Villa Guide
Welcome
You have arrived and I’d like to give you some important information
to ensure your stay will be a great experience for you.
I’ll start with a few important house rules,
then give you information about check-in and check-out times,
gate lock, staff, food and restaurants, internet, transport, surf lessons,
Yoga lessons and Tallentire House.
At the end I’ll add a little trouble shooting guide 😉
Check-In
after 14:00 pm
Check-Out
before 10:30 am
House Rules
Please throw nothing down the loos!
No loo paper, no tampons, no tissue!
The pipes at Sakara House are too bendy and narrow and get blocked very easily.
PLEASE save me and Uncle from doing a day of digging through your shit 😉
Thanks.
Please make sure EVERYBODY in your party knows this!
No food in the rooms!
Food in the bedroom will be discovered by ants within minutes.
Not a pleasant sight to wake up to.
Please use coasters and No insect repellants on wooden surfaces!
Especially bad are the “natural” ones with Citronella.
They remove the wood stain.
Think about your own skin and rather wear long clothes around 5pm.
Please keep the Outside bathroom doors shut!
Unless you want to be visited by all sorts of creepy crawlies in the night…
No smoking in the bedrooms!
There are plenty of outdoor spaces where we don’t mind if you smoke.
Gate Lock
If you want to lock the front gate for security reasons
in the night, the key to the padlock
is on the same key ring as the key to the Villa.
Please mindful of other guests in the Garden Studio.
Don’t lock the gate, when they are still out for dinner.
Staff
The staff’s working hours is limited to 8 hours per day
with a lunch break in between.
This includes the time they need to clean the house, do their chores
and keep everything maintained.
It’s not just the time they shop and cook for you.
The actual start and end of their shift can be arranged according to your needs.
Just communicate with Lalith.
Lalith
is our chef and handy man.
He speaks the most English, so he’ll be your first point of information
whether it is organising your shopping, dinner or a TukTuk to get you somewhere.
He’ll sort it out for you.
Suresh
is the cleaner who tidies up the place, keeps it clean and sorts out the laundry for you.
He understands a tiny bit of English, but hardly speaks a word.
Uncle
is a lovely smiley old chap to have around.
He looks after the Pool and is the Lord of the Leaves.
He loves to chat, but mostly smiles.
Tips:
If you’re happy with the service the staff delivered, please leave them a tip.
If you required their services beyond the daily 8 hour window,
please increase your tip accordingly.
Thank you very much in advance.
Food
Shopping:
Lalith will get all the shopping for you.
You discuss what food you’d like, give him the money and he and
Suresh will go into town on their scooter and get it for you.
He‘ll bring a receipt for anything he buys.
You can trust him 100%.
If space runs out in the kitchen fridge,
there’s another fridge in the store room on the right side of the Garden Studio.
Just ask Lalith, he’ll organise it for you.
Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner:
Lalith is not formally trained as a chef.
We rescued him cooking for some surf camp and
trained him in Lindsay’s kitchen ourselves.
For breakfast he can offer Eggs in all their variations, pancakes or
a Sri Lankan variation with Dal, Onion Sambal and Coconut Rotis.
We also have a great juicer in the kitchen
if you fancy pure Pineapple or other tropical fruit juices.
There’s also The Kip (just around the corner) or
Soul & Surf as well as the Little Bang Kitchen (LBK)
on the main road a mere 5 minute walk from Sakara House.
The Kip only offers Brunch and dinner,
the other two are open from morning through lunch up to dinner.
On Sunday afternoons Soul & Surf hosts the “Soul Sessions”.
If you want to treat yourself to a decent cocktail and have some food with music by the beach,
then you should go.
It usually starts at around 4pm.
Another great breakfast place is the Nomad Cafe in Weligama.
They have people often queuing around the block outside.
For dinners Lalith can do all variations of a mean Sri Lankan curry.
His favourite Indian dishes are:
Cashewnut infused Yoghurt Chicken Curry, a Coriander Chutney Chicken,
a Poppadom Chaat and a Jaipur Slaw as a side.
They are all recipes from the Indian Cookbook “Made in India”
that you can find in the kitchen.
Have a look inside to see if there’s something else you’d fancy.
If we can get the ingredients,
I’m sure Lalith will be up for it.
He loves to learn new things.
Restaurants
New restaurants pop up almost daily.
This season alone we’ve counted 45 new bars/cafes/restaurants in Ahangama alone.
We have not tried them all by any means.
So we encourage you to go and explore.
I just want to highlight a few of the ones we can recommend.
Middle Eastern Food
Citra in Kabalana
(Food can be exceptional…
and sometimes not, but it’s always very expensive 😉
Chambers in Galle Fort.
East in Ahangama/Kabalana offers a great Hummus plate and Falafel Pittas.
In the day they are open in Kabalana,
from 9pm onwards they are open in Ahangama near the bus stand.
Italian food:
Vertigo in Kabalana for the best pizza.
Rise in Weligama.
Aqua Forte, Aqua Pizza and The Pasta Factory in Galle Fort.
Sushi:
Little Bang Kitchen (LBK) in Ahangama.
KAIYŌ in Weligama.
The Tuna & The Crab in Galle Fort
Beach, Bar & Burgers:
Pickled Pelican in Ahangama
for a great Burger & Sunset Cocktail.
Marshmallow’s and Cactus in Ahangama
for beachside coffees & lunches.
Internet
The internet router sits in the Sala behind the TV and the Wifi Network is called ‘Sakara House’.
The password is: 21101974
If you need a fast connection, use the yellow Ethernet cable that comes out
from underneath the TV in the Sala.
To extend the reach of the Wifi, there is a TP-Link
extender outside the kitchen door on the left hand side,
and another one left of the entrance door
to the Garden Studio.
I recommend only to ever switch on ONE of these two
at the same time,
otherwise the Internet gets unbearably slow.
To use the extender, just switch on the power socket.
Wait for a minute. That’s it.
Now you can connect to the respective Wifi network
(“Sakara House_Studio” or “Sakara House Kitchen”).
Transport
If you need a TukTuk, please talk to Lalith. He will organise it for you.
The same goes for renting a scooter.
Surf Lessons
Looking for a good surf teacher and/or board rental?
Use Surf’n Lanka in Weligama. They are at the end of the
bay. The head teacher is Manju. He and his team are the
best you can find around this neck of the woods.
Alternative beach: The Shack in Dewata.
Yoga Lessons
The offerings for Yoga lessons are basically on every corner of the island.
If you’re looking for quality, check out the
The Yoga Shala in Thalpe.
They often have interesting Events that are a bit more of substance.
If you’re interested in activating your third eye and
having a deep mediation experience, like never before,
have a go on Carsten’s Ajna Light.
This is a mind blowing experience!
The effects are instant!
If you’re not happy afterwards,
he’ll give you your money back.
(Never happened;-)
The Ajna Light is a powerful DMT experience with a safety-switch.
The session takes about an hour and costs LKR 23,500.00
For more info check out
http://carstenantoni.com/ajna-light/
or talk to Carsten.
He’s a fully qualified Yoga teacher,
and has been practising Yoga, QiKung, Pranayama
and Meditation for more than 25 years.
Tallentire House
Do you like the textiles and interiors at Sakara House?
Most of them are produced by Lindsay’s company Tallentire House.
As a guest of ours you are entitled to a 10% discount on any purchase.
Just take a Sakara House business card to the Shop and
show it to the sales person.
You find the Business Card next to the metal lion in the courtyard.
The Shop is down by the beach on the main road,
a mere 5 minute walk from Sakara House.
If you’re having trouble finding it,
check out the location on Google maps.
Trouble Shooting Guide
1 – No water coming out of the taps or the shower:
Unfortunately with the exponential rise in demand
with the explosive development in the Ahangama area,
the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) provides a grid
that is underpowered during the peak hours on a daily basis.
How to get taps running again:
Fortunately Sakara House has two separate power line connections:
One to the Studio and one to the Villa.
Often the power only fails on one of the two lines.
So moving the pump’s plug top between the two power lines
and restarting the pump, might solve the problem.
You find the respective power sockets labelled inside the little pump house
at the front of the premisses.
If changing to the other power line doesn’t solve the problem,
make sure to connect the pump to the Villa’s power line
and then do the following:
Check the inverter in the office.
If the Voltage reading from the CEB is above or equal to 200V:
Go and restart the pressure pump
in the little pump house next to the gate at the front of the property.
To restart the pump press the Restart button.
Before that, make sure the Over-Heat switch has not popped out.
If it has, press it back in and then press the Restart button.
If the Voltage reading from the CEB on the inverter is below 200V:
Push the battery switch down to switch from CEB supply to Battery supply.
The battery switch is below the inverter in the office.
Then go and restart the pressure pump as described above.
Make sure to turn the battery switch back to CEB after you’ve finished your shower.
Otherwise the batteries won’t get charged and
if then a real power cut comes along,
you’ll be sitting in the dark.
Don’t worry, I’ll show you all of this in place and
Lalith also knows how to work this.
2 – The Lights are dim, some are not working,
but it’s not a Powercut
Check the CEB voltage on the Inverter in the office.
It’s most likely below 80V.
Solution:
Switch the Battery Switch to BAT.
Now the lights should be back on and Voltage up to 230V.
Don’t forget…
to check every 15 or 20min., if the CEB Voltage is back to normal
by switching back to CEB.
Normally these extreme low power periods only last 30min or an hour.
Don’t leave the switch on battery power and drain the batteries.
3 – How to use the TV in the sitting room
as a display for your laptop:
The remote of the TV was munched by our previous dog.
Just turn on the power socket where the TV is plugged in.
You find the socket marked on the MultiPlug underneath the
cupboard on which the TV stands.
Switch the socket ON
and the TV will automatically start up in AV mode.
Then connect the black HDMI cable to your laptop,
and you’ll be ready to use the TV as a display.
There’s also our son’s Xbox 3 with a few games.
To use it, connect it to the TV with the same black HDMI cable.