Day 5 – 25 January 2019

Sri Lanka – Mirissa

Mirissa Beach Inn

Total Spent 12,600 LKR ($96)

Another beach day. 

We went back to No1 Dewimi Roti Shop to try a traditional Sri Lankan breakfast of string hoppers, dhal and coconut sambal. I imagine anyone who doesn’t like spice would struggle to enjoy authentic food here. The string hoppers were little nests of vermicelli noodles which were served with a spicy lentil dhal and the coconut sambal was a mix of shredded coconut with chilli and red onion. It was such a tasty and filling breakfast, washed down with another papaya juice.

After a few hours of relaxing on the beach and swimming in the ocean, we headed back to the hotel to have a beer and look into our trains for India, which we’ve realised we probably should have booked a lot sooner. 

After dinner, which was another visit to the roti shop for kothu and dessert roti, we went for a walk along the beach before heading back to the hotel. We saw a group of people gathered on the beach with torches, turns out it was a giant sea turtle nesting in the sand. Can’t believe we stumbled upon this and got to see a turtle laying its eggs. I read up about it and apparently this is the only time that you could be so close to a turtle as they are in a trance state, their behaviours are driven by the task of nesting. We’re looking into doing some snorkelling while we’re here to see if we can spot any.

When we arrived back to the hotel in the afternoon the owner rushed up to us apologising, explaining that while they were cleaning our room they had whipped the bedsheets off and my phone had dropped and smashed on the floor. I instantly told them that it was fine and not to worry, I felt bad as I know that would have worried them, I don’t doubt there’s people that would have gone crazy and demanded payment for it. Luckily my phone is pretty old and I don’t have any emotional attachments to technology, other than the photos and memories they hold. This has shown me how little I cared about my phone, and I was glad of that. It just felt like a mild inconvenience, I wasn’t bothered by it at all. I think this was a blessing in disguise, a sign from the universe, that I needed to get off my phone. If I’m honest, since I got my SIM card I’ve barely been off my phone. I think when you go on holiday it’s such a good thing to only have wifi when you’re in the hotel and then once you’re out, it goes off. But since we’re in countries for a long time and doing a lot of moving around we need it for the maps. I have been glued to it, not always on social media, but googling where to go, where to eat etc. Although this is helpful for the trip, it stops you from making decisions based on your feelings and movements, instead of asking locals or taking a walk and going somewhere that looks and feels nice, you google and go for the place with the most or best reviews. This is good sometimes for a one time experience, but it also creates this culture of one or two booming businesses as they get bigger and bigger and the others fall behind, not because their standards are low but because they don’t have as many reviews. And often you go to the places that has thousands of reviews and it’s not even that good but you think it’s great just because everyone else does!

Losing my phone has forced me to reevaluate my decision making process. I’m actively working on my decision making whilst on this trip, I think this will be greatly improved if I learn to make decisions without the use of my phone.

We’ll try and get the screen fixed when we get to Kandy which is 8 days from now, lets see if I can finish my book by then with all the extra time I’ll now have.