Ni Dieu Ni Maitre

Arriving in Trincomalee in early February, was it?, I was accosted by the usual station tuk-tuk driver preying on the sleep deprived tourist from the overnight train, overcharged triple for a ride to the hotel which he had a deal with where I was overcharged double for a room. This is pretty normal on arrival anywhere if you haven’t booked in advance.

And so, after ample sleep, the next thing on the agenda was finding a budget hotel near the beach. Walking several kilometers along the north/ south road led to Sarvodaya Road, running westward to the beach. This is the main tourist road, and the featured photos are of some of the multitude of restaurants along this road.

A favorite.

I asked about rooms and prices all along this road, and at the end, I wandered down a side road a few steps, running into Mr. Hameed, manager of the Wings hotel, a very pleasant person who had a nice non-AC room for a good price. I have been actually the only guest here for the last 5 weeks. Tourists are very thin on the ground as this is not the ‘season’, and now with Trumpy’s idiotic war it seems that there may be no season at all this year.

The owner of Wings, Mr. Farook and his wife have spent their working lives in Sweden, providing them with enough money to buy this small hotel, and Hameed is their brother-in-law… both heads of Muslim families.

At the moment, the Farooks have gone to Sweden for 5 or 6 weeks to wrap up their business there and visit their children who live in Europe. Mrs. Farook, sister of Hameed, showed me how to run things at the hotel, saying “‘I don’t trust Hameed.”

Cappucino and nice light breakfasts, as well as lunch and dinner.

Well, last evening Mr. Hameed, really a very nice fellow, if a little befuddled at times, knocked on my door to announce that he and his family were leaving for Columbo immediately. He gave me the keys, a short course on how to close up and lock everything and open up again, and they were off. For how long? He forgot to mention this…

A nice family run place. Many of these places are family run, and the menus are generally identical, lots of seafood, rice, pasta, kottu, soups and salads.

Well, my sole desire is to snag another customer for the hotel, which is decent enough, but with the dearth of tourists and our location right at the end of a street lined with hotels and restaurants… pretty unlikely.

And the bulk of western tourists who do come in arrive in pre-booked groups, staying for a day or two. For me, this quiet eastern beach scene is preferable to the much more bustling scene at Negombo on the western shore and unfortunately catching the pollution from Columbo. Air quality in Uppeveli has been consistently good, the surf fairly rough after storms but otherwise mild, the food… somewhat repetitive and heavy on the seafood… trying mightily to not gain weight here.

Next up, bicycle rentals and a ride to Trinco.