Ratnapura and the Sinharja rain forest

The trip to Ratnapura was fairly uneventful and just had an afternoon of relaxation - there really wasn't much to do there and the accommodation was too far from everything to walk to anything exciting. The next morning we had a sort of an early start and headed out to the Sinharaja rain forest (with breakfast along the way). The rain forest was beautiful and we walked for about 4 hours seeing different types of birds, monkeys and trees and although I was warned about the leeches, I was still amazed to find the three that had managed to get through my socks (one looking like it wouldn't need to eat for a very long time).
Yesterday we headed to Hikkaduwa via the coast road. Hard to believe that only a couple of years ago the area was devastated by the tsunami. Along the way we stopped at a turtle hatchery - they are the cutest things I've seen so far!! They keep tanks full of 1,2 and 3 day old little ones before releasing them into the wild. Plus they even let you pick them up!! Could have wasted several hours watching them just swim about...
The hotel is right on the beach and my room is less than 50m from the surf with massive crunching waves (almost monsoon season) which can be heard all through out the night. The water is so warm and the sand so soft. There is a reef on the beach just in front of the hotel, so walked down a little further today to try and do some swimming but the surf and the current was too strong and although I had 3 guys watching (thought it safer than swimming further south where a local drowned a couple of weeks ago) the pull was too strong and decided best to stick to the pool (also on the beach front).
Tomorrow I head back to Colombo to have lunch with Kesh and Thamali (old CPU work mates) and dinner with Olivia (cousin's sister-in-law) before heading to Bangkok on Saturday. Was planning on doing a tour of Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos but think that may have to be postponed as I was successful in completing the first stage of the AYAD program (the finance job in Cambodia for 12mths) and will need to be back in Oz for not just the training but also the health checks and other hoops that I need to jump through before they send me off (hopefully!) in late June. This means I could be back in Oz as early as mid May.