(Click here for more posts about restaurants/places to eat in Sri Lanka)Negombo, 1.5 hours from Colombo, is a small tourist town / fishing village with a walkable strip of restaurants on Poruthota Rd (formerly Lewis Place) and hotels around it. Because it's so compact, you can go from kadala karaththe to restaurant to pub and stagger back to your room ...
If you need a place to stay on your way to Pinnawela (27km), Kurunegala (30km) or Kandy (60km) or you just want a quiet place to hang out for a weekend, you could do a lot worse than Thirasara Leisure Village ...
When I went recently with a group of IT BPO people to Galle for a career fair, I found out that not everyone knows about chicken/cheese and chocolate rotis. They're just like egg rotis but, instead of egg, they're filled with chocolate or cheese and chicken. These tasty beasts are endemic to Hikkaduwa - the original rotti shop is in ...
Despite the Sinharaja rainforest being the single most popular destination among local tourists - or maybe because it is? - there are very few hotels there. I've already reviewed Rock View Motel near Sinharaja which is a basic, low-priced experience at around LKR 5,000 full board double. And here is a review of Boulder Garden, a posh ...
The festival is on till tonight (Sat 27th Jun 09)When I was homesick for some Sri Lankan food, I used to go to a Malaysian restaurant. They had godamba roti (called it roti canai) and the chicken curry was identical to Sri Lankan chicken curry. In Sri Lanka, though, there are almost no places to eat Malay ...
We're so 3008, it's so '80s-late The '80s called and they want Nilaveli (Nilaweli?) back. That decade was full of these types of hotels with matchbox rooms, tiny bathrooms, pools and buffets catering to miserly package tourists. The lobby, entrance and restaurant are typica
(Click here for more posts about hotels in Sri Lanka) (Click here for more posts about beach accomodation in Sri Lanka) Arugambay is full of places to stay. None of them are super posh but they're usually cheap. LKR 700 was the cheapest rate I was quoted and LKR 5000 was the most expensive. To find ...
When to visit:Arugambay is full of foreigners during the surf season (June to August) but seems empty otherwise. While surfing is good, I prefer swimming. And what makes the off season bad for surfers (no waves) makes it great for swimming. The waves break really close to the shore so if you slightly beyond, you can ...
(Click here for more posts about hotels in Sri Lanka)(Click here for more posts about beach accomodation in Sri Lanka)(More photos and video at end of review)Kalpitiya (around 160km from Colombo, 3.5 to 4 hours drive during the day) is the hype capital of Sri Lankan tourism. "Blah blah Kalpitiya blah blah dolphins blah blah" says everyone from Hi Magazine ...
Arugambay is a lot like Hikkaduwa. The accomodation is cheap but the majority of places are holes. They have fancy names (Hillton!) and big, digitally printed signboards but are still holes. Originally, when we decided to go there for the long, long weekend, I'd booked into Ranga's Beach Hut. When my wife found out Ranga's had shared bathrooms, ...
Six days of holidays are coming up! The 9th to the 14th of April, 2009 are holidays for most of us - for others, you just need to take the 10th off.Only in Sri Lanka do we get these kind of long weekends. Most of us head in ...
I've always been a bit of a pizza snob. To me, real pizza is not Italian - it never was - but New York pizza. I think it's the water. In most places here in Colombo, the pizza just doesn't feel right in an I-don't-know-much-about-art-but-I-know-what-I-like manner. Even ...
(Click here for more posts about hotels in Sri Lanka)(Youtube video at end of this post)The Taragala Place Matti Gedaras (mati gedara means clay house in Sinhala) are located right beside the Kalametiya Bird Sanctuary, 214km from Colombo. The name comes from Taragala Rock (not pronounced thaaraa as in duck but thaara as in tar) inside the sanctuary, which you ...
Rubber Soul Kalutara. What is it known for really, other than somewhere to stop, drop in a coin and pray that you get to somewhere nicer? Turns out Kalutara, the district anyway, has nice areas and Halketha - in Mathugama, 75 km from Colombo - is in one of these. We were ...
This Google map is for all the blog reviews of hotels in Sri Lanka. If anyone has reviews of hotels/restaurants on their blogs, please give me the links in the comments so I can include it in this map.Judging whether a hotel is near where you want to go by address, especially in SL, is not the easiest unless you ...
People like to visit a hotel they are already familiar with so that they won't have any unpleasant surprises. New Sri Lankan hotels, as a result have a huge barrier to overcome before the beach-pool-and-buffet crowd comes to visit them. We always felt a little superior to them. We used to find hotels in the HIT Ads and if we ...
(Click here for other fine dining options in Sri Lanka) (Click here for more posts about restaurants/places to eat in Sri Lanka) Recently, we dined at Park Street Mews,a new bistro style restaurant with a lounge and dining space, on Park Street in Colombo 2. (Legally, new restaurants can only open ...
(Click here for more posts about hotels, guest houses and holiday villas / bungalows in Sri Lanka) In 2008, I have stayed at over 30 hotels. Of some of these - the ones that either impress or depress me greatly - I have written about in this ...
The festival is on till tonight (Sat 27th Jun 09)When I was homesick for some Sri Lankan food, I used to go to a Malaysian restaurant. They had godamba roti (called it roti canai) and the chicken curry was identical to Sri Lankan chicken curry. In Sri Lanka, though, there are almost no places to eat Malay food. So when ...
