With its long, palm-fringed stretch of golden sand, clear seas, sand-side hotels and vibrant restaurants, Hikkaduwa is a picture-perfect tropical paradise.
Boasting good waves for surfers, coral reefs for snorkelers, it’s known as one of Sri Lanka’s best beach-holiday haunts.
When Dasha Ross and her husband John Pinder visited friends there, they were enchanted. And when they were offered the chance to up sticks and run their friend’s charming, if chaotic, hotel, they jumped at the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
‘Everyone dreams of going to a tropical paradise to run a boutique hotel, don’t they?’ says Dasha.
The timing seemed to be perfect. Then in her late 50s, she had recently been made redundant as a commissioning editor at the ABC, ‘s public broadcaster – and John, in his late 60s, formerly a major player on the entertainment scene, was feeling at a low ebb after his latest comedy festival on Sydney’s Cockatoo Island had been cancelled.
Consoling themselves that it was their time to relax and unwind – their ‘days of wine and roses’, as Dasha puts it – they had rented out their Bondi Beach home and bought open-ended return tickets to Spain to be near their daughter, Lola.
But Sri Lanka captivated them – so too, says Dasha, ‘the fantasy image of lounging casually under a palm tree in a hammock, sipping a piña colada with a paper umbrella stuck in a maraschino cherry.’
Sadly, within just eight months, the fantasy would prove just that when Dasha and John were forced to flee for their lives.
Thrown into a culture they didn’t understand without speaking a word of the language, they battled natural disasters, corrupt officials and unfamiliar local customs. But it was the death threats from their embittered predecessor that burst the bubble once and for all.
‘To the tourist’s eye, Sri Lanka is the most pristine, sultry and as yet undeveloped paradise.’ Dasha would later write in her just-published book about the experience. ‘But, as with any paradise, there is always a serpent ready to strike in the garden of Eden.’
First impressions
In December 2011, the high-flying couple had received an invitation from one of John’s old showbiz mates to celebrate New Year’s Eve at his hotel in Sri Lanka.
John had met Nick, an English producer, at the Edinburgh International Festival, and they’d been friends for 25 years.
With its palm-thatched beach bars, Hikkaduwa, reminded them of Bali’s Kuta 40 years earlier.
Nick’s Surfside Hotel, however, while perfectly positioned, had clearly fallen into disrepair. Most of the 15 rooms were empty and online reviews were terrible.
At the heart of the problem seemed to be manager Nalinda, a ‘plump-featured’, balding Buddhist in his early 40s who lived in the hotel with his wife and two daughters and treated it like his home rather than somewhere for paying guests.
One thing Nick told the couple during that first stay should have served as a warning.
‘Sri Lankans are usually a laid-back, peaceful lot,’ he said. ‘But they have a saying here, “When voices are raised, the machetes come out!”‘
On Dasha and John’s last morning after a night on the drink that ended in the early hours, Nick grinned mischievously and offered them an unlikely proposal.
‘I think you should come back and run the place next season,’ he said. ‘We’ve told you about the changes we want to make, and you could be just the people to do it. What do you think?’
Dasha’s initial reaction was to wonder whether Nick was insane. At the same time, she did think it was an ‘incredible proposition’. The couple said they would consider it.
Back in Sydney, the pair discussed the possibility. John was excited by the idea but worried about Nalinda’s ongoing role.
Nick’s response that to reassure them they could ‘work it out’ with Nalinda and that he’d already raised enough funds for a refurbishment and rebranding.
Dasha thought the project was tailor-made for her and John. They would combine travel with work, utilising complementary skills and contrasting styles: his freewheeling, intuitive ways with her methodological, procedural approach.
‘Just as long as you don’t turn into a Sybil and I don’t become a Basil,’ John warned her, referring to the lead characters in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers.
Trouble brewing
Not long afterwards, John made a two-week trip to Sri Lanka to gauge how Nalinda would react to their arrival. Nick had bought Nalinda a block of land to build his own home, but he was still living at the hotel. Within 36 hours, John was on the phone to his wife, warning her that the Nalinda situation was more ‘complicated’ than they’d thought.
‘I have to admit, this phone call rattled me,’ admits Dasha. ‘It didn’t sound straightforward. While Nick wanted change to happen and us to be its agents, what did Nalinda want?
‘But it wasn’t just about Nalinda. John needed to find out how Sri Lankans felt about white Western managers in general and specifically in “our” hotel. Would we be accepted or shunned as reminders of a colonialist past? Were there other white Western managers/owners in our village working successfully with Sri Lankan staff? Did they experience any problems?’
Despite these misgivings, the pair decided to give it a go.
‘Maybe it’s the recharge that John and I need,’ Dasha writes in her book. ‘A challenge John could meet that would get him over the smouldering misery of his cancelled festival.
So nine months after their first visit – they returned to Hikkaduwa in September 2012 to begin their new lives in charge of the Surfside Hotel.
The famous beach with its kilometres of golden sand was just as spectacular as it always had been – but the hotel, a modest, white bungalow on busy Galle Road, was dingier than either recalled.
Dasha and John exchanged ‘what have we got ourselves into?’ looks as they surveyed the scuffed walls, blown light bulbs and filthy coir matting running down the main corridor.
The kitchen appeared to be a death trap with five burners sitting atop a wobbly metal frame and attached to a pair of gas bottles on the floor. There was no running water, the cutlery was rusted, and a broken freezer stood in an alcove.
The next day, Nalinda emerged for the first time.
He had been a waiter when Nick came to the hotel on a surfing holiday in the early 2000s. Now he was installed as the manager. Nalinda gave Dasha and John a wary greeting, his eyes to the ground.
Three days later, he was just as terse. Nalinda was supposed to move out in the first few weeks and guests were booked for the start of the peak season in two months’ time. But the couple could not afford to lose Nalinda entirely as he held the key to communicating with the locals.
Clash of cultures
When Dasha proposed buying new kitchen equipment, Nalinda’s nostrils flared and he took off, eyes blazing, without saying a word.
This was to be an early lesson for Dasha: Nalinda did not like being told what to do by a woman, particularly one whose position he did not accept. Nalinda was still in control as far as he was concerned.
He had not been a good hotel manager but he was Nick’s man on the ground, dealing with power and internet companies, paying police, and looking after the accounts. Dasha and John would continue to need him as their fixer and bagman.
Being the manager had given Nalinda considerable status in his local community and his self-respect was at stake if he allowed the newcomers to take over.
With Nalinda offering next to no help, Dasha and John began preparing the hotel for its reopening. There were 15 guest rooms to bring up to standard and the couple soon carried away seven trailer loads of rubbish.
When carpenters, painters, electricians and gardeners were needed for urgent works, it became clear they all operated on ‘Sri Lankan time’.
A lucky break came when Dasha’s friend Sophie, a chef and cookbook author living in Barcelona, agreed to act as consultant for a fresh menu and get the kitchen in order.
Black magic and murder
Dasha soon learned of a darker side to their corner of the island. Whispers among expats had it that the south-west of the island was ‘well-known for black magic, superstition, murder, mayhem and ruthless tactics’.
A café owner told Dasha that one local woman, who had objected to a powerful family illegally building a luxury hotel on her land, had been found in a ditch, hacked to death from machete blows. Police ruled her death a suicide.
With five weeks to go before the first guests checked in, the growing list of jobs seemed insurmountable.
To do: create signage, clean up garden, paint rooms, install air conditioning. To replace: toilet seats, lights, taps, showerheads. To purchase: pot plants, sound system, bedding, glassware. To repair: sunbeds, beach showers, bar.
Hiring staff was done without Nalinda’s input, as by this point he was too busy building his own house. Seven new men – a chef, second chef, kitchen hand, two housekeepers and two waiters – joined an existing housekeeper, waiter and staff cook Dasha and John had inherited from the previous management.
Nalinda chose not to tell Dasha and John that one of the waiters was known to have a major drug problem. When he had to be sacked and Nalinda was asked why he had not said anything, he replied: ‘Because you wanted to hire him as a barman.’
Dasha and John had embarked on their foreign odyssey lacking not only the local Sinhalese language but the business visas necessary to operate. They pretended to be guests when excise police came to the beach checking liquor licences (the hotel did not have one).
Thankfully on this occasion Nalinda smoothed things with the constabulary by giving each inspector free food and drinks, plus about US$30 a month.
With three weeks to the grand re-opening, the hotel was still a construction site.
Nalinda complained when dodgy shelves he had built were removed. Turning on lights produced electric shocks from the switches. Workmen refused to follow orders from Dasha.
The internet dropped out for hours, day after day, and sudden electricity outages caused blackouts while hotels either side still had power. Nalinda claimed ‘the hot water stops when it rains’ without further explanation.
A new beginning
And just as finishing touches were being done, a typhoon struck, tearing holes in the roof and ruining the premium rooms upstairs. The wind blew off old asbestos sheeting, which was replaced with new sheets of asbestos.
Dasha and John were to learn Nick had given Nalinda a small share of the hotel’s ownership and he was describing himself on business cards as managing director.
But miraculously opening day came and went without too much disruption.
The wrong music playlist was put on at breakfast and some guests were served incorrect orders. But the Mediterranean-Sri-Lankan fusion menu was a success.
A Spanish couple who ran a small guesthouse in Madrid walked up from the beach for lunch and enjoyed the hospitality so much they immediately booked to stay for a week.
A squad of Sinhalese yummy mummies from Colombo, each accompanied by a child and a nanny, soon followed and proved demanding guests but spent plenty of money.
But some days after that group left, the circuit breakers to the electricity supply for the restaurant, kitchen, bar and garden lighting burnt out at about 9pm and the main over-rider caught fire. Nalinda said he would call an electrician but didn’t bother.
By now, the couple was calling the hotel Faulty Palms.
Yet business was good: the bar’s signature Surfside Special mix of vodka, fresh lime and ginger beer was popular, as was the half-price cocktail hour.
An ‘uber-attractive’ young couple who arrived one afternoon turned out to be British actor Ben Whishaw, who played Q in three Bond films, and his then-partner, n composer Mark Bradshaw.
Within a few months, Dasha and John had settled into a rhythm and the place was getting positive reviews on Tripadvisor, which ranked it the third best hotel on the beach and the fifth of 22 in Hikkaduwa.
While the couple housed and fed up to 40 guests a day, Nalinda was still not handling the maintenance problems. When 30 fluffy white towels Dasha sent to be washed were swapped for tatty old cloths, Nalinda took the side of the laundryman.
Eventually, after much cajoling, Nick organised business visas for Dasha and John – but, as the hotel’s fortunes improved, Nalinda only got surlier.
Breaking point
When Nick met with Nalinda and the hotel’s accountant, Nalinda failed to produce a folder of invoices that would have balanced the books and accused Dasha and John of being responsible for the missing money.
When they told Nick Nalinda had deliberately obstructed them, Nick confirmed their worst fears: Nalinda had said he ‘hated’ them and was jealous of their success.
The tipping point came when Nalinda turned up at the hotel late one night, unannounced and drunk. Sitting next to some guests, Nalinda said he owned the hotel and complained about how it was being run.
The next day John sent an email to Nick, who had returned to London.
‘We spend vast amounts of time putting out fires (metaphorically speaking, usually) due to systems’ failure,’ he wrote.
‘We do this in an environment where your local partner continually undermines us, has informed you he hates us, and wants to sack all the staff because they don’t respect him.’
Having not received a reply from Nick after three days, Dasha and John headed off for a weekend escape in Colombo, the capital of the South Asian island.
The final straw
In the couple’s absence, Nalinda found John’s email to Nick and was on the warpath.
Dasha and John were toasting each other with negronis on their hotel balcony when Nick phoned with a warning: ‘Nalinda says he wants to kill John! Wait there in Colombo until he calms down.’
As Dasha says in her book: ‘It was the first time I’d ever seen John lost for words in our marriage. Beads of sweat illuminated the top of his head. Our eyes locked silently; I collapsed in the nearest chair.’
With their passports and money in the hotel safe, the couple had to make a choice. Dasha thought they should stay in Colombo, but John wanted to go back and face Nalinda.
‘The following morning, I realised John was right; we did have to go back. It was the only way to know if Nalinda’s threat was real. Or not…’
By mid-afternoon they were back at the Surfside after an anxious three-hour car ride.
Reggae beats were playing as dozing guests basked on sun lounges. That peaceful scene was broken when Nalinda strode through the courtyard yelling: ‘Get out, you bloody bastard, get out, get out now!’
Dasha’s throat shut tight, knowing if Nalinda threw one of his clenched fists at John her husband would not back down.
Having pulled John away from the confrontation and ordering him to call Nick, Dasha turned to see Nalinda who was ‘advancing towards me like a cobra’.
‘Do you hit women?’ she demanded. Nalinda, with eyes ablaze, replied, ‘No, I never hit a woman.’
A stand-off ensued until Nalinda agreed to hand over keys to the safe and Dasha could retrieve their money and passports. Nalinda stormed off with a box containing petty cash, leaving Dasha and John to contemplate their plight.
The final departure
There was no denying Nalinda had crossed the line. But Dasha and John realised they had caused him to lose face and he would now be even more determined to force them out.
In coming days Nick told the couple he had never – ‘for obvious reasons’ – made it clear to Nalinda why he had been replaced by two outsiders.
Feeling unsafe and under siege, Dasha and John decided to leave while they still could and began to plan their departure.
After a long and sleepless night, they packed their bags into a waiting car and bade a final tearful farewell to their favourite staff. After just eight months, their dream was all over.
Now a decade later Dasha is sanguine about the experience: ‘Our mistake was underestimating how rigid and hierarchical the social system was. Sri Lankans are so conscious of the social order and their status in it that it pervades every aspect of their lives.
‘In hindsight, we understood that we’d attacked Nalinda in the most fundamental way. Not that safeguarding one’s reputation is less important in other cultures, but causing someone to lose face in Asia can cause you to lose yours.’
Dasha has changed several names, including that of the hotel, and some characters are composites. The hotel has since been sold and renamed.
Dasha Ross and John Pinder’s exotic adventure was over when they fled Sri Lanka for Sydney, but the worst time of their lives was yet to come.
Weeks after returning to Sydney, a routine medical check-up revealed John was suffering from stage-four bladder cancer.
After his bladder and and prostate were removed, he underwent five months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
‘Sri Lanka receded, shimmering only as a palm-fringed mirage in our memories,’ Dasha writes in Big Trouble Coming. ‘We’d fallen out of paradise and entered into cancer’s hell.’
When the cancer was in remission, the couple sold their Bondi home and moved to Barcelona but eight months later, a scan showed the disease had returned and spread. This time, the prognosis was terminal.
John died in May 2015 at the age of 70. Friends gathered at the famous Bondi Icebergs restaurant for a final farewell when his ashes were blasted into space over the Pacific Ocean.
Dasha began writing about the couple’s Sri Lankan experiment as an exercise in grief management. The project took seven years to complete and the final result is a love letter to her late husband.
‘It’s as much his story as it is mine,’ Dasha tells Daily Mail . ‘Without him there’s not a story.’