Thursday 26th September

Day 4 Overland Trip

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Today we got another wake up call at 6am!! Just what we needed after 4 late nights and too many early mornings. Today the early rise was so that Princess could get us back to the ship so that they could use our 3 buses for passengers going on day tours... always have that extra dollar at heart!! The ship arrived into Colombo at 7am and we didn't have to be back on board till 7.30pm so why did we have to be taken back to the ship at 7.15am!!?? A more reasonable time of 10 or 11 would have been preferred.

Anyway we dutifully went back to the ship via a quick orientation tour of Colombo. Colombo was still pretty quiet at this time of the morning and not much traffic around at all. However, there were lots of weddings happening as apparently they have to have the ceremony based on moons and tides etc so there was a line up at a number of the temples from a very early hour. Not sure how the bride gets dressed in time as they have very elaborate dresses, make up and hair.

On our arrival back at the ship we had a welcome back party of dancers and drinks.... no champagne at that hour!!

Once back on board we went to have some real food for breakfast then got organised to go out and explore Colombo.

It was a very hot day and most things were not in walking distance so a tuk tuk was the main means of transport and why would you walk for a fare of $1US!

Peter decided to go to the Museum and I went with Marie and Phillip to a nice air conditioned shopping centre.

We arranged to meet Peter at 2pm at the Town Hall to head to an up market hotel on the beach for afternoon drinks. Well you guessed it Peter got the time mixed up and after waiting for 45 minutes we decided to go and let him catch up with us.

The hotel was described to me as similar to Raffles... Well it was old world and would have been grand in its day but it really needed a lick of paint and they were in the process of renovating. The location was overlooking the beach which was great with the sun sinking to set over the water. The pool looked pretty inviting too but we did not have our cozzies...

We had booked our taxi driver that dropped us into the city in the morning to come back and get us from the hotel at 4pm... well Peter didn't arrive to 3.55pm and we were having such a good time we asked the taxi to wait till 5pm which he was happy to do at no extra charge.

After a number of cocktails we headed back to the ship nice and relaxed and ready for a sleep as all the late nights and early mornings were starting to catch up with us.

Colombo is the commercial capital of Sri Lanka and sits at the mouth of the Kelani River which is the 4th longest in the country. The old capital was Kandy which is located high in the mountains and is surrounded by tea plantations.

We now have three sea days before we arrive at Klang in Malaysia... not an exciting port for us.

Bring on the sea days!!