Greg and Deb's Travel Blog

It seems strange to say this, but it has taken until we arrived in Malaysia for us to have an electronic lock on the door of our accommodation. All through Sri Lanka and even in the Maldives, all our accommodation – hotels, tents and a villa, had old fashioned key locks. Once we hit Malaysia it was a swipe card for our airport hotel and fancy nf (near field) wrist band here in The Datai.
Day 23     2 March 26
We started our day with an 8am Jungle birdwatching walk. Our guide was Dev, a passionate local and had been employed, or one way or another involved in the resort since it very beginnings. Continue reading →

Well that was an “interesting” night, not!
We finished up changing rooms at about 12:30am because the hotel decided to have maintenance works done at night, and it was too noisy for sleep!
Our/Deb’s alarm went off at 6am and had checked out and were in the hotel lounge by 6:20 for a light breakfast.
From there we went down to the lobby and got a cart to the airport, so much quicker than walking, I think our driver was practicing for the Malaysian GP.
Without baggage it was a simple process, go through security and head to the lounge. We checked to make sure our luggage would be travelling with us, and all was good.
We played a bit of Ingress on the way to our gate, caused a little havoc in game, and were seated on board by 8:35am.
We are heading into the jungle! Continue reading →

Just a quick note for anyone concerned about our safety as things go crazy.

We are both safe and expect to stay that way.
We are not flying anywhere near the areas above.

We are in the Malaysian jungle and our thoughts are with all the innocent people caught up in the conflicts.

Woohoo, we managed breakfast this morning, none of this brunch in disguise, 8:30am counts as breakfast. 🙂

After breakfast we checked out, got a boat to the float plane pontoon at around 9:40 and flew to Male for our connection to KL. Our sea plane / float plane flight took at about an hour. There were 12 passengers on board, a full flight. The inflight service consisted of ear plugs, a cold towel and a bottle of water. Not bad for a 15 seat float plane and short flight
We arrived in Male at about 9:45am (the resort was on Bangladesh time, Male + 1hr, so times can get confusing in transit). Continue reading →

Day 17 24 February
We managed to get to breakfast by around 9:30, so nice to take our time.
After breakfast we walked to the dive shop and pick-up our snorkelling gear, then walked back to our villa to relax.
Around 10:30 I hit the water, and went snorkelling out from our villa. There were so many fish, Needle fish, Unicornfish, Trevally, Parrotfish, Wrasse, Batfish, Surgeonfish, and lots more, so colourful and unafraid of people. I then swam to the seagrass area between jetties 1 and 2. I saw a 1.5m Black Tip Reef Shark, loads of fish again, maybe not the variety as in front of our villa, and 2 Green Sea Turtles – one under a meter and the other well over a meter in length, and two rays – an Eagle Ray and another round headed Stingray that had a deformed or injured tail, or should I say lack of tail, just a couple of fleshy bits where the tail would be. (It could have been a Cowtail Stingray that had lost its tail). Different you may well say. Continue reading →

Our bird watching began today, so it was an early start, 6am pick-up.

The high priority this morning was Flamingos, a must have for Deb. With her good camera primed for the occasion we set out on a bird hunt, shooting only with a camera.

We left just before 6am, a very quiet car, I think everyone is still waking. A naturalist from our hotel joined us to share his local knowledge.

At 6:20 we were in the sanctuary, our naturalist and Hiru got out of our car and went to look for Flamingos. Sadly there weren’t any to be seen.

Sri Lanka has the largest flamingos, they come from India with a wing span of up to 1.9m Continue reading →

We had checked out and on the road by 9:30am.
Our destination, Mannar, has been described as a future Dubai of Sri Lanka. It has the potential to become an economic hub for Sri Lanka because of its significant natural resources, as long as they are developed and managed diligently.
Mannar harbour was the gateway to the Roman Empire due to its past where it was a 1500 year international trading centre for 400 years from the 1st century bc. This was driven by trade in pearls, gems and spices. The area has the most abundant pearling in Sri Lanka.

Along the way we stopped Kaludiya Pokuna, ot otherwise known as The Black Water Pond
It was built around 900ad and is said to be one of the first Buddhist monastery in Sri Lanka. Continue reading →