk swimming, they swam in the pool. Quite clean and the water is warm. In the ocean, the water, like in the Sea of ​ ​ Azov, is greyish, torn by sand. Azure, as in the Maldives, do not wait, it is seething all the time.

In general, the holiday was a success. The country is rapidly developing economically after the war, you need to take advantage of the opportunity of low prices now, otherwise in 5 years it may become exactly unaffordable for many at a price. We flew to Hibiscus by super last minute and bingo, glad we got it, decent hotel for a good price. With a plus to the price, you must definitely have at least 500 bucks. 25-visa, the rest quickly dissolves into gifts, purchases, meals, excursions.