We started off in Sri Lanka by visiting many of the ancient temple complexes in the northern part of the island that we had missed the last time we were there. That trip was cut short by the outbreak of a Civil War and unfortunately this meant that this time much of the infrastructure was still in a shambles. It was still quite interesting but 10 days was enough. This was followed by a wonderfully relaxing 1 month stay at a beautiful villa on Phuket. It was the rainy season so the villa was amazingly good value and we were lucky that it only rained on a few days. We had a car for the whole month so spent quite a few days touring the islands various beaches and checking out some new villas for sale, pretending to be potential buyers.