Good Times: Eating, Sleeping and NOT surfing in Arugam Bay

You know what? So I totally went to Arugam Bay and it was fantastic. Fantastic in a rugged, you're-way-too-pansy-to-swim-in-my-waves kinda fantastic, because the surf season has just started and the waves are NOT...I repeat, NOT for swimming. You will either die by hitting your head on a sandbank (recently had happened to a foreigner we heard) or just really lose your shorts - whichever you do not prefer.

So anyway, here's some things we did in A'bay...

Pass by the infamous Thanamalwila! It's a beautiful area really...very lush..and...green. Ahem.

Aaand after 5-6 gruelling hours of listening to 3 boys talk about cars and more cars, we finally ended up at The Hideaway in Arugam Bay. By far the BEST, most tasteful place in Arugam Bay, well worth for what you pay for.

We got two wonderful upstair rooms which overlook their garden. The rooms were perfect with all amenities, bathrooms were super (this matters a whole lot to me!) but only downside was the mid-day heat which turned the room into boilers, mainly due to the asbestos sheets overhead!

Local flora and fauna...awww

We didn't eat much at the Hideaway due to the boys to girl ratio during our trip (3:1), and they obviously went for quantity and more quantity (more on that later)...but I did order breakfast on the last day and it was just OK for a good Rs. 800. Depends I suppose, what you're really after. But I was told by the lovely host and owner that they made an excellent rice and curry...

SURF'S UP!

So more on quantity...

Next we found an amicable looking fellow and said Hi, where can we find good curry then, and he pointed us towards The Beach Hut.

A nice hippy little place which smells a little too mildew for my taste serves us awesome paratas (I mean AWESOME PARATAS THAT MAKE YOU WANT TO WRITE IN CAPS) with killer pol-sambol and dhal curry for breakfast. Oh and that sugary sweet plain tea which makes you think of Mom. (Not my mom though, she forces uber-healthy food to all of us....but you get the drift.)

We also wound up eating there quite a bit during our stay.

Here's lunch...not as great as breakfast though. Prawns were a little over-priced, doused in chillie-paste and set fire. Meh meh.

There's another place called "The Green Room" on the landslide which had awesome seafood fried rice. Yum.

Arugam Bay...beautiful....

We explored a few beaches too. Like Whiskey Point...where we met a Iranian kite-surfer who wanted to know where the best winds were. I connected him with Dilsiri...

And Panama Beach (Paa-nama...not Panama Canal)... just isolated, wild, beach. Nothing more, nothing less.

And then we took a really random road to nowhere, which took us through a narrow ridge of road between a lake, Kumana National Park and paddy fields as far as the eye can see. The road ended in an area which had strange animal droppings, and where 3 tipsy men in sarongs popped out of nowhere ("after a party" apparently) and told us to move along as wild elephants and sloth bears apparently frequent the place. That's Sri Lanka man...I doubt any of us have even scratched the surface of it!

Back in A'bay, the late evening and night brought out the surfer boys and girls who roamed around looking for a bite to eat. We were told by friends to try Geckos, right opposite Hideaway. We missed their recommended home-made ice cream, but did have beer in tea-cups (in lieu of Vesak.. lol) and bland burgers.

The last day at A'bay had me pondering life on a hammock at the Hideaway while the boys hit the Beach Hut . We also managed to drop in at the Mihindu Maha Chaitya, a Buddhist temple where the princess Vihara Maha Devi was supposed to have landed after being sacrified to appease the gods when a tsunami had occured. I'm sure there's a lot of historical sites in the area which needs a little more time than 2 nights to explore.