Greetings from the Queen's Hotel in Kandy, a fine old establishment with antique furniture, grand arches and waiters in smart maroon waistjackets. I'm not staying here of course - it's far too smart for me.

I'm down the road at Raja's Oriental Music Garden, owned by a Sri Lankan fellow with more than a hint of West Indian about him. Every night he emerges in the most outrageous get-up imaginable: white from top to bottom, big sunglasses and his shirt front lined with flashy silver. Turns out Sri Lanka has its very own Elvis Presley. There's no grandeur involved in his lodgings, but he plays some funky music in the evenings and it's a chilled vibe up on the hill.

No, I'm not staying at the Queen's Hotel, but on non-match days it's a splendid place to come and work. It's easy enough to pretend you stay here while you use the swimming pool and set up camp at the cashier's desk, which is the only desk in the bar area that leads out to the pool. Everyone in Sri Lanka is too friendly to get upset at the fact that I've taken over a key post, and so instead they chuckle at how funny I look behind the glass pane with a hole at the front for exchanging money.

This really is the friendliest country I've come across. Look a man in the eyes and you're guaranteed a broad, heart-warming grin in return. After the hustle and bustle of India it's noticeable how everything here is much more laidback. There's a distinct air of island life, and tourists have been flooding in since the end of the war to experience a calmer part of the sub-continent.

As I type the band strikes up with The Beatles' song 'Yesterday', which hardly seems appropriate. The only tourist around me who has any semblances of troubles is an English fellow who's been forced to fly home for surgery after he was involved in a motorcycle accident. He admits he was probably going too fast, but then when you're faced by two buses coming straight at you - the one overtaking the other - there's little you can do but end up in the drain and hope for the best. A split foot means his holiday is over, but everyone else in the Queens Hotel continues to enjoy the good life.

Kandy is up in the hill country and has lush tropical vegetation. It could just as easily be a hilly island in the Caribbean, except Buddhist. In the centre of town is the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, which is said to house a tooth that was snatched from the flames of the Buddha's funeral pyre in 483 BC and smuggled into Sri Lanka in the 4th century AD, hidden in the hair of a princess.

The temple sits on the edge of Kandy Lake, and there's a giant white statue of Buddha up on a prominent hill overlooking the town (see the picture above). With Buddhism being so widespread here it's little wonder that there's a calmness in peoples' eyes.

Nevertheless everyone enjoys a bit of excitement from time to time, and on Saturday Kandy hosted Sri Lanka's first ever night-time street race. As people lined the streets with umbrellas over their heads to protect them from the bird droppings that fell regularly from the trees overhead, motorcycles whizzed round the usually-quiet roads. It was a bizarre sight to witness.

Since shifting from Group B matches in India to Group A in Sri Lanka the cricket has gone downhill, but it's great to see such a wonderful ground with the best crowd I've seen so far. What they lack in numbers they make up for in enthusiasm, to the extent that, pound for pound, they've even outdone theIndia v England crowd in Bangalore.

The other evening I ventured into the stands as Brendan Taylor was attempting to disrupt everyone's evening with some clean hitting. Closeby a large group with cymbals and a drum tonked away and bounced along, singing songs and showing why grass embankments are such a good way to watch cricket.

They've labelled Pallekele the 'Centurion of the East', which is a nonsense really. This ground is far too fun and far too unique to need to model itself on any cricket grounds in other parts of the world.

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