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| Helga's Folly: pure whimsy |
AFTER years of scraping the bottom of the budget-holiday barrel, Sri Lanka resorts are striving for a new image - and a new kind of visitor: the discerning traveller who wants a good deal, with a difference. In spite of the 2004 tsunami, the festering political situation and other setbacks, the tourism infrastructure remains intact. It is even expanding with the addition of new eclectic retreats targeting a diverse audience. Since tourism helps not just those employed in the industry, but many others - such as fishermen, craftsmen and guides - to survive, there is an extra 'feel good' factor to a holiday in Sri Lanka.
Mass-market Sri Lanka beach resorts tend to close in May for an off-season revamp but new off-the-beach-and-beaten-track resorts have begun welcoming guests. This will delight those who like to think of strife-riven Sri Lanka as the more gracious Ceylon, since these new or revived resorts of character emphasise individuality laced with lots of TLC.
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Visitors increased after the partial cessation of open hostilities in 2002 between the warring LTTE (based in the north and east of the country) and government forces although by the end of 2007 visitor numbers had plunged again with further upheavals and random violence. Although holiday resorts were never the prime targets of terrorism, the renewed outbreak of the long civil war has damaged the island’s economy as well as the hospitality industry.
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| Illuketia: colonial charms/ photo: hotel |
The domino effect of low (and low-spending) arrivals caused the collapse of hotel standards, both in state of repair and caring service, leaving a product that lacked lustre. However, there have been improvements as new boutique-style hotels concentrating on personalised service and good food have entered the scene. The shortage of visitors to fill the beds means that room rates are low when compared with similar properties in other tropical destinations, making this a fine time to discover Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka’s appeal lies in its diversity, and resorts are opening that focus on the independent visitor with a special yen. Ancient ruins, Buddhist culture, adventure tourism like white water rafting and mountain biking, game park safaris, colonial lifestyle, and Colombo shopping and casinos are a small part of the island’s lure.
Conventional beach hotels that offered as a diversion only buffet dinners and a local calypso band wearing silly straw hats, are adding value. Some have opened “wellness” spas, others – like the Bentota Beach Hotel – have opted for novelty restaurants. This 35-year old property has opened a cellar fine dining restaurant with show kitchen as well as upgraded buffets and set menus, so even the full board guest has a memorable gourmet experience.
Other resorts are bolder in their themes. It’s possible to stay in a tea planter’s bungalow or a peasant’s mud hut, in a jungle tree house or a designer villa. It’s not just the diversity that’s attractive about holidaying in Sri Lanka, there’s also the ease with which it can be done. While there are companies that will organise individual tours, independent visitors can easily make their own arrangements on arrival.
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| Amanwella: modern touches |
There is a tourist information office at the airport, and a counter where taxis can be hired. Also at the airport, after immigration, there are duty-free shops for arriving passengers to stock up on booze (but the importation of duty-free cigarettes is not allowed). Visitors are given a 30-day permit on arrival. There is no customs declaration required of foreign currency being brought in, unless it is in excess of US$10,000. Visitors with nothing to declare can use the customs Green Channel, although there are occasional spot checks.
Minivans with an English-speaking driver can be hired from Rs6,000 (about US$55) a day. However, if doing this, be firm and know where you want to go. Good drivers can be informative about local traditions, others may be reluctant to follow your itinerary and try to steer you to gem shops or hotels where they’ll get a commission. Actually, most hotels provide the driver with free food and a free bed in dedicated drivers’ quarters when they bring guests. (An exception is Helga’s Folly in Kandy, which is why drivers try to deter visitors staying there; Helga directs drivers to a local guesthouse instead.)
Advance reservations at resorts are not necessary except at peak times such as December/January on the west and south coasts, April in Nuwara Eliya, and during the “Perahera” season in Kandy, which falls in July/August.
Kandy is the ancient hill capital and has retained a charm that Colombo has lost. It is compact with bustling – but friendly – crowds, a lake and the world-famous Temple of the Tooth. At the annual Perahera the tooth casket is paraded around town in a spectacular pageant with acrobatic dancers and drummers and Kandyan chieftains in attendance. Over 100 caparisoned elephants, whip crackers and jugglers take part in the 10 nights of celebration, climaxing on the night of the Esela full moon. There is a daylight Perahera the day afterwards.
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| Madu Ganga verandah |
Kandy, perhaps because it has always been on most visitors “must see” list, has a range of low-cost resorts. The most amazing is Helga’s Folly, a chalet style building where every room has a view of the lake, and enough fantastic décor to satisfy the inner child. “If this is a folly,” wrote a guest in one of the voluminous guest books, “it’s foolish to be wise.”
Helga, who presides over her erstwhile home with the grace of a duchess, has created a fantasy with outrageous colour schemes and candle-lit parlours of antiques and whimsy. “It’s tongue-in-cheek,” she says to startled guests. “Staying here should be fun.” It’s an attitude that has made the place popular with cosmopolitan trendsetters. There are 25 rooms in operation, some of which are air-conditioned, and the food is as memorable as the over-the-top décor, with such dishes as fish poached in tea. This is a Sri Lanka budget resort with a difference.
The Olde Empire hotel is a down-to-earth contrast boasting a balcony, overlooking the temple square, that is a meeting place for young backpackers. While this is a budget hotel, the rate increases to big-spender levels during the Perahera season because of its proximity to the parading elephants. Rooms, apart from one, have shared bathrooms and the hotel enjoys the unusual intimacy of a travellers’ club and local tavern. At the other end of town, and price bracket, with impressive service and large rooms with splendid river views, the Mahaweli Reach has expanded over three decades from a family guesthouse to a homely five-star resort of character. It has a sparkling new business centre and a new dynamic-looking gym.
The Australian owners of Colombo’s popular Cricket Club Café have converted a century-old plantation bungalow off the Kandy to Nuwara Eliya road at Pussellawa for guests. The Lavender House is set in seven acres of tea, woods, mountain views and terraced lawns, proving there are still niches in Sri Lanka where all is calm and orderly. With five sumptuously-furnished suites, each with French windows opening onto a private garden and a gloriously retro bathroom with chain-flush loo, and a portrait of Sir Winston Churchill glowering above silk-covered wing chairs in the lounge,,a clay tennis court and a granite-sided swimming pool, this is the perfect retreat into the past for two or a house party of 10. Mark this Sri Lanka colonial resort gem in your diary.
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| Vil Uyana: wetland fantasy |
In the island’s interior near the cultural sights, the lakeside Amaya Lake (formerly Culture Club) offers a ‘back-to-nature’ experience in peasant-style mud huts with thatched roofs, alongside regular accommodation designed like temple chambers. Also with a view of the Sigiriya Rock, where tall grass, paddy fields, and a lake with basking crocodiles form the setting for a back-to-nature-in-style retreat of thatched cabanas (many with their own swimming pools) atop concrete platforms in a wetland, is the fantasy known as Vil Uyana. With an extravagantly-stocked wine cellar, exquisite cuisine, and rooms that transform a childhood dream of a romantic tree house into five-star reality, this is a sophisticated woodland retreat offering the ultimate in seclusion and relaxation.
The four master suites at the 142-unit Cinnamon Lodge (transformed out of Habarana Lodge, a favourite mainstream hotel for those doing the Cultural Triangle) seems designed for permanent residence, spread over two floors with a sarong-clad butler on call and monkeys gamboling by the lake in its vast parkland setting. Beds are piled high with silk cushions and spread with crisp, Egyptian cotton in rooms wrapped around with balconies or verandahs. Tranquil elegance complemented by hearty buffet fare.
Sri Lanka resorts are not all mountain and beach. A crop of nature resorts bring guests right into the wild. Standing starkly in 200 acres of scrubland, in “nature-scaped” gardens is the new Elephant Corridor, so-called because of its location at the crossroads for wandering animals of the wild. It boasts one of Sri Lanka’s most expensive rooms, the Presidential Suite at US$1,250 a night (but that can sleep eight). There are 21 suites in huts of granite blocks of striking hue. Within easy motoring distance of the Sigiriya Rock and the ruins of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa, this hotel provides a jungle base of heightened ostentation for the jaded jet setter.
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| Deer Park: eco friendly |
The Deer Park is more homely in character with 74 comfortably-furnished cottages and a rambling presidential villa with its own swimming pool. Located near the lake at Giritale, it is handy for viewing the ruins of Polonnaruwa as well as for indulging in environmental bliss. Adopted as one of the international Colours of Angsana brand of resorts, it has a rural charm spiced with urbanity that pitches it among the best Sri Lanka resorts.
A Sri Lankan colonial resort in the manner of an English country house, Glendower in the hill country retreat of Nuwara Eliya, is warmly welcoming (there are log fires in the public rooms). Although it is a reproduction bungalow, it has nine rooms and suites with teak floors, handcrafted polished mahogany furniture, and beds that guarantee a good night’s rest. Even the quilts are filled with silk. Its King Prawn Chinese restaurant provides a relief from the bland boarding house fare of its grander neighbouring hotels.
One of the most unusual hotels is a few miles away from Nuwara Eliya, at 6,700 feet above sea level, in the middle of acres of rolling hillsides carpeted with tea and often bathed in mist. The Tea Factory resembles a gigantic and thrilling construction made by a zealous boy out of a Meccano set. The exterior has preserved the original tea factory’s corrugated iron walls, painted silver, and hundreds of tall, wooden casement windows. Inside its reception hall atrium (once the tea drying room) latticed with steel, two giant wooden fans turn slowly in the roof. The generating engine remains connected to a Heath Robinson contraption of pulleys and chains that powered the old tea rollers and sifters. The hotel’s 57 cosy bedrooms are equipped with heater, a bathtub and lashings of hot water, and a kettle for making tea from the estate’s own brand. It’s a snug kind of place, ideal for lazy lingering in isolation for a few days or hiking in hills, forests and village hamlets.
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| Kahanda Kanda bungalow retreat |
A traditional, unreconstructed Sri Lankan colonial hotel that has escaped the popularity of those in Nuwara Eliya, in the neighbouring tea town of Bandarawela, is the Bandarawela Hotel which was opened in 1893. Despite an occasional lick of paint or modification, it remains reassuringly locked in a time warp somewhere between 1930 and 1950. At 4,000 feet above sea level, on a bluff overlooking the town, it was originally favoured as a sanatorium by the then Ceylon’s British residents. Its beds with brass knobs and the hushed, measured tread of the sarong-clad staff convey a sense of restful calm. Tea on the lawn or in the long verandah lounge is a ritual, and the restaurant caters for those with a tea planter’s healthy appetite.
What about those wonderful Sri Lanka bungalow resorts? While there are now several tea plantation bungalows that take guests, the pioneer is the Kelbourne Mountain Resort, at Haputale. With gob-smacking views across forested canyons right down to the south coast, there are three bungalows set in the hillside around a central garden that has a dining pavilion and kitchen. Meals from the resident chef’s menu can be served in each bungalow’s dining room and a bungalow boy is on call for whatever guests want.
Aerie Cottage has two parlours and two bedrooms, each with attached bathroom, and the other two bungalows can sleep six each. Tea grows up to the window ledges. Here is plantation living in style with good management to keep the experience trouble-free. The planter’s lifestyle (butler and cook on hand with meals from a plantation menu) can be enjoyed at the hill country Sherwood and Thotalagala bungalows near Haputale, Rosita bungalow at Kotagla and St Andrew’s bungalow at Talawakelle. Overlooking deep valleys of tea and drenched in colonial charm, these bungalows each sleep 10 in chintzy comfort.
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| Cinnamon room/ photo: hotel |
The Boulder Garden Nature Resort, near Ratnapura and the Sinharaja Forest, comes with a health warning on its rate sheet: “It is home to many jungle creatures and they visit our guest facilities. Our suites are thatched…wide open to the symphony of nature.” But they are elegantly furnished and have attached bathrooms. The bar is in a natural cave, the restaurant under a rock. All sorts of adventures are promised or simple relaxation in a wonderfully wild environment. For a real backwoodsman encounter with nature, guests can stay in one of four tree houses at Rafter’s Retreat on the banks of the Kitulgala River. In one cabin the bathroom is down a ladder made of branches hidden under a trap door set in the planks of the floor. Daylong white-water river rafting expeditions, with lunch of village cooking, take off from the retreat.
Off the main road at Kitulgala a rough trail (called the Beli Lena Road) leads uphill to the enchantingly different Royal River Resort. This complex of four rooms in two separate blocks is built by a raging river around a fresh (and thrillingly cold) bathing tank fed by the relentless torrent of a mountain stream. Rooms are bright with sunlight bursting through windowed walls, and comfortable with four-poster beds, but basic bathrooms. Food is refreshingly not fancy, and prepared in a galleried kitchen where guests in the pool can look up and see the chefs at work. A great resort for a party of friends.
Countryside living in a style is to be found at Illuketia, a few kilometres inland from the southern coastal road near Galle. The property consists of two villas, one with its own pond and open-air bathrooms, another with cloistered rooms around an interior swimming pool. The furniture is bold colonial, with Chinese touches, and the atmosphere grand.
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| The Fortress rooms, Koggala: airy |
Featured with awe in glossy magazines worldwide Kahanda Kanda, off a country lane heading inland nine kilometres east of Galle, was originally built as the owner’s private, fantasy residence following his purchase of an abandoned 12-acre tea plantation in 2000. He has since created a retreat of two suites in the original bungalow and three vast guest pavilions, with a stunning swimming pool, ponds, and two recreational pavilions, with furniture made locally to the owner’s design and contemporary fittings by in-vogue Sri Lankan designers. Staying there is to feel in advance of the “in-crowd” who would surely enjoy it too.
The Sun House was created as a fine Sri Lanka boutique hotel in a colonial mansion overlooking the Galle harbour. Its approach up a road lined with suburban houses, to a door set in a wall, gives no inkling of the idle splendour within. There are five double rooms with four-poster beds and a Cinnamon Suite complete with library and lounge that takes up the whole first floor. Dining is on the loggia by a garden with terraces and a sunken swimming pool. High walls keep out the world.
Across the road, the renovated Dutch House known as Doornberg was built in 1712 and its outside wall and entrance verandah look appropriately dilapidated with peeling umber paint. Its four huge bedrooms come with colonial period furniture including Edwardian style bathtubs. Columned cloisters enclose a sun-drenched lawn, with frangipani blossoms floating in clay pots and a path that leads to a lower-level swimming pool.
Opened in Galle Fort is a remarkable conversion of the ruins of a 17th century Dutch mansion into the Galle Fort Hotel done with passion and love by a Malaysian former investment banker, Chris Ong, and his Australian former film producer partner, Karl Steinberg. Guests enter through the verandah, adapted to a café serving eclectic food conceived by Ong, and a dining hall furnished with exquisite Chinese porcelain, to a courtyard with swimming pool and tall columns.
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| Amangalla: remodelled relic |
Three garden rooms lead off the cloisters and there are nine elaborately furnished suites including the largest (2,500 square feet) in Sri Lanka. All this pomp and grandeur is made more fun by the serving lads who wear, instead of the traditional tunics and sarongs more suited to the colonial atmosphere, T-shirts and beach shorts. The place has every sign of becoming trendy and already several international magazines have done fashion shoots there. It is the only hotel in Sri Lanka to achieve the distinction of a UNESCO Heritage Award for Cultural Heritage Conversion, awarded in 2007.
In the same road and league is a hotel, formerly famous as the New Oriental, now transformed by the Amanresorts group into Amangalla. With parts of the building harking back to its days as a barracks during the 17th century Dutch construction of the fort, the hotel was affectionately known as NOH from its beginning in 1865 until its reincarnation 140 years later as Amangalla. Visitors who pop in for drink on the broad, art-deco tiled verandah, as they did in the old days, are astonished by the successful transformation of the property from seedy to sophisticated. This is among the best Sri Lankan luxury resorts around, albeit with a homey feel.
The dated essence of its predecessor has been lovingly enhanced with spit and polish. The shining wooden floorboards of the Grand Hall are original, as are the metre-thick walls and the corridors of suites and chambers. While four-poster beds and some of the chunky period furniture remain, more comfortable, slimmer pieces have been added creating a confident elegance. Hidden in the cloistered garden is a huge, sleekly modern swimming pool and The Baths – a spa.
Close to Weligama in the far south is the 60-room Barberyn Beach Ayurveda Resort set on 15 landscaped acres looking onto the Indian Ocean. Expect a herbal garden, swimming pool, and a range of options from yoga to acupuncture, herbal steam baths and massage. The same group runs the Barberyn Reef Ayurveda Resort at Beruwala, 58km south of Colombo with 75 rooms and a similar array of yoga, massage, and "pranayama" (breathing technique).
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| Renovated Galle Fort Hotel |
Amanwella, opened in March 2005, is at Tangalle, 77km from Galle along the south coast road. The drive takes at least two hours, allowing time for adjustment to the contrast in Aman styles. Amanwella is resolutely modernist, the first glimpse new arrivals have being a forest of tall, black square concrete columns complementing the palm trees of its coconut grove location. Accommodation at this hideaway, among the best Sri Lanka luxury resorts, is in 30 villas strung out in three tiers along a hillside curving around a golden beach. The villas have glass-sided walls and no curtains, and partial privacy comes from the closing of lattice screens. With roofs of old clay tiles, the villas blend beautifully into the environment and inside all the furniture and fittings are locally made from dark-grained palm wood.
The latest technology powers the lights and air-conditioning which means some guests need instruction on how to operate them. Each villa has a private swimming pool and there is a huge one in the main complex, where there is also a library, a restaurant with an excellent menu, and a bar so demurely lit at night, one wonders if it’s there. (Amanwella and Amangalla are featured in our Top Asian Hotels section with more information and stunning visuals.)
The Fortress, which opened on the beach at Koggala on Sri Lanka’s south coast in 2007, announced the world’s most expensive dessert, a chocolate and gold leaf confection with an 80-carat aquamarine for US$14,500, as part of its ploy to position itself as an exclusive resort for high net-worth visitors. Its 49 suites are defiantly modern in design and gadgets (an iPod in every one), set in a huge reproduction fortress stretching along the beach with the longest swimming pool in the country, and for the hedonist, a wine cellar dining parlour with glass cutlery, crystal glasses and a floor of crushed marble.
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| Saman Villas pool |
Jetwing Kurulubedda offers two timber chalets with upper deck of bedroom and sun platform and lower floor given over to a cement tub plunge pool, set in a vegetable garden by a river. Reached by boat arranged through the nearby mainstream Lighthouse Hotel in Galle, this is a miniature bird sanctuary and nature haven, with its own teak decked restaurant for just four guests, with a. personal chef and stewards on hand.
Reached by boat along the river from the bridge at Balapitiya, about 84km south of Colombo, Madu Ganga Villa is a blissful retreat set in a wooded garden landscaped with antiques by its young Sri Lankan owner. There are floating rooms, riverside rooms, and jungle cottages but with basic bathrooms. As well as a floating restaurant, there is a riverside dining room created with antique screens, and an inviting swimming pool shaded by kitul palms. Nothing is rushed, the food is genuinely Sri Lankan (fresh river crab, rich pork curry) and the resort is the kind that once you discover it you’ll want to visit again and again, before it goes upmarket.
Among the first Sri Lanka boutique hotels was Saman Villas, built in 1995, now with some rooms having the addition of swimming pools overlooking the west coast beach near Bentota. With only 27 suites, decoratively and practically furnished (no modern gadgetry here), this hotel has matured into a reliable, popular place for sun and sea worshippers of a certain age.
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| Miles and miles of beach |
Less than an hour’s drive from Colombo, up a road off the Colombo to Galle highway at Wadduwa between the 33km and 34km posts, Nidahasa has three separate suites filled with music and fantasy in a garden-like a fairyland at night when hidden lights and candles are lit. There are two unexpected waterfalls in the garden, a swimming pool inside the house, a gym complete with satellite TV in an old cottage, and a clay-walled hut and rush mat kiosk for socialising at night. Meals on request, a willing young staff, and a pleasing informality make guests feel comfortable and at home. An amazing place to unwind after visiting everywhere else. And that’s our guide to the best Sri Lanka resorts from budget and bungalow escapes to high-end colonial retreats, spas, and luxury resorts.
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