by Alan Goodwin

Created on: November 11, 2009

I'm currently as inoculated as I've ever been against all manner of disease through a series of Honeymoon injections administered in May this year, and not wanting to waste this fact on our next holiday, we scoured the malaria and rabies world hotspots, with special points awarded for a high stray dog count and any sort of lackadaisical approach to locking up cows championed, especially around busy village roads. We seriously considered Kerala in India but the flight connections were beyond horrendous before we eventually settled on Sri Lanka, the fact an actual proper war had only recently ended didn't deter us tells you just how bad the flights to Kerala really were.

Anyone heading to Sri Lanka, an island off the southern tip of India known as "the teardrop" or "the pearl" depending on who you ask, will undoubtedly have to encounter a naysayer or two condemning your jaunt as certainly doomed to mother nature's natural fury in one way or another, and you explain politely that The Tsunami was years ago and life is returning to its former confidence amongst tourists, with the two-week prices being amazingly reasonable for 4 or 5 star All Inclusive holidays available in October from 700 each and raising as the season gets going, we confirmed our arrangements through Tripadvisor favourite Mercury Direct and all was happy in the world.


48 hours before we departed, the Samoan Islands, which are far away, sunny and beach-like, were hit by a Tsunami, and all the naysayers were beating a path to our doors to say "I told you so!" Smugly, I informed them that Samoa was all the way round the other side of the world. Idiots.


24 hours before departure, and Mother Nature clearly had the right hump about something because there was another Tsunami, this time in Malaysia and Indonesia. A bit closer, in fact, exactly where we'd been in May, but unperturbed, and slightly wanting to prove people wrong, we strode on with our holiday plans and arrived at Heathrow's recently face-lifted Terminal 3 ready for our indirect flights to Colombo, via Doha.
The flight itself was lengthy but uneventful; Qatar Airways being our airline, the mysteriously located Doha stopover was a welcome opportunity to stretch our legs, albeit for only 30 minutes between landing and departing again.

Colombo airport is nothing much to write home about, with the exception of their inspired duty free zone in arrivals.
Duty free shops are usually a supplier of last minute forgotten items like plug adapters

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