Just 2 months later I flew to Sri Lanka again. The plan was originally to build Manjou websites for what he said were numerous clients. This is what I was going to earn a significant part of to open my own guesthouse or hostel. But things didn't go as expected.
I did not want to leave at all, so I began to look for an investor and a future partner among my friends. And surprisingly quickly found)
We spent only a few days on the island together, spending them on opening a company and choosing a house, from the options that I managed to find before.
Opening of our guesthouse
In mid-December, I moved into a big house in the middle of a huge garden. Nobody lived in the house for several years, the garden could hardly be called well-groomed either. Boiled work. The first couple of weeks I was alone and did the bulk of the work of clearing the house of old things and furniture. And thanks to the fact that already from the first days in the house I posted an ad on the workway, already as a host, a week before the new year, a young couple from Germany joined me.
Sophie and Timbo helped me a lot with further preparations at home. We brought to mind a couple of the first rooms and a large common hall for the speedy reception of the first guests. After all, right now was the peak of the season!
My daily routine was quite tough - work from morning to evening with a short break for lunch, which still had to be cooked. And only in the evening I went for a walk along the beach at sunset. I don’t know where there was so much energy and strength, and most importantly, it wasn’t perceived as work. But, probably, when you start a new business, especially when this is the embodiment of your dream, it should be so.
Along with the repair, he was engaged in equipping the house. I had to buy a lot. Furniture and appliances, dishes, bedding and a lot of consumables. It took a lot of time to arrange the garden, but I did it gradually almost all the time I lived and worked there. A special pride was the summer open kitchen, which I built in the garden in the second year. By the way, a volunteer from Australia helped me build it, all from the same workshop. And one of the special moments was the preparation of chebureks in this kitchen with his father, whom he came to visit.
Final move
The third month was coming to an end. 4 out of 5 rooms of the house were completely ready to receive guests, occupied and there were already several reservations for the future. I had to fly to Ukraine and pick up my wife for the final move to the island. Fortunately, a friend happily agreed to fly in and replace me for a month.
There is nothing special to tell about the trip to Ukraine, except, perhaps, a sad event: the engine in my Mercedes flew. I had to urgently sell it for a penny. In early March, we were already flying to the island.
The house was very old, about 150 years old. And each of the local acquaintances who came to visit said that he was afraid of this place, because. spirits live here. And one might have thought that this was a joke, but on one of the guest visits of a couple of a Russian girl and a local guy, he did not want to spend the night in the house and left, leaving his girlfriend (probably white spirits are not afraid).
"Summer" kitchen cost together with the Australian. And you can see the horizontal bar - a rarity for Sri Lanka)
Every month I expanded the ennobled territory of the garden. First, the usual place for a fire to roast meat, later - a barbecue and a summer kitchen. Several hammocks under palm trees, flower beds around the house. I also tried to grow vegetables in a remote part of the garden. But it didn’t work out) It seems to me that this is because the land is not suitable here, there is too much sand in it. Attempts to fertilize it with ash and humus were unsuccessful, because. all fertilizers were washed out at the first rain. But the native plants were doing great, so I switched to them. Pineapples, passion fruit, bananas, soursop, papaya.
Papaya grew quickly and gave fruit in 7-8 months after germination. At certain times I had a lot of it.
I also remembered breakfast, which became our standard after a few months on the island. Fruit bowl with sliced pineapple, papaya and banana. Sometimes there were variations with mango and the addition of passion fruit. All this is watered with kurd (mikiri) - a local fermented milk product such as yogurt made from buffalo or cow's milk. And of course a cup of coffee. The coffee maker arrived on the island almost simultaneously with me. There simply weren't any here, and we're nowhere without coffee.
And this is just a beach, to which exactly 500 meters on the way from the house)
Island life
My son was born on the island. And I think this is the best place to have a baby. Good ecology, sun and ocean, evergreen garden and beach as the main place of entertainment. I think this is one of the reasons for his good health and mood. True, I had to fly to India to make documents for him, because. There is no Ukrainian embassy in Sri Lanka.
To increase my earnings, I decided to “build a hostel”. To do this, he agreed with the owner to pick up also his garage, where a bunch of cold .. his valuable things were stored. To do this, he built a small extension for him to transfer all things there.
The garage was large, with a window and a separate exit to which I attached a shower room with a toilet. And instead of the gate, he put a panoramic glass wall with doors. It turned out to be very good in my opinion and very budget.
In addition to the hostel, I rented a couple more houses and a villa for the season, which I rented out by room or as a whole for a short period of time to tourists, providing all the conditions and service. This was beneficial for homeowners, who received even more money than when they worked themselves. But I also managed to make good money, because. succeeded in attracting enough guests. Both booking and airbnb gave no more than 35%, the rest - from their website, instagram and groups on vkontakte and facebook.
An interesting story happened during the construction of the hostel. On a tip from one of the locals, a local policeman came to me. He assured me that I did not have the right to build personally and had to hire someone (and I hired, but I wanted to lay out the walls myself). It's good that I coordinated all my actions with a lawyer. Therefore, after talking on the phone with my lawyer, the policeman left, although he told me that I must bring all the documents to him. The lawyer said "forget it" - I did it)
This was the first of two significant stories. The beginning of the second was when I had to rather harshly put in place some local inadequate, who very impolitely conveyed his idea of “Sri Lanka for the Sri Lankans” to my wife and son in my absence. As it turned out later, he had connections and a bit of a “mafia” past. Therefore, soon the migration service from Colombo itself descended on me. At what with the aim of taking me with them and putting me behind bars. But they didn’t succeed either, because. All my documents were in order. Although my nerves were frayed, I had to go to Colombo a couple of times, proving my case. But after that, some of the locals began to classify me as a “Russian mafia”, and someone even attributed to me connections with Putin themselves!
Of the special aspects of life on the island, it is also worth noting the opportunity to act in films, just because you are white. It was not only exciting but also well paid. Whites were paid about $70 a day for being extras. Those who got more significant roles were even more lucky. I managed to get into the frame of the British series “The Good Karma Hospital” (which starred Amrita Acharya, who played Irri in the Game of Thrones itself!), an Indian film about the place of Robin Hood (I forgot the name) and several commercials. I managed to get my first fee (100 dollars in less than 2 years!) and my son, starring in commercials.
Surfing and diving are two essential parts of life, which, unfortunately, at that time I paid too little attention to. I liked both, but both in terms of time and financially, these classes had a low priority. Next time I'm going to catch up.
And of course, travel around the island itself. Perhaps later I will write a separate short story about this.
Advantages of working in the tourism business
One of the biggest benefits of owning a guesthouse was meeting new people from all over the world. There was usually no close communication with the guests, but even just getting to know and finding out who is from where and what they do, what they liked in Lanka and where else they were, is also very interesting. I remember how delighted the guest from Japan was with the size of the house and the garden. How much we got drunk with the Slovaks. How they cooked bishbarmak together with the German Kazakhs. And of course, joint barbecues with a lot of people.
But volunteers are a different story. In fact, communication is an important and integral part here. Yes, and most of the volunteers themselves are people who are a little out of the “average” at least because they went on a trip in this way. A ballet soloist from Latvia, an electrician from Australia, a hostel owner from Italy, a model from Moscow, a Frenchman in search of their place and way of life, students going around the world or just future students from Europe and Australia (and imagine, they can really make money on this traveling part-time after school and in the summer).
Wall painting in the room from one of the volunteers
But one of my guests more than others influenced my later life. Once a young guy Sergey settled with me - a traveling programmer at a distance. I don’t remember exactly how we started talking, but my past experience and just an interest in development gave us a topic for conversation. He settled with me for a long time, perhaps thanks to Nastya, a radio host from Belarus, who at that time was a volunteer in my villa. As far as I know, they are still together and spend their lives traveling.
At first, it was just interesting for me to look at the new laravel php framework, which Sergey had already switched to. And later, based on the results of several test tasks, Sergey offered me a part-time job in his new project. It was interesting and I agreed. And after the completion of work on Sergey's project, he started his own, thanks to which he mastered the framework even better and gained experience.
This is how I imagined the work of a remote programmer, but in fact I wrote the code only in an air-conditioned room at a comfortable table and chair)
I never managed to launch, or rather promote, the project, partly due to personal unfortunate circumstances and the subsequent decline in self-confidence. Although later I had a clear understanding that a lot can be created alone, but in order for a sufficient number of people to know about this creation, very large resources (both team and financial) are already needed. Only now I began to understand why, when evaluating a startup, investors pay more attention to the team than perhaps to the idea itself and so on.
Everything has changed drastically
The separation from my wife was a major turning point in my life, especially given the temporary separation from my son. I stayed in Sri Lanka for another half a year, somehow finishing the season at the villa. Not the best mood all this time resulted in three falls from the bike and the decision that you need to somehow stir yourself up. I did not want to leave the island, but it was necessary.
Part 5. To Moscow, to IT
Bonus :)) photos of Ceylon orders
