We visited Sri Lanka for a couple of weeks after we graduated from University (see our two week itinerary in Sri Lanka). Having not started working in the corporate world at the time, we weren’t blessed with bags of cash, so the aim of this blog is to show how easy it is to stay somewhere really nice, on a small budget in Sri Lanka. Of course there were some places where we got it wrong and found ourselves without air conditioning or in the right location, but there were a good number of places we booked which hit the nail on the head.
The main attraction at Rekawa, near to Tangalle in southern Sri Lanka, is to watch the turtles clambering up the beach to lay their eggs and bury them in the soft sand beaches. Because this marvel of nature occurs at night, we wanted to stay near to the Turtle Watch Rekawa site so that could easily get there and back without losing too much sleep.
Panorama Rock Cafe is a beautiful little hotel found on the quiet and extremely pretty spit of beach between the sea and Rekawa lagoon. It is made up of a cluster of cute little cabins nestled among the palms right on the beach front. For around £25 a night, you can’t expect luxury, but the cabins certainly do the job and there’s not many places with a better location and outlook.
One thing to bear in mind is that the waves here (and on the south coast in general) are extremely powerful and swimming in this little paradise is not quite so blissful as you might think.
We based ourselves in Wirawila to visit Yala National Park which is famous for its Leopards. The park itself is a short drive from Wirawila and Tissamaharama, the largest town in the area.
Saraii village was one of our favourite hotels on the trip. This amazing hotel is made up of several thatched tree houses perched high in the trees – it’s every kid’s dream! The bedroom is situated on a large wooden platform, which can be reached by a couple of fairly steep, but pretty secure wooden ladders. It certainly makes lugging your baggage up there quite a challenge, not to mention clambering down in the middle of the night to go to the loo. Each treehouse has it’s own private bathroom on the ground floor which is kept remarkably clean, though as you are staying in and amongst nature don’t be too surprised to find one or two tree frogs hanging out in the toilet!
There is a restaurant onsite which serves some great food for breakfast and dinner, and features regular visitors in the shape of monitor lizards (which we huge but completely harmless).
We managed to bag this beautiful tree top room for only £40 a night – an absolute bargain for such a cool hotel experience.
Ella is an extremely pretty town in the highlands, just south of central Sri Lanka. A stop here is a no-brainer on your tour of this beautiful island. It is a small town but there are still a fair few accommodation options available, ranging from wooden cabins to some swanky, balconied hotels overlooking Adam’s Peak, Ella’s Rock and with a view all the way down to the sea in the south.
We chose a rustic log cabin just on the edges of Ella, called Little Folly. This bed and breakfast, poking out from a pine forest on the road to Adam’s Peak serves excellent cakes, so even if you aren’t staying here, it is certainly worth popping in for some afternoon tea on the way back from the peak.
For as little as £20, you can get a spacious and rather characterful cabin for the nigh, including breakfast in the morning.
Back of Beyond (Pidurangala hotel)- Sigiriya
Sigiriya is an unmissable stop on your Sri Lanka trip. Basing yourself around here for a couple of days allows you to visit Sigiriya Rock, Dambulla Cave Temples and our favourite part of the whole trip, Minneriya National Park.
We went with our driver’s recommendation for accommodation here – a great perk of having a driver was his knowledge of where to go and where to stay (see our blog Getting a Driver in Sri Lanka for more reasons if you’re not yet convinced it’s worth it). The accommodation was another rustic hotel hidden away in the jungle out in the sticks, called Back of Beyond. The hotel was made up of several thatched, terracotta coloured, mud walled, cabins and some tree houses, joined together by a maze of paths. We opted for a room on the ground this time (though again our bathroom was very popular among the tree frogs). The cabins were extremely well decorated considering how cut off from the outside world they were and how rustic they appeared from the outside.
The Pidurangala hotel is part of the larger Back of Beyond chain of rustic hotels which spans across some of the major tourists hot spots in Sri Lanka such as Yala National Park. This was one of the more expensive hotels on the trip, at £55 a night, but it was certainly worth it and was a great base for the sites in the area.
Unfortunately we were so excited by the Elephants of Minneriya National Park and Sigiriya Rock, that we completely forgot to photograph this lovely hotel.
On our trip we spent a couple of days in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s captial city. Colombo is home to the main international airport and so depending on the times of your arrival and departure flights it may be necessary to stay here.
We splashed out at Colombo Courtyard on the last night to end our trip in style. This 4 star hotel in the heart of the city is certified as a carbon neutral hotel and has an extremely contemporary design and atmosphere.
The hotel has a wide range of amenities including a restaurant, a roof terrace bar, a gym & spa and a pool. The pool isn’t particularly large but its good enough for a quick dip and a splash around.
We stayed in a superior deluxe double room which was extremely nice, with a large amount of floor space, four poster bed a bath the size of a small plunge pool. This was only for £75 a night, which we thought was pretty good value. The other perk we cashed in on was the breakfast in bed service on the day of our flight. This was excellent.
For a more traditional hotel steeped in history we would recommend the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo. The hotel is perceived by many as the most elegant and prestigious place to stay in the city. The building certainly has a sense of grandeur and the decor transports you back in time with its cavernous rooms, its tasseled cushions and its heavily patterned rugs. It sits on the sea front with beautiful views out to sea and across Galle Face Green, the kilometre long stretch of land running parallel to the sea which once was a popular place to go for a walk in Victorian times. Now the green is full of local kids playing football and flying their kites.
The hotel has a very grand courtyard with perfectly manicured lawns reaching down to the sea which make it a very popular wedding destination. It is also very well equipped with a number of facilities including a spa and a decadent wine cellar.
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