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When people enjoy their vacations, they often bring home souvenirs or trinkets from their travels.
A pair of London-born newlyweds took that custom to the extreme when they drunkenly purchased a hotel during their honeymoon last year, Mirror reports.
Gina Lyons (33) and Mark Lee (35) were married in June 2017. Their honeymoon was a three-week backpacking tour of Sri Lanka in December.
One afternoon after booking into a local hotel, they immediately hit it off with the staff who worked there.
“When we walked into the hotel we saw a group of old Sri Lankan men who were still drunk from the night before, so we started drinking with them,” Gina says.
They then spent the night on the beach drinking rum with one of the bartenders, Metro reports.
The bartender told them the hotel’s lease was almost up – and 12 glasses of rum later, they thought it would be a great idea to buy the hotel’s three-year lease for £30 000 (about R575 000).
The next day the couple spoke to the previous owners – and older couple – about renewing the lease. They admit they again got bit tipsy during the negotiations, Daily Mail reports.
“We had to take two friends we had made with us so they could translate for us, as the couple didn't speak English themselves,” Gina recalls. “Because we didn’t understand most of the conversation, Mark and I were just sat drinking more rum and slowly getting drunk again.”
Despite facing financial challenges – after all, they’d just paid for a wedding too – the couple have managed to pay half of the lease and have refurbished and renamed the hotel to Lucky Beach Tangalle.
They then faced more financial challenges when Gina fell pregnant but they decided to persevere. And luck seems to be smiling on them as they’ve had a steady flow of guests since July of this year.
“I was plagued with feeling irresponsible, but it was either sink or swim – so we decided we’d have to make it work,” Gina says about their decision not to back out of the deal.
Sources: Mirror, Daily Mail, Metro
