We slept for a long time and woke a quarter before breakfast closed at ten. Apparently the power had gone out and wasn’t suspected to be back until 17 due to some maintenance, the hotel owner was thrilled about the lack of communication regarding this – We didn’t have much sensitive stuff in the fridge and could live fine without WiFi and chargers.

So we headed towards the beach and met Kalle & Gunnel with Juni after some searching. I this time had passports with me so could get us sim-cards with plenty of data – turns out the price for 45Gb is less than one bottle of sunscreen while roaming was exorbitantly priced (4 EUR/MB) on our Norwegian cards. I also made an attempt to get a power adapter from Sri Lanka since that was another thing that had been left at home but failed since the recommended store was closed (with an open sign at the door for lulz).

As the sun got scorching hot we headed back to the hotel for some slacking by the pool and got ourselves some toasts. It took Mona a few minutes of trying to tell the local chefs how to make this without electricity (but a gas stove) before she gave up and showed how one could do this more efficiently.

We slacked a bit, I wrote some notes for the blog and then Juni payed in the pool with a pair of slightly older girls.The electricity returned, in a way. Since I brought the old MacBook Pro without a working battery (and had to install Mojave and Lightroom the night before since Catalina didn’t support that old 32-bit application I hesitated to learn a new tool while on vacation – but I digress) I was relying on the power to last since when power died out so did my laptop and I had to restart everything. After four attempts getting a few minutes each I managed to finish the last expense and time report and could officially sign out from work.

We were a bit hungry and decided that we would go for classic food today so we headed off to Spagetti & co. where we got two pizzas and some pasta for Juni. Tasted surprisingly great.

I managed to get two hours or so before being woken up for breakfast. Mona didn’t sleep anything, and after finishing breakfast I realized it was another 90 minutes before we would land. An interesting tactic to wake all sleeping passengers and then leave them doing nothing for an hour before landing. The perhaps least promising sign was when immigration cards where handed out and informed we all need to fill in. I noticed that it was the official immigration documents for Indonesia and asked if this perhaps the wrong paper (while at the same time checking the map in the infotainment to ensure that the mistake was just a paper) – luckily it was only a paper mistake and we we’re indeed on our way to our planned destination – but this mean everyone on the plane would need to fill out the papers on arrival.

We ninja:d ourselves out from the airplane, and I got a very good spot in the immigration queue while Mona secured proper immigration cards that I filled out just before it was our turn. We walked through with smiles and as Juni chilled I eagerly scouted for the luggage on the conveyor belt. Things seemed a bit too easy when both bags were identified – and without any visible damages and after customs we spotted a sign with Mona Ernholm and we were picked up at the airport by Deepthi – a friend of Kalle & Gunnel.

During the final two hours we enjoyed the new built highway and didn’t need to go through central Colombo since last time. Mona crashed and slept like a baby, Juni kept up her iPad and I read my book. Vacation was well underway. We finally arrived at Jippie the Villa where Kalle & Gunnel was already waiting for us. Juni was really excited about finally meeting them but also managed to get into the pool within a few minutes as we got a set of instructions on what to do and what not to do at the hotel.

Mona went to catch up some sleep while me and Juni played in the pool, then headed out for a small excursion together in the neighborhood. After that I left Juni with Mona (and they both fell asleep), visited the supermarket, withdraw some cash and got a bit of shut-eye myself before we took a tuk-tuk to Kalle & Gunnel.

We said hi to the landlord with family and chatted away, then got another tuk-tuk to Sea Shells were we got a nice dinner. When we were about to head home Juni very clearly explained that she was to sleep with Kalle & Gunnel today – not us. Fair enough – after a stroll back home that meant Pringles, book reading and chilling alone for the first night in Sri Lanka.

After a rather intense last week before vacation we’d managed to get a rough idea on what to pack and get a lot of it in actual bags. We had about an hour before we should leave home and that’s when we got the tip that even though visa can be solved on arrival, waiting there is less than ideal. So I send in three visa applications at 08:57, given they should be OK and be done within 24 hours according to the website that would leave us almost 8 minutes before the plane would land according to schedule. We gobble down the last breakfast, empty the trash and head out enjoying the 2° grey skies.

We get to the airport fine, a long with a lot of other people and even check-in is smooth (despite the slight stressful detail that Juni’s middle names were lost somewhere between the travel agency and Aeroflot – meaning ticket and passport doesn’t match exactly). We were however advised to not save the passport-control until last minute since it was a lot of people today and “they don’t wait for anyone”. Said and done, we moved from one control to another and eventually got on the plane. First leg was a breeze, we enjoyed our iPads and had a light snack.

We had 3 hours in Moscow airport while we wait for the final leg, and it seems there was quite a lot more to do since I was here last (which was more than a decade ago to be fair) We managed to get some cigarettes for Kalle & Gunnel and diapers (for Juni) which we hadn’t forgot to bring – we’d however placed all of them in the checked in luggage. I finished the book Saturn’s children by Charles Stross – which was OK, but nothing extraordinary and left the sci-fi for once and started to read Man’s search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl – that was recommended by a colleague. Juni had a great time at the playgrounds and we finally boarded the last leg.

Juni handled the travel like a champ and fall asleep from her iPad eventually – however a screaming child is never far away and in our case the row behind us, I was slightly surprised that Juni slept through it but won’t complain. Russian service is Russian service, and after waiting for two hours since departure we got our dinner, and after some searching they indeed found out that they had “special food” for me (vegetarian) prepared and after that I tried to get some sleep.