Thursday 7th June 2012 - Colombo, Sri Lanka

Anjali had a friend's relative's daughter's birthday party to go to tomorrow so our mission today was to find a birthday present for her. Anjali hated going in tuk tuks so decided she wanted to pay for a car and driver to take us around.  During one of mine and Anjali's past conversations I had for some reason mentioned that when I get married I want a dress with a low back so somehow from this conversation Anjali had decided that today she wanted to get a top made for me with a low back. We firstly needed to stop off to get the material from a store called fashion fabric. We were walking towards the store when a man, a lady and two children stopped Anjali and gave her this story about loosing all their money and their house and told her they were hungry. They asked if Anjali would buy them food. We were standing right outside McDonalds but apparently they only eat curry and rice so that wasn't suitable but then 2minutes later we went past an expensive bakery/patisserie and they pointed at that place to eat!!! The light still didn't turn on for Anjali that they were dodgy and despite me cussing her saying that if they were that hungry they would eat anything she still went ahead and bought them food! When she told the Sri Lankan driver what she had done he cussed her too and said he was surprised he hadn't invited them into her house to have them rob her of everything.  Also following on from our conversations about making her house into a guesthouse she wanted to show me Casa Colombo, a hotel that was once a house but was converted. Casa Colombo was so elegant and chic. There was a pink pool out the back with silver balls floating on the top. Around the pool was modern silver sun loungers with little side tables with white towels neatly rolled placed in the middle. The place was gorgeous.  She had set out with the intention of buying the little girl some kind of arts and crafts set or makeup but after looking around the whole of majestic city, a large toy store and Arpico with no luck, she was instructed by a lady to go to this other store for makeup sets. One thing about Sri Lanka is that most shop assistants are useless and not willing to help. In the first toy store we went to in Majestic City we had asked the shop assistant for arts and crafts sets and they said they don't sell them so I continued looking around and found them. Also when we were at this store that this lady had told us to go to we asked where exactly the sets were. Despite asking a few members of staff (in English and Sinhala) all of them had said that they don't sell makeup sets so we found a makeup bag and starting looking around for individual items to make up a makeup set. Then after we had been in the store for maybe an hour and Anjali had paid for everything I spotted makeup sets! The guys first refused to give a refund but Anjali caused a stink and they gave in. This shopping trip lasted maybe 6hours.  After the shopping Anjali got the driver to drop us at Cinnamon Lake where we going to eat Chinese at a restaurant called Long Feng. The food was delicious!!! We ordered loads of different dishes and shared them. There was a live band playing the classic singalong type songs from the 80s and 90s that had Anjali and I singing out loud and bopping our heads. On the lake there was a stunning floating restaurant that had thousands of lights that cast a beautiful reflection onto the water.  Again Anjali took the bill leaving me feeling really bad. I kept letting Anjali know how I felt about her paying but she insisted that it was what she wanted to do.  We caught a tuk tuk back to her place and chilled talking for a few hours before going to bed.