Category: Travel

My first couple of postings about this holiday focussed more on eating than anything else:

After the day we helped to cook our own food…

…and then the next day’s intense efforts of short-sleeved-shirt-searching in and around Tangalle…

…naturally we needed to chow down well. We returned to the Italian restaurant, Il Mare, where I chose the local barracuda fish done in a similar style to the tuna Daisy had tried the previous time, while Daisy tried the lobster spaghetti. Il Mare preceded these delights with a very tasteful-looking and tasty amuse-gueule. Food porn photos – here they come:

Janie insisted on rounding off the meal with some almond chocolate cake. Who was I to refuse the offer to taste it?

Here is a link to the Il Mare menu from the website – January 2026.

We interrupt this food-oriented posting to remind readers that we were playing tennis for an hour every morning – activity which I preceded with 20 minutes in the well-appointed and well-equipped gym.

Also to say that we had two more wonderful therapies towards the end of our stay, in the caring hands of Oka and Lily:

• 11th – Hot Stone Massage (90 minutes)
• 12th – Stress Release Massage (me) & Foot Massage (Janie).

Back to food. On 11th, we returned to Verala for our penultimate visit there. On this occasion, we wanted to try the Japanese fusion aspect of the place. The restaurant manager had reassured us about the intense international standard food safety procedures they followed to ensure that raw fish was safe even in that hot climate and a culture unaccustomed to such delicacies.

I can only describe it as a feast for the eyes and the mouth in equal measure. We loved that meal. Here is a link to the Verala menu from the website January 2026.

The night of the 12th, we returned to Il Mare for the last time. I fancied the giant prawns Italian style and Daisy fancied trying the chicken, declaring herself to be “seafooded out”.

Both dishes were delicious.

For our last meal, we returned to Verala one final time. We wanted to try some of the other Asian fusion style dishes, both rice-based and noodle based. But we started with the outstanding Sake Kani salad we had enjoyed so much on our first night.

And we couldn’t leave without trying the highly recommended chocolate sticky toffee pudding. That would have been rude.

That last one was a relatively early dinner for us. We had an early start the next morning for our flights home.

If you want to see the whole album of pictures from this holiday – more than 150 of them – click here or below:

The Thinker

We didn’t much notice the wildlife all around us for the first couple of days. Then we started to spot photo opportunities as we walked around…then, it seemed, the wildlife was hell bent on visiting us in our beautiful villa, so close as we were to the lagoon that transcends the Anantara Peace Haven Resort.

Actually, I think it was the fact that the next door villa was empty after the first couple of days that started to score us so many visitors. The peacocks were especially keen visitors.

Janie also started spotting creatures on her way to the tennis court just before 8:00 in the morning. This black giant squirrel on 7th January, for example.

But we didn’t need to leave our villa to see squirrels – although we didn’t get visitations from the giant ones.

Not just squirrels – also mongeese. This little fella came to visit us in our own garden:

Soon Janie and I were competing to get the best pictures of these majestic creatures. This one of mine from the comfort of my own lounger…

…this one of Janie’s in the field beside the tennis court, where this particular peacock. whom we named “Showoff” resided.

“Why did we name him Showoff?”, I hear many a reader cry. I finally managed to catch him in action on our last day. I suppose this photo of a peacock display is that species’ equivalent of a dick pic.

We saw some wonderful creatures on our afternoon at Mama’s kitchen, as some of the bird species clearly like to hang out on the rice paddy field.

But the stars of the show were the grey langurs. Janie started spotting them in the mornings near our villa when she was coming down for tennis. She absolutely hit paydirt on our penultimate full day, a few villa doors down from ours:

I thought that the pictures she took that morning were just stunning. Two of the best above. I even forgave her for being late for tennis as a result:

Meanwhile the housekeeping staff tried to make us laugh with their towel art of wildlife. Here are the best two examples:

On our very last day, almost as if to say goodbye to us, the family of grey langurs came and stopped by on the next door roof and then our villa. That’s when I managed to snap “The Thinker”.

I also attempted some video, which I have yet to assess. Frankly I think it should almost all…or perhaps even all…end up on the metaphorical cutting room floor. Attenborough I ain’t.

It really was a treat to see so much wildlife in such close proximity to us.

…but, admittedly, quite a lot of it was about the grub!

We quickly slipped into the type of institutionalised (in a good way) mode that wonderful places such as the Anantara Peace Haven encourage in their guests. Through our agents, Healing Holidays – click here for our itinerary, we had pre-arranged to play tennis at 8:00 every morning.

The temperature even at 8:00 was a bit hot for Janie – even I felt it on the more humid days. Add to that the bouncy surface that neutralised Janie’s fiendish slice…the conditions suited me more than Janie.

We’d also pre-booked, for the first day, the 5th, a body scrub treatment (to prepare our skin for sun) and a consultation at the spa. Here’s the list of treatments we had in those first few days:

• 5th – 30 minute body scrub and consultation with Ayurvedic doctor
• 7th – Pinda Sweda (Ayurvedic hot pouches treatment) followed by 45 minute meditation class
• 8th – head and neck massage.

The spa was superb. Janie and I were mostly treated by Oka (me) and Lily (Janie), who were excellent practitioners. Meditation was with Vinod. We arranged some more treatments for the second half of our stay.

We had a pool villa, which we made our home for much of the day, most days. The small pool didn’t offer much length for swimming, but it was great for foot-dangling while reading.

I’ll write some more about the reading and the local wildlife (much of which would stop by at our villa, so we didn’t much need to go look for it) in a separate article or two.

Because you, dear reader, came to this article to learn some more about the grub, didn’t you?

On the first evening, 4 January, we ate in the Verala Asian restaurant. Janie can be seen digging in to the giant lagoon prawn dish…

…and we also ordered some Thai style regular prawns, Goong Pad Med Mamuang – so there! Meals in that restaurant are prefaced with a delicious welcome soup, based around coconut milk with spices and either lentils or rice. Janie has the recipes for future reference!

On the second evening, we dined in the main restaurant, as there was an opportunity to try an array of Sir Lankan style dishes. We were particularly taken with a spicy lamb which the chef was cutting from the bone for the diners, but we also tried some small tasters of other Sri Lankan dishes. I particularly like the traditional yellow rice with Sri Lankan dishes and the local daal was very tasty indeed to my taste.

On the third evening, 6 January, we returned to the main restaurant (for the last time) for the seafood buffet. We’re not really buffet people, but we did fancy trying the array of seafood available. We tried prawns in more than one style and particularly enjoyed the local fish, barramundi, roasted in a Sri Lankan style.

On the fourth evening, 7 January, we tried Il Mare, the Italian restaurant, which was really excellent. I went for a seafood pasta (Linguine ai frutti di mare), while Janie went for local tuna steak with mash (180g Bistecca di tonno).

My pasta dish in particular lent itself to the food porn photo treatment:

Our fifth meal, 8 January, saw us return to the impressive Verala – not for the last time either.

Despite having sworn, when we were in Portland Maine, just three months earlier, that we were through with wrestling large shellfish…

…we decided to attempt it again, as we had happy memories of Hikkaduwa crab from our previous times in Sri Lanka.

The Sri Lankan crab curry was hard work but was just about worth the wrestle. We did swear “never again”, again, though. Our exhaustion exacerbated by the unfortunate “lock out” from our villa, as the batteries in our door lock failed between locking up for dinner and trying to return after dinner. The problem was easily fixed, but not before we walked all the way to reception to report the problem. Walking off such a dinner is probably not such a bad idea, but a better idea if done willingly and with expectation!

We had a busy day ahead of us the next day, as we had booked a lunch time cookery session at Mama’s Kitchen, which I’ll describe and illustrate in the next episode.