Drifters - in the Narigama part of Hikkaduwa - is close to all the Hikkaduwa clubs, close enough that you can crawl across the road after a good night/morning. For breakfast, they give you gigantic slices of bread with parippu and pol sambol for breakfast and, even better food wise, is walking distance from the Roti Shop. Nothing like a ...
The year has been a tumultuous one. Lehman Brothers and Danduwam Mudalali, failed in different ways. Asantha De Mel left his office, poppin' his zero cost collar and blaming everyone else. Yet us Sri Lankans continue caring for nothing other than what's for dinner (heta marunath...). But in our precarious economic times, we have cut back, eating ...
We're so 3008, it's so '80s-lateThe '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 typical of all chain hotels, polished cement, Bawa touches and Indonesian style furniture.In the '00s, we have learned ...
Embilipitiya is one of our new urban centers, 200km from Colombo. Drive into town and you can see a town that in a few years will become a city. When my dad was doing an agribusiness here, we used to stay at Centauria. Now, ...
Breakfast may be the most important meal of the day. But even at luxury hotels, you get the same old, same old: a choice of English (meat, eggs, toast, coffee), continental (English minus the meat and eggs) and Sri Lankan breakfasts (string hoppers and such).
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 just float for hours.Security:It's ...
Sometimes, when visiting places in Sri Lanka, multiple days aren't required. The island is small enough that a 3 hour drive out of Colombo can take you somewhere completely different. Yapahuwa is one of these places. In the 13th century, one of our kings, seeing how well Sigiriya had turned out ...
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, she had a ...
What I love about the type of hotels (cheap!) I usually stay at is that they are usually built, owned and run by people who are from the area and not professional hoteliers. As they are not professionals, they avoid the common pitfalls that the chains make (like offering bland, washed ...
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 one direction: down south. The roads are good, the beach is there, ...
(click here to see more reviews of burgers in Sri Lanka) (click here to see more reviews of fast food places in Sri Lanka) Naming conventions are an odd thing in Sri Lanka. Many shops have rip off names, taking a well known name and modifying it just a little bit. Whether it's a little guy running ...
(Click here for more posts about hotels in Sri Lanka)(Updated Sep 2010) We visited the Chalets at Victoria Golf Course last year as a one night stopover on the way from Dambulla to Nuwara Eliya. We needed a place to stay in Kandy and we just didn't ...
Driving on Sri Lankan rural roads is heaven. The main roads are usually carpeted, well maintained and traffic-free. But I also mean it in an aesthetic sense: rural roads here are surrounded by lush greenery, ancient trees, flowers (which I struggle to grow in my own ...
In my previous existence in New York City, we used to go to the most upscale restaurants and see how we could come out with the lowest bill. We used to call this game 'Being Broke.' Or 'Being Poor.' Here in Sri Lanka, the way to do this is to go into a posh hotel ...
(Click here for more posts about hotels in Sri Lanka)(Updated Sep 2010)Many hotels in Sri Lanka have evocative names that they do not live up to - "beach" hotels with minimal, unswimmable beaches, "resorts" which barely meet the criteria of a single star and ...
88 Chinese looks like the usual Sri Lankan Chinese restaurant with fried rice and hot butter cuttlefish galore. When we go to 88, however, we do not order the usual. We order "chicken rice." I suppose it's Hainanese Chicken Rice but that's not what we order. We order "chicken rice" and that's what we get. Chicken ...
The hotel trade in Sri Lanka is an odd business. Down south, cookie cutter hotels with blue pools and blah buffets next to a sliver of beach are full every weekend while one in gorgeous low country tea land, right next to a waterfall in an intensively green, landscaped environment languishes, ...
Drifters - in the Narigama part of Hikkaduwa - is close to all the Hikkaduwa clubs, close enough that you can crawl across the road after a good night/morning.For breakfast, they give you gigantic slices of bread with parippu and pol sambol for breakfast and, even better food wise, is walking distance from the Roti Shop. Nothing like a parippu/pol ...
(Click here for more posts about hotels in Sri Lanka) (Updated Sep 2010) Judging a hotel by how you get to it is like judging a book by its cover. The drive to World's End Lodge, Lower Ohiya (drive on the A4 past Belihuloya and turn right at Kalupahana Junction and keep going up, up and up) ...
Quick, where does anyone stay in Puttalam district? Apart from Dhammika Holiday Resort which does not overcome its unpromising name and Puttalam Rest House, there's pretty much nothing. Just before a monitoring visit to Puttalam, however, a friend told me about the Mudhouse which is in Anamaduwa off the Puttalam Kurunegala Rd. The way there is promising, beginning ...
