VERY quiet here. Pretty much nothing going on apart from the locals and some dogs. Arrived with nothing booked and walked up and down the high street speaking to locals. The room rates here seem to vary wildly. This town has (apparently) one of the top 10 surfing breaks in the world, and regularly holds competitions. The best surf is in May, but some guest houses hold their high prices all season. Have they never heard of supply and demand?
I bargained hard and got a 700 rupee room on the beach. I later ask about the tsunami and how it affected him. He tells me that it flattened his house and business and 5m of water gushing over the beach nearly killed his family - they managed to get inland quickly. The tsunami only reached 100m inland. Nothing near the scale of Thailand but equally terrifying. I felt bad about bargaining hard and in the end I paid a little extra.
The beach is wild. You can see the hyped offshore break and there's a few surfers pootling about on it but it was small. I walk miles down the coast accompanied by a pair of rowdy dogs! There's lots of tsunami damage: house foundations, broken trees and even black palm trees, though i'm not sure how they got to be this colour. Found what I thought was a football washed up on the beach, but was a fully inflated puffa fish.
In the evening had a real German beer in a Thai bar owned by a real German and his Thai (I can only assume) wife! Delicious. Grabbed some incredibly spicy (and cheap) rice and curry from a local hotel over the road and went back to the room. Not much else to do!
I think my little toe was up against the mosquito net in the night as it got painfully munched.
Next day, had another trust episode with Sri Lankan men while waiting for a bus. I was 99% sure the bus came this way, but got told by tuk-tuk drivers, and locals who had tuk-tuk driver friends, that there was no bus, or the bus wasn't until the evening. I shrugged them off then later a lady hotel owner came over and told me that there IS a bus and it'll be there at 11:30. Sure enough 11:30 came and so did the bus. I'm now only speaking with women!
You can see all of the photo's here
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| The high street |
The beach is wild. You can see the hyped offshore break and there's a few surfers pootling about on it but it was small. I walk miles down the coast accompanied by a pair of rowdy dogs! There's lots of tsunami damage: house foundations, broken trees and even black palm trees, though i'm not sure how they got to be this colour. Found what I thought was a football washed up on the beach, but was a fully inflated puffa fish.
In the evening had a real German beer in a Thai bar owned by a real German and his Thai (I can only assume) wife! Delicious. Grabbed some incredibly spicy (and cheap) rice and curry from a local hotel over the road and went back to the room. Not much else to do!
I think my little toe was up against the mosquito net in the night as it got painfully munched.
Next day, had another trust episode with Sri Lankan men while waiting for a bus. I was 99% sure the bus came this way, but got told by tuk-tuk drivers, and locals who had tuk-tuk driver friends, that there was no bus, or the bus wasn't until the evening. I shrugged them off then later a lady hotel owner came over and told me that there IS a bus and it'll be there at 11:30. Sure enough 11:30 came and so did the bus. I'm now only speaking with women!
You can see all of the photo's here
