Information ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 232 Sunday 30 November 2014. Greetings from Sri Lanka as the holiday season approaches, with information on gin and whales. Information Thanks to an unexpected invitation from Martin Straus, MD of the British Food & Beverage Training Centre of Colombo, I was privileged to sit in at a Gin Cocktail training session given by Mr Straus ...
Bottled cobra ROYSTON REPORTS Number 231 Sunday 23 November 2014. Lots of parties as Sri Lanka heats up for Christmas, and news of my new book for a stocking filler. Sri Lanka’s Best Seaside Resort Last week I featured Asia’s longest (25m), and Sri Lanka’s first, glass fronted lap pool at the cutely named Calamander Unawatuna Beach Resort. In the ...
Cliff Richard, The Truth ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 230 Sunday 16 November 2014. Welcome to this week’s report on garden carpentry, rival gardens and the lowdown on Cliff Richard. Winning writer I had the great pleasure of meeting the winner of the 2014 Templeberg Fellowship for an Australian writer at Templeberg Villa on the outskirts of Galle last week. She is ...
Cycling to Sri Lanka ROYSTON REPORTS, Number 220 Tropical Topics, Sunday 7 September 2014. Welcome to this week’s topics: a dish and some bikes. English lesson “Ayurveda” has become such a buzz word among tourists in Sri Lanka, who believe that this local wellness therapy could help them detoxify after over-indulgent lifestyles, that the word is used as a mantra. ...
Mapping the weather. ROYSTON REPORTS Tropical Topics, Number 219, 30 August 2014. Greetings to readers new and old with this week’s topics touching on ancient weather and sybaritic revelations. Chutney From gherkins last week to chutney this week. I had some chutney that inspired raptures of appreciation recently at a bar, in the middle of an abandoned paddy field, that ...
Pickled ROYSTON REPORTS Tropical Topics, Number 218, Sunday 24 August 2014. Welcome to this week’s newsletter with views on food, self-catering and Cliff Richard. Pickled My newest Made-In-Sri Lanka discovery at Nebula, the independent supermarket in Aluthgama, is Pickled Gherkins. Many years ago I saw gherkins being harvested in Sri Lanka (alas, I can’t remember where) and rued the fact ...
Restaurant strip ROYSTON REPORTS Tropical Topics, Number 217, Sunday 17 August 2014. Greetings! This week’s newsletter touches on such diverse topics as turtles and a marathon. Turtle conservation Close to where I live on the west coast of Sri Lanka, the two old-established turtle hatcheries (at Kosgoda and South Bentota), have been joined by a third one that opened last ...
Rabbits on impulse ROYSTON REPORTS Tropical Topics, Number 216, Sunday 10 August 2014. Welcome to readers to this week’s report on eggs, rabbits and a great new swimming pool. Rabbit Pie? Driving home through Dharga Town the other day after leaving the Southern Expressway from Colombo, I espied cages crammed with live, but scrawny, chickens and, behind them, a cage ...
Quail Egg Glut ROYSTON’S REPORT Tropical Topics Number 215, Sunday 3 August 2014. How to peel a quail egg, and a fun boutique hotel, among this week’s topics. Quail Egg Curry We recently acquired a dozen quails and, to my delight, they have settled in happily and begun to lay. Regular readers will recall my predilection for quail eggs, especially ...
Free wildlife treat ROYSTON REPORTS Tropical Topics, Number 214, Sunday 27 July 2014. A free download for readers this week about Sri Lanka’s wildlife. Wild about wild life. “Sri Lanka is the best all round wildlife destination in the world for wildlife tourism,” states Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne, a fellow Bradt guidebook author. Gehan has a vast range of experience ...
ROYSTON REPORTS Tropical Topics, Number 213, Sunday 20 July 2014. River cruising and beautiful railway stations are some of this week’s topics. Houseboat in Sri Lanka The waterways of Kerala and Kashmir have houseboats so, thought Hiran Cooray at the innovative Jetwing group of hotels, why not have houseboats in Sri Lanka too, where there are hundreds of rivers, including ...
ROYSTON REPORTS Tropical Topics, Number 212, Sunday 13 July 2014. This week’s newsletter looks at topics traditional as well as tropical. The Whight Enterprise James & Gabrielle Whight are catering pioneers from Australia who settled in Sri Lanka and created Colombo’s most reliable and popular pub, the Cricket Club Café. They also turned the Hellbodde estate mansion off the road ...
Coffee reclaimed ROYSTON REPORTS Tropical Topics, Number 212, Sunday 13 July 2014. This week’s newsletter highlights the delights of reclaimed coffee. The Whight Enterprise James & Gabrielle Whight are the catering pioneers from Australia who settled in Sri Lanka and created Colombo’s most reliable and popular pub, the Cricket Club Café. They also turned the Hellbodde estate mansion off the ...
ROYSTON REPORTS Tropical Topics, Number 211 (Sunday 6 July 2014) Welcome to this Sunday’s look at tropical topics (and my books). Self Catering When I first arrived Sri Lanka, there were NO facilities for self-catering holidays – no dedicated villas, apartments, cottages, chalets or cabanas with kitchenettes so guests on holiday could fend for themselves. At my suggestion, a friend ...
ROYSTON REPORTS Tropical Topics Number 210 (Sunday 29 June 2014) Welcome back to my restored weekly newsletter on topics tropical! Hotel puzzle. I realise that the world is changing fast and it’s difficult for me, a septuagenarian beat poet, to keep up with, or understand, it. During the past couple of years when I have stayed in hotels (in Thailand, ...
