Internal clock still drunk and disorderly,

I wake up before dawn and tiptoe into the boys' room hoping to catch the sunrise over the lagoon. It's still too early, so I settle back in bed, watching an industrious trail of tiny black ants lugging a dragonfly corpse and drift off to the beeps of a gecko above my head until I'm woken by AT; we're off to the beach for a morning swim. The van jostles a short distance to the coast, twin dogs patiently packed nose to nose into the back: two tan snack cakes.

The beach is wide, impeccably bare and apocalyptically empty. The sand squishes away pleasantly between my toes like an infomercial mattress, and dosily soaking in the postcard magnitude of where I am, I finally snap to the realization that I am far, far away from Montreal. It's been a very long time since I was at a beach, and the saline, foamy waves of the Indian Ocean are just absolutely fucking wonderful. Wading out into chest-high surf, it's hard not to feel like a kid, and we all play in the hard gravity of push-pulling tide until we are spent.

Music: Beach Boys: I Can Hear Music

Home to a breakfast of thin vanilla crepes, small omelettes of shallot and bird chilli and a fruit plate of midget bananas, pineapple and papaya spiked with lime.

We have had plans from the night earlier to fashion our own crab trap and try our luck for the auspicious pinchers in the lagoon. Back to town, we first stop in at the neighborhood welder, where AT and Barnaby get quoted for a custom protoype of a building material used in their new business venture. The welder's children are busy folding paper planes out of torn notebook pages, and squeal with laughter as the impressive little craft land on the roof and in a bucket of water.

We visit a hardware store for chicken wire and accompany one of the house staff to a modest covered market, a shaft of sunlight between corrugated scrap highlighting a sack of dried red chilies. We wander down the road, careful to avoid speeding buses and doubled cyclists.

Sri Lanka has no deficit of smiling faces, but before I give too rosy an impression, things are rough in this rural area for most of the people I have seen, and the contrast of absolute luxury in the frame of third world life is weighing uneasily on me at times. The small streets are full of rough-looking street dogs with pockmarked fur and visible ribs, scratching at fleas and lapping from stagnant puddles. Skeletons of rusty bikes line alleys edged with plastic trash and ruddy open ditches brim with things not fun to smell. This area of the coast suffered the worst of the tsunami, and the rubble of clobbered schools and homes and boats pushed kilometers inland accompany hard stories from AT's family of the tragedy. Renate and AT's father Bob converted a ruined post office into a village relief centre, offering aid to workers and tradespeople looking to rebuild their businesses. It is now a non-profit computer centre, giving volunteer training to people in the surrounding area. It's hard to absorb the nature of a place in a short time, and I don't feel equipped to make any conclusions, but the warm energy and easy smiles of everyone here feel sincere. Errands complete, we shuttle back to the house to eat.

Two bluefin tuna caught that morning are cut into thin sashimi which disappear on my palette without chewing, they are seriously that fresh. AT and I assemble some simple maki with the rest of the fish, avocado and sesame. Steamed okra with tomatoes and herbs complete the light meal. We stay at the table late and empty a couple of bottles of wine, talking animatedly about everything from happiness to the battle of the sexes to driving 150km an hour in a disintegrating car with no seatbelts in Thailand.

A projector is set up and we are knocked out one by one watching The Scent of Green Papaya, the ambient soundtrack of jungle birds and insects continuing seamlessly long after the movie is shut off.

Music: Eric Satie: Trois Gymnopedie