Early on Friday morning at 5am, 8 sleepy Durham students boarded the university air-conditioned bus destined for Hikkaduwa on the South-West coast of Sri Lanka. Tired and trying to sleep anywhere (even on the bus floor), the bus took around 5 hours to get to the resort before parking up on the busy main street in Hikkaduwa that runs parallel to the beach (road and beach separated only by a row of hotels and guest houses). After viewing a couple of different hotels on the popular beach, we ventured into our third one to be surprised when Sam met his football captain from university sitting on the beach in front of the hotel! After just getting there, he said this hotel had been brilliant so without much discussion, prices were agreed and once the bus had maneuvered its way into the small car park, 10 minutes later 8 students were strewn across the beach lapping up the lovely weather they had been wishing for.

After a small walk down the beach, we stumbled across a surf-shop/restaurant with a few energetic people in the group renting some body boards to catch some waves! After perhaps an hour, hunger and thirst started to grow amongst the group so unanimously lunch was called in the beach restaurant we had found. The western food that had been so widely talked about in the first two weeks of the project, was thoroughly enjoyed along with some fine Sri Lankan beer before people went their separate ways. Some wanting more sun, stayed either sunbathing or chilling in the sea, while others who had started to develop shades of pink on their bare skin headed for the shade, cold showers and aftersun!

The evening began at 7pm as we all gathered before going to a nearby Italian restaurant that had been seen from the bus window earlier that day. With sunburn being nursed already, people were starving eagerly anticipating some more western food. With a power cut/total blackout greeting our starters, the food wasn’t all that we’d hoped for so after only a few had finished their meals, the bills were paid and the group moved on to the popular beach restaurant from earlier for some drinks. Here the group split with some going back to the hotel to catch up on some sleep, while others stayed and got ready to go to a club/bar up the road called vibrations. We have since decided that we turned up too early at this place even though the time was 10pm. It was empty. 15 people max including us were sitting enjoying the music, before the 5 Durham free spirits decided that we would never see most of these people again, so reputations weren’t to be worried about! Dancing for the next 2 hours with a man from the Maldives, all the moves coming out before tiredness from the early start got the better of us and we retreated back to our hotel at 12.30am.