On the road in Sri Lanka

I did type a long post detailing our last two days but it was lost in the publishing process I guess there were far too many people on the bet st the hotel but locally its now 5am so I'm probably one of the few awake. Lets rewind then to Monday in Colombo we were up fairly early our luggage had gone off with our driver we just kept our shoulder bags. We wandered down the railway which runs along the coast past the hotel and hot some shots of the intense commuter services and then hopped on a train into the city to fort station. From there we got a tuk tuk to the busy junction we had sussed out hear to the docks access road. It was a slightly challenging junction with light and position but well worth going heavy traffic was constant and there were some gems of classic trucks amongst the general mayhem. In one incident a road work gang arrived UK repair a pothole and one was nearly killed when a car tried to undertake at the works sent the guts shovel flying up in the air a close shave. Most of the classic trucks are leylands from end of aec onwards not like Uruguay but still good. We then went back to fort and had hassle with cops over filming the only time so far. We got the train we had booked on Sunday it was an all first class express air con not really any choice of we were to get a ride in plus do trucks. The train ran an hour late and much of the tide was in darkness which was tedious it was half ten at night and our driver was waiting for us but it was another hour from there to our digs which were in a weird hotel north of Jaffna which was a throwback to my 1980 trip. Thankfully we were soon on the road again and on our way east to trincomallee with some useful stops along route and no hassle at all in these former Tamil Tiger towns although we saw plenty of war damage and all the minefields. The road had just been upgraded and was better than our roads at home there were however plenty of obstacles appearing which included cows dogs monkeys buffaloes goats etc. trincomallee isn't much of a place but I managed to get enough shots at he bus station in the afternoon rush hour to finish off a programme on this area. We were booked into a resort hotel chaaya Blu which is a shock to the system as Martin and I would seldom e stay anywhere quite like this. Guests seem to be Dutch Japanese Australian and yanks, not encountered any Brits. Dinner was a farce as nearly everything was seafood even the buffet , Martin likes seafood I don't and thankfully we only gave one night eating here I expect breakfast wil be kippers!! The large swimming pool is red hot to swimm in hood my trunks are dry in a couple of hours time as we set of further east to batticolea or batti as its known, not the coast toad is open it will be a short journey in the minibus, the speed limit is just 70kph so very sedate not the worlds best driver some crazy manoeuvres and never wants to change down a gear. We should be going sling the coast which is hopefully a scenic trip hoping to get the buses covered thus afternoon. The buses are split between government ones which look pretty similar to those of 1980 and private ones which are needless to say Ashok leyland lankas on the whole although Tatas are also used plus second hand jap buses .the rail stock us very mixed all dmu or loco hauled .