Getting to Sri Lanka

We arrived to a hotel late late Wednesday night after a whole day of traveling:
We left our place after 3am to get to the airport for our 5am flight. When we got there, the Qatar Airways agent said they only had one seat left because they overbooked the flight to Doha (where our connection was). Thankfully, we checked in the night before and since we didn't have any bags to check (we're backpacking it), it wasn't a problem for us. We had to wait forever though, because a local and his 10 family members and 2 servants were on the same flight, and we were stuck behind him in line complaining about how the seats weren't all together. At this point in a week of craziness, we contemplated finding a same-day flight back to the US for good and just leaving all of our stuff at our apartment, but reason struck us.

After we made the flight and the short layover in Doha, we had a 4 hour flight to Colombo, Sri Lanka. Upon our arrival , it started to POUR, so that was interesting experience. We had to hop a series of buses to make it to the train station and catch the 7:30pm train out of Colombo to head south toward Galle. Due to the kindness of an upstanding gentleman, who told us which buses we needed (and even paid our 7 Rupees fare!), we made the train and took the 4 hour ride to arrive in Galle around 11pm. We rode in third class, but we got seats because we made it to the train station about an hour early, and were able to enjoy the cool night breeze coming in the windows.

We headed into the sleepy town in a took-took, a motorized three-wheeled covered bike of sorts, and stopped at the hotel where we planned to stay. All the lights were out and no one came to the door (these are small, 3 to 4 room family-run hotels mind you). Our driver took us down the street to another one of the same sort, and after ringing the bell and rousing the couple from sleep, we got a room. There was no A/C, so that made it a little muggy and inconvenient, but we were glad to have beds with sheets and a hot shower...today we moved to a room with A/C. God is so good to take care of us in each step and generally make things happen when we don't have a clue! The young couple that runs our hotel is super sweet and really helpful.

More about today coming soon after we do a little adventuring. Happy Thanksgiving and love to everyone at home.