{"id":16143,"date":"2017-02-26T02:08:16","date_gmt":"2017-02-26T02:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.geoffjones.com\/?p=16143"},"modified":"2017-02-26T02:08:16","modified_gmt":"2017-02-26T02:08:16","slug":"a-very-enjoyable-day-around-bentota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/?p=16143","title":{"rendered":"A very enjoyable day around Bentota on LifeDay 25,414"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Geoff<\/a>
A nervous me with crocodile<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The main reason for staying at the stupidly expensive Bentota Beach Hotel was so I could use their river cruise through the mangrove swamps. I opted for the one hour one as experience tells me I rapidly get bored sitting in a boat \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

It was just me and the guide, a young chap who spoke good English and had sharp eyes. So we quickly saw a lot of wildlife: herons, lizards, crocodiles come to mind. A nice tourist touch was pulling in and a guy with a baby crocodile stepping aboard so you could have a picture taken with it, me somewhat nervous of all those teeth.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
My new found friend<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the afternoon after a decent swim in their 35 metre pool, the best feature of the hotel, I took myself of for a walk. The touts soon leave you after 50 metres of walking and I was soon on my own. On maps.me I spotted the Siri Sumansrama Temple (interesting that Apple use the name Siri for their digital assistant) so I headed over their. The place was deserted, its quite a modest temple but soon a monk came over and invited me in \ud83d\ude42 He showed me around explaining why the Buddha is surrounded by Hindu figures and also the new Buddha statue they are making under the Serpents head. All very symbolic and interesting.<\/p>\n

I was then invited into his house for a cuppa and cake, well I am a cyclist \ud83d\ude42 Where he told me his story of becoming a monk when he was 9 and staying at this temple all the time and how he learnt such good English.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The subject soon turned to architecture the next thing I know we are in a Tuk Tuk to see the totally stunning former summer home of architect Geoffrey Bawa at Lunuganga. Wow totally amazing, he was obviously a keen arboriculturist as well the selection of trees was stunning! A gorgeous tall Teak at the entrance and then planted & trained \u00a0trees inside like Balsa, Ebony, Temple trees (Plumeria) and a lot more. The whole estate is cleverly designed to maximise the elevated position in a dog leg of the huge river. I just loved it and reminded me of Chris & I visit to Henry Moore’s old studio<\/a> near Cambridge. \u00a0Totally incredible and many thanks to my new monk friend \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

A very interesting and enlightening day with loads more pics \u00a0here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The main reason for staying at the stupidly expensive Bentota Beach Hotel was so I could use their river cruise through the mangrove swamps. I opted for the one hour one as experience tells me I rapidly get bored sitting in a boat \ud83d\ude42 It was just me and the guide, a young chap who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,31,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-travel-blogging","category-walks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsite.geoffjones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}