Colombo, Sri Lanka's dusty, sprawling, noisy, hectic capital, doesn't feature high on most visitors' to-do lists, and we only see a scant handful of tourists in the two days we're there. Our main reason for stopping over is to re-group after the flight (which, incidentally, we came within about two minutes of missing - the staff felt that putting  out a boarding call might delay their lunch break. Kuwait Airways: where the customer comes second to a sandwich).

After negotiating our fast becoming traditional aarrg-I-can't-take-any-money-out-of-the-ATMs panic (not the result of chronic disorganisation this time - bureaux de change don't seem to sell Sri Lankan rupees in the UK, as you can't bring more than about  £30-worth into the country) we take a taxi to our guesthouse and then head straight over the road for breakfast. Like all Sri Lankan meals, breakfast is customarily eaten with your hands (or rather, hand), which supposedly enhances your appreciation of the food's flavours and textures, but is a slightly daunting prospect when the food in question is curry. (Yup, curry for breakfast. I think it was at this point that Mike decided he was going to like Sri Lanka.) Surprisingly, though, eating dhal, sambol and sauces with your fingers proves eminently do-able, especially when you have chapattis, lentil dougnuts and string hoppers - little disks of tangled rice noodles - to help you.

Colombo's a bit short on specific sights, but the guidebook mentions a couple of interesting-sounding temples, so we grab a tuktuk and head off to check them out. Sri Lankan taxis can't be hailed on the street, you need to call one in advance, whereas tuktuks (which, slightly confusingly, call themselves taxis) crowd the streets, painted in either beige or bright primary colours, and further embellished according to the driver's whim, which could mean anything from a solitary Hello Kitty sticker to a fully-fledged shrine decked out with garlands of plastic flowers. I was expecting a tuktuk ride to be a bone-jangling, death-defying experience, especially considering that road lanes in Colombo are treated as mild-mannered suggestions rather than dictates, but they're surprisingly comfortable. No, the real problem with tuktuks is that none of the drivers seem to have the faintest idea where you want to go, even if a) it's a local landmark, and b) you point it out on a map. They don't let this curious ignorance of their own city deter them from taking your custom though, preferring to stop occasionally at the roadside to consult helpful strangers.

Anyway, the temples! Sri Lanka claims to be the world's oldest Buddhist country, and is home to an accordingly vast number of Buddhist temples, of which our first port of call - Gangaramaya - is purportedly the most bizarre. Founded in the nineteenth century, it's received thousands of gifts from well-wishers over the years, all of which are proudly displayed, and as the donations range from ivory bananas to vintage cars this makes for a slightly surreal, inescapably kitch atmosphere. More excitingly (from my point of view, at least), Gangaramaya has a resident temple elephant, who was being hosed down in the courtyard when we arrived. At first I just stood there taking an excessive number of photos, but after a while the keeper - possibly sensing the waves of desperation emanating from me - beckoned me over and let me feed the elephant some sweetcorn, pat his trunk and stroke his enormous tusks. Huzzah - we'd only been in Sri Lanka for a few hours and I'd already ticked off my main aim for the holiday! What an over-achiever I am.

From Gangaramaya it's only a short walk to Seema Malaka, a small, modern temple designed by the renowned Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa. (This is where we'd actually wanted to go first, but after a fruitless fifteen minutes our tuktuk driver gave up pretending to know what we were after and dumped us at Gangaramaya instead.) According to a story you can't help but relish, Seema Malaka's construction was funded by a local Muslim as an act of revenge on the Islamic community he'd fallen out with.  The temple consists of three linked wooden platforms rising out of Beira Lake, each structure topped with beautiful blue tiles. It's all very elegant and serene, but unfortunately our enjoyment of it was somewhat sullied by a man who latched onto us outside the temple and insisted on accompanying us around, impervious to our repeated attempts to get rid of him. Annoyingly, this kind of thing is quite common in Colombo - having engaged you in conversation (invariably by asking where you're from), people wil try to be of "help" to you - whether by eagerly giving you information (which you either already knew or which they've simply made up) or by establishing themselves as your informal guide - in the expectation that you'll reimburse them for their "services". Having started out determinedly uncynical ("the vast majority of Sri Lankans who approach you will be perfectly honest, and simply keen to have a chat"; so sayeth the Rough Guide), we've rapidly become hardened - we haven't been approached by a single, solitary person who was "simply keen to have a chat". We still haven't come up with a foolproof tactic for shaking them off - the most successful one so far was inadvertantly mentioning that we were staying in a guesthouse in South Colombo, at which point our accoster gave us a disgusted look, mumbled, "cheap place", and wandered away.

Day 2 saw us visit yet another temple, this time a Hindu one (roughly 17% of the population is Hindu), but unlike the Buddhist temples it seemed to be the exclusive domain of the devout, so we didn't venture inside. Instead we headed to the Pettah, a Tamil and Muslim bazaar district in the northeast of the city, which the guidebook describes as a captivating area characterised by shops crammed with colourful fabrics, women in beautiful saris, heavily laden barrow boys, and Muslim children dressed in white from head to toe. It uses the word "quaint" at least once. I can't, off the top of my head, think of when I've felt more misled by a guidebook. The Pettah is pretty much entirely devoid of romance - filthy, crammed with stalls selling tatty electronics, and bristling with cars, vans and tuktuks trying to jostle through the crowd (which, I might add, looks pretty much identical to crowds elsewhere in Colombo, with not a white-clad child in sight). To top it all off, we acquired a hassler who refused to be put off by Mike's claim that we didn't speak English (not surprisingly, really; that particular pretence is a bit tricky to keep up unless you eschew all communication with one another), and then called us liars when we said we didn't need any help. I was starting to look forward to seeing the back of Colombo.

We left the next morning on the 10:30 train, which the owners of our guesthouse (who, by the way, were lovely, and almost certainly in no way related to Pestering Pettah Man) advised us to arrive at least an hour early for - having seen the snaking queues at the ticket desk the day before, I could understand why. Mercifully, though, the desk was empty, so we had plenty of time to twiddle our thumbs waiting for the train. Sri Lankan trains are a fairly ancient breed, shunning any form of superfluous smartening up or decoration (which is to say, any), but the journey was pretty confortable really - lack of glass in the windows proves a handy substitute for air con (that reminds me of my dad's old Saab, which he used to claim had air con - closer inspection revealed that he was referring to the fact that one of the windows didn't close), and proceedings are livened up considerably by the incescant parade of food vendors through the carriages.

Galle, our destination, is Sri Lanka's fourth largest city, but after Colombo it feels like a particularly somnolent village - or at least, it does if you confine yourself to the walled old town ("Fort"), which we more or less do. Galle is apparently thought to have been the Biblical town of Tarshish, source of King Solomon's gold, peacocks and spices, but more recently it was colonised by the Portuguese and later the Dutch, and it's the Dutch influence which is still very much in evidence: tranquil streets are lined with Dutch colonial villas, and there's a sprinkling of Dutch churches for good measure. It's a lovely, atmospheric place to wander around, although the one drawback of its obvious attractions is that it's much more touristy than Colombo - whereas in the capital we never caught so much as a glimpse of another Westerner in any of the restaurants we tried, here our fellow diners are exclusively visitors, and the prices have been hiked up accordingly.

Speaking of food, on our first night here we ask our guesthouse owner whether they offer dinner, and we're treated to the most sumptuous spread I've seen in a very long time - at least ten separate dishes, ranging from curried pineapple to shredded jackfruit, and each more delicious than the last. It's essentially a lavish take on "rice and curry", a Sri Lankan staple which encompasses anything from miscellaneous dollops of curry atop a mound of clumpy rice to an all-singing all-dancing multi-dish spread. As a mark of dinner's stupendous tastiness, I ask our hostess to teach me the word for "delicious". This brings my Sinhala vocabulary up to three words, and considering that one of them is "pineapple" it probably isn't as general purpose as it could be.

The following day is spent wandering round Fort some more, being adopted by a local dog, and catching some of an enthusiastically supported cricket match. (Do cricket audiences cheer in Britain? Even if they do, I bet they don't play dance music between overs.) Today our meander along the South coast continues, subject to us being able to decode the mysteries of Sri Lankan bus schedules. See you soon!