Day 12

It was an another late night, so I didn’t wake up until 10:15 - breakfast finished at 10:00 - bugger.

So we got up and tuk tuk’d it into Kandy to have a look around the shops.


We started by having a burger for lunch before going round the shopping mall.


Then we went to the market and saw monkeys on a roof before Joss tried her hand at haggling.





Then a Sri Lankan walked past and said hello.


He then said that we didn’t recognise him out of uniform and that he was from the hotel. We couldn’t remember him but didn’t want to be embarrassed so we played along.


He then took us to two market stalls where we were bullied into buying stuff for an over the top price.


At the end we felt violated so went to The Pub and had a beer.



It was only then that we realised we haven’t seen anybody at the hotel and that even the “meet cute” had all been a con.


Oh well, live and learn - although the goods were expensive for Sri Lanka they were still cheap for normal prices so it could have gone a lot worse.


We’ll have to be more switched on - or just leave our money behind…..🤣


We then took the most manic tuk tuk we’ve had so far back to the hotel for a well earned rest.


We were due to be picked up for the first T20 at 5:15 and we got there in plenty of time.


Thank goodness, though, that the 2 couples that are desperate to get the front seats, got them, I was so worried.


Instead of the advertised 25 minutes to get to the stadium it took 90 because the traffic was horrendous.


Still, that journey was better than our actual entry into the ground as they insisted on checking our tickets twice and all the women had to be patted down behind a curtain.






I volunteered for that but was told that I couldn’t participate and they used a metal detector wand on me instead - blast.


They then ran out of wrist bands to allow us in so there was a lot of shouting before it all got sorted.


We went up to the air conditioned box and there were also seats outside we could use.


What a con - we were asked to pay £84 per couple for an outside seat and these were free!!!


Thank goodness I was too tight to pay it.







We sat down at our seats (after getting our beers) and it was raining - boooooo.





The game started about an hour and a half late but we only lost 3 overs each.


We won the toss and bowled first and did well to limit them to 133.


The atmosphere was so much better here than Colombo.








We batted well and with 2 overs to go the rain fell again and we won by DLS.


The only real downside was that I was sitting under a Leeds flag.




A bit of a hollow victory but a win is a win and I did get to see the Barmy Army trumpeter.




We got a bit wet getting back to the coach and the journey took ages despite it not being too far.


It took a bit longer because some utter c@nt had the coach stop so he could have a wee - bloody well go before you leave!!!!!


Still, back at the hotel now and we have two tours tomorrow….

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