Snorkelling in Hikkaduwa

Took the first class train ticket to Hikkaduwa from Colombo. It was pretty cool because in first class, you get your own private "area" and you can even lock the curtain so no one can come in from outside! The view on the train journey from Colombo to Hikkaduwa is awesome. It goes along the Western Coast of Sri Lanka and you get to see the sea view practically throughout the entire jourey!

On the train from Colombo to Hikkaduwa

Upon arriving at Hikkaduwa, we decided that we would look for a place to snorkel. I knew that it wasn't really the "season" to snorkel, but I wanted to try it here as I had a really good snorkelling experience in Taiwan. Furthermore, I thought it would be cool to snorkel "in the Indian Ocean". I was terribly wrong.

Well, we saw this shop and we decided to go in and ask about the price.

We went in the shop and got convinced to pay 2250 rupees each for 1 hour of snorkelling. At first, it sounded like a pretty decent deal to me since I paid about half of that price for 30 minutes of snorkelling in Taiwan. So I thought, okay, since the duration is twice, it's okay if I pay twice the amount? Hence, we agreed on the deal with the shop.

Bad choice. He wanted us to change into our swimsuits in the shop (when there are lots of construction workers outside the shop who can simply see through the window). We didn't feel comfortable changing in the shop and insisted that we go somewhere else to change. He eventually brought us to a toilet across the road to change. That wasn't anything bad compared to the actual snorkelling itself.

When we got into the water, damn, I don't think snorkelling can get any worse than this. Firstly, the currents were super strong. I spent most of my energy and time trying to fight the currents. Secondly, the water was really shallow despite the strong currents, so, I had to constantly prevent my body from getting abrasions from the corals underneath. Thirdly, due to the super strong currents, the "instructor" had to like hold my waist while we snorkel?! Holding waist is nothing much I guess, but he was really very touchy and was trying to go too far with all the touching and I had to very firmly pushed his hand away many times. Yikes. Fourth, there were many boats around and they were emitting super smelly smoke. Imagine breathing in super polluted air while snorkelling... And lastly, the water was super murky and most of the corals were damaged/destroyed. So I basically paid a "fair price" of 2250 rupees to get some life survival swimming lessons in the sea. I couldn't wait for the 1h to end as soon as possible.

Also, we made a very silly mistake of leaving our bags unlocked in the shop while going out to snorkel. When we were heading back, one of the "instructor" went back to the shop first and got the other "instructor" to bring us to another part of the beach to look at the giant turtles. We suspected that some of our money got stolen during this period of time (although we can't be 100% sure that it was done by the people of this shop).

Giant Turtle!

There were 2 of these giant turtles. Managed to take a photo with one of them! :) In order to get them so close to the shore, there would be some local people holding a bag of seaweed and luring these turtles to shore. So you may wonder, what do these locals get to gain out of this? They would actually ask money from the tourists who take photos with these turtles as a reward for luring the tutrles to shore. Oh well, I'm guilty of wanting to take a photo with the turtles but I hope it isn't harmful or anything for the turtles to be constantly in contact with tourists!

Chaaya Hotel Hikkaduwa

#SriLanka #Hikkaduwa #Travel #Snorkelling