West & South Coast, Sri Lanka

Arrived in Colombo and caught the train down to Hikkaduwa. There was a bit of a crazy episode on the train. A pretend-blind man was trying to get money off foreigners, and when other passengers told him to stop hassling us, he went crazy. Yelling and thrashing his stick around, he hit a few people breaking his stick. After 5 minutes of this we arrived at the next station. Around 10 of the passengers rushed him and threw him off the train.
We found a nice place to stay in Hikkaduwa with a swimming pool. Hikkaduwa was a resort town, and as it was low season it was pretty deserted. We headed to Galle after one day. Galle is an interesting city with a massive old fort built by the Dutch. Did an evening walk around the top of the fort, then headed to Unawatuna the next day.
Stayed at Unawatuna for two days, and it was awesome. Lovely beach and friendly people. We swam a lot, and snorkelled over the coral reef. Also walked up to a temple on the hill.

Trivandrum, India

After leaving Calangute we took a 3hr bus, then boarded a sleeper train bound for Trivandrum. We had planned to alight at Kochi to make our way to Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary, but decided to get off at Kottayam instead, thinking it would be closer. Our train had stopped at plenty of stations, so we thought this wouldn't be a problem. However, there were no stops after Kochi and we found ourselves arriving directly in Trivandrum after 14hrs. We spent around a week here mainly relaxing yet again. We ate most of our meals in the Indian Coffee House which was pleasant and inexpensive, and housed in an interesting spiralling building. There was a state festival coming up while we were there so there was much festivities with music blasting the streets and bazaars everywhere. We went to Veli tourist park which has large-scale sculptures by the river and beach. We took a daytrip to Neyyar Dam, which was huge and had pretty gardens. They also had a crocodile "sanctuary" which was sad as they were all housed in tiny cages without much water in their tiny swimming pools. Views from the bus on our way to Neyyar Dam. On our last day we went to Kovalem beach which was around 10km away from the city, and enjoyed a drink at the Beatles restaurant.

Calangute, GOA

We spent six days in Calangute basically just relaxing and swimming at the beach. On the first night there was a soccer game in the field right outside our hotel window.
We spent a bit of time at the local juice shak. Between us we tried all the flavours of milkshakes including chicku and papaya. They were all really good.
Darren went for a long walk on the beach one day and came across the River Princess, a huge container ship marooned on the shore. A fisherman told him it had washed up during a cyclone five years ago. We both went there again the next day to check it out.
Was a lovely little village on the whole, got a bit of a tan, enjoyed lots of yummy food and drink. Darren got an open blade shave at a local barber shop. One downer was being knocked over by a car which then sped off without stopping. Nothing more than a bruise and a sore back luckily as I fell in a very fortunate manner.

Panaji, GOA

Arrived in Panaji on the 26th and found a room in Aroma Hotel after first checking in elsewhere and discovering a bedbug infestation! Eeek! We went on a river cruise that night which wasn't what we'd expected. It was fun though, like a dance party with live music, beer and dancing.
The next day we went on a North Goa tour visiting Fort Aguada and Mayem Lake. Also visited Vagator, Anjuna, and Calangute beaches.
Spent the next few days relaxing, walking around and trying different food, going to watch a movie in Hindi etc etc. Darren even had his shoes shined!