In August 2006 I was traveling from Rakwana to Aluthgama when I realised that I wouldn’t make the coast by night fall. My friend Lahiru lives in the Bulatsinhala area and he introduced me to the Field View Inn.

The rooms at the Field View Inn are clean and comfortable, they have attached shower room, fan and mosquito net (which I didn’t need).
Good food and drink is available in the large bar-restaurant up to 11pm. We had an excellent dinner of fried rice, with several cool lagers served by the friendly but incessantly polite staff. Next morning coffee was brought to our room and we took a walk through the friendly little town of Bulatsinhala before breakfast. The final bill came as a pleasant surprise, I couldn’t really ask for more.

This is not a tourist area, I was the only foreigner staying at the hotel, the other customers in the bar were all Sinhalese. However the decor suggests it might occasionally be busy with local wedding parties so it might be as well to telephone ahead and reserve your room. Tel: 034-2283021

From Colombo, it's about an hour drive to Horana where you can pick up direct and frequent buses to Bulatsinhala. Alternatively you can take a bus from Aluthgama to Matugama and pick up the Bulatsinhala bus there.

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A restaurant, café and bar built in 1998, it was the old office and residence of Sri Lanka's famous architect Geoffrey Bawa. His office is left as it was, in a small room off the main courtyard. This place is really a haven amongst the sights and sounds of main Colombo, quiet, exclusive, yet not pretentious.

The main entrance looks like the entrance to a volonial residence, over a small front garden area. Once through the door the heat seems to naturally subside and the last smells of Colombo drift away, into sweet smelling international fusion food stuffs.

The inner courtyard has a slate floor and a shallow pool, with a few carp drifting in their perfectly heated swimming conditions. The restaurant and bar lie around a beautiful open-air courtyard filled with silver pots of flowers and subdued lighting, you can eat outside or undercover.

The burning sun does not reach most parts, leaving a cool, comfortable dining area, where you can sip iced tea (Lipton's of course) and while away a good few perfect hours. The food is excellent standard and comes in good-sized portions, the staff are relaxed and perceptive enough to serve at a good pace and leave you to enjoy the calm.

2 Alfred House Road; tel: 941 582 162

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Just about every village you pass through will have at least one small restaurant selling Sri Lankan food at very reasonable prices, they are sometimes known as hotels or cool spots.

You can get hoppers, eggs and bread for breakfast, coffee usually comes black so ask for kiri kopi (milk coffee) and unless you like it impossibly sweet ask for it without sugar.

For lunch and dinner there is of course rice and curry, this often comes with fish or chicken. Throughout the day you can get a variety of rolls and patties called ‘short eats’ you may be given a plate full of these but you only pay for what you eat.

There is a range of soft drinks called Elephant (ask for it cool) the ginger beer is particularly excellent. Local soft drinks appear to be being increasingly replaced by American brands.

Hoppers (appa). Eggs (bithara). Bread (pahn). Coffee (kopi). Milk (Kiri). Sugar (seeni). Cool (cool). Fish (marlu). Chicken (kukul mas).

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