We pick out the name of a hotel from our guide book, having no other knowledge of the area, and when we are driven through the gates of Nilaveli Beach Hotel it suddenly occurs to us that we might have picked the nicest hotel around and that actually it might be a little above us! This thought is confirmed when we are shown the price list of $100+ dollars a night but when we are asked if we are foreign or not, Miri shows her resident’s visa, we are shown the Sri Lankan citizen and ex-pat price list and we breathe a sigh of relief!

We are welcomed to the hotel with a glass of fresh juice and then settle down for a weekend break in a luxury hotel by the beach! Of course, we were only here because Miri needed to rest but what a nice place to rest! Thick white towels, clean sheets, air-conditioning, no mustiness, no dustiness, hot and cold water – even a kettle with tea and coffee! It may have seemed just up to standard in the UK but to us it was luxury! Along with the trees that stretched out in front of us to Nilavelli beach, the air-conditioned cabin, the swimming pool and the restaurant opening out onto the sand was a haven. The brunt of the heat that shone onto the scorching sand of our beach flowed between the trees and became a warm breeze. There was even a troupe of monkeys that hung around in the trees and came to spy on us from the branches above while we waited for a room.

So we had another holiday ;) A swim in the morning and the afternoon in between sleeping and eating. I did the eating rather than Miriam who was saddly forced to abstain from the evening buffets of all sorts of cuisine – much to her horror there was even barbecue and Chinese! I used this as an excuse to say that we’d have to come back again oneday so that she could enjoy it too ;p

Nilavelli isn’t so much of a beach resort as just a sparse string of hotels dotted along the beach after Trincomalee. The beach that belongs to the hotel, looking out at Pigeon Island, is next to a navy base which also fronts out onto the sand. In that direction there’s a ‘No Entry’ sign and in the other direction the beach is sepearated from the rest of the stretch of sand by a rope fence. While our sand was white and virtually empty apart from the odd milky white and rosy-skinned holiday-maker the other side of the rope brimmed continually with groups of school children in their white school uniforms, fully clothed families and groups of boys playing in the sea. One time a group of monks, robed in their signature orange, came bursting onto the beach, throwing off their cloaks as they ran towards the sea before diving in. That side of the beach, like the Sri Lankan side of the beach at Unawatuna, was always buzzing. The guards from our hotel would eye the few who ventured onto our side of the beach with suspicion, as if they were bound to be trouble-makers. Again, that blatant separation between the holiday-makers and the locals, between those with money and those without.

On leaving our hotel compound the culture shock was more obvious than when I first came to the country. Inside we were treated like queens by those who came from outside. Now, back into the real Sri Lanka – no sprinklers, no-one to sweep the pavements and gardens from dawn till dusk, no air-conditioned, luxury rooms to hide in, no choice between hot or cold water, no stillness or quiet – just the bare necessities, just the raw-ness of life that is prominent in everyday life in Lanka. On the way back to Trinco I wonder whether it’s right to afford ourselves such luxuries and then go back to our boy’s home and be with people who live worlds apart from our beach retreat. It’s as if we are part of two worlds, as if we have the choice to run away and hide when we are tired and weighed down by the vividness of it all while most of our Sri Lankan friends only have the choice of and have only ever known the real Lanka.

But when we do go back, there doesn’t seem to be any sense of hard-feeling. It seems that they take it for granted that being foreigners here we are going to need to escape from time to time. In fact, they seem surprised that we can cope with Sri Lanka at all – How do we cope without air conditioning, how do we cope without electricity when we go to the village? They look at us in amazement…

So, for now, we’ve found a good hide out…It also occurred to us that it might be a good place to bump into kind rich people who might give us money and cars and things like that ;p