15 Top tips when visiting Sri Lanka

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Having got home from Sr Lanka a few days ago we decide a Top Tips blog would help those thinking of going to Sri Lanka to maximise there enjoyment and not make some of the mistakes we did. 

1. Apply for your e-visa, ETA online prior to going. It’s easy and saves you queuing and waiting to do it on arrivals, it’s also cheaper. Make certain you apply for it on the official website so that you are not overcharged. You don’t get a paper ETA but you receive a message saying it’s been granted and it’s automatically attached to your passport number. We did print off the email saying it had been granted but we didn’t need it. We did it through the link on https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/sri-lanka/entry-requirements

2.  Once your ETA has been granted the email allows you to fill out an online entry form…..oh how I wish I had done this…when you arrive if you’ve already done this you walk straight through to a set of immigration booths and straight out…those who had done it were out in moments. The rest of us queued to fill in the form online only to find the machines not working, we then queued for a paper form, then queued for a space to fill in one for each of us. Then the final queue was about 100 people going through 3 immigration booths one at a time..it seemed to take forever…all because I couldn’t be bothered to spend 10 minutes filling in the online form prior to arrival.

3. Once you’ve passed through immigration and customs you come into a large hall with Foreign Exchange booths prior to the next section where the guides, drivers etc wait. We strongly recommend you change money here. The Thomas Cook booth offered the best exchange on both US$ and £. Change enough for your trip, because we didn’t see another exchange booth throughout our trip. Ask them for small denominations because they like to give you LKR5000 notes and no porter, tuk-tuk driver or waiter will be able to give you change for LKR5000, so ask for quite a few 100’s and 500’s. Some hotels and shops will change US$. We had to change in a fabric shop in Kandy and didn’t get a great exchange rate. You also need to keep some US$ because some attractions have international visitors entrance fees in $ although I think you can pay in LKR ( Sri Lankan Rupees) ours was all paid as part of our holiday.

4. If you are being met by a guide or driver they will be holding a placard with your name on. PLEASE make certain it’s the right person….we instantly saw a placard with Jackson  on it, so we greeted the driver and started going with him, when I asked if he was going to be our driver for the whole trip. He responded that he was just taking us to our hotel in Colombo…..hang on!!!!! Our hotel was in Negombo…..it seemed there were two Jackson’s on the incoming flight…so back we went. We quickly found our guide and driver Suminda, who also had a placard with Jackson on it!! He greeted us with a warm welcome and a garland of orchids each…and yes he was our companion for all of our vacation….phew just missed a catastrophe!!

5. At the back of the arrivals hall are the telecom sales booths. We carry a Huawei router when we travel so that we have portable WiFi . We had been recommended either Dialog or SLT Mobitel. We went for the SLT Mobitel the data SIM card was US$13 for 60gb. This lasted us our entire trip and we WhatsApp every day to UK , surfed the internet and used Facebook, uploaded our blog and photos to Flickr. We usually used our own internet rather than the poor signals we so often had in hotels. Once again it’s easiest to buy it at the airport…they’ll even fit it and check it’s working. 

6. Try and go to a supermarket on the way to your accommodation. We really recommend that you purchase an electric plug in mosquito repellent. Not all places have them and they really work…we didn’t just have it on at night we left it on all the time. The other purchase is “Kick” Citronella Spray… a big bottle you can spray on ankles, feet, arms etc…I used it twice a day  but you could probably get away with just in the evenings…even my husband used it when he noticed a lot of bites on his legs. 

7. When using a tuk-tuk  agree the price before you get in. Try and ascertain the rough price from your hotel or restaurant…but if you can’t ask the price and then the best price which is usually about half the original price. 

8. Try and only book Bed & Breakfast. We found half board in some places, gave you no choice or only a choice of two mains and the protein portions were very meagre. In one hotel it was just fried rice with very little tasty additions and a chicken drumstick, the chicken must of died from anorexia!! Having said this the half board  at The Beach & Bliss 4* hotel was superb. But if you just book B&B you can choose from the menu or choose to eat at an alternative restaurant.

9. Some UK bank cards don’t seem to work in the ATM machines and we didn’t really find out why. My husbands Santander card worked. It only allowed a maximum of LKR50,000 a day which is approx £135. My NatWest card got declined twice at 2 different locations, I was too afraid to try a 3rd time..we don’t know why. So make certain you have enough cash to see you through ……credit cards aren’t always accepted. The Commercial Bank didn’t charge for ATM transactions. The HNB charged LKR800 about £2. 

10. If you plan to do the train journey from Kandy to Ella you need to book in advance 1st Class air conditioned reserved seats are the best….loads say 2nd class reserved seat are good…but people open the windows and it gets very hot…in 1st class you can still walk through the carriages and look out of the open window. Tickets are difficult to get so contact an agent like Jetwing travel well before you go and ask them to get you tickets. There’s no point turning up on the day and expecting to get a reserved seat ticket.

11. If you go to Ella you need to prebook accommodation and a restaurant …it’s very busy….the recommended best restaurant is The White Rabbit…which we had our hotel  prebook..when we arrived every table was full and people were being sent away…the food was superb.

12. If you decide to stay at Sea World Botique, Mirissa make certain you state you want a sea-view room. They are divine and the road side are small, noisy and not so great. 

13. The food at Beach & Bliss, Mirissa is superb. The restaurant SALT or perhaps it’s SOLT, Mirissa is a real experience…sitting at the waters edge, selecting your own fish having it cooked and served to you under the star….wonderful experience. 

14. If you do pay by credit card be warned that they add 3 or 4% for the privilege.

15. If you are attempting to climb either Dambulla Cave temple ( 364 steps) or Sigiriya Rock Fortress(1200steps) you need to do it in the early morning before it gets too hot and crowded.

Day 24-28th February 2024- Our Last day -Farewell Sri Lanka, hello home UK.

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The alarm rudely awakened us at 6.15 am… the last bits and pieces squeezed into the cases. We had a packed lunch to eat in the car… At 7.00 Suminda arrived and away we sped to the Airport along the expressway which had a toll of LKR 550 about £1.50 local LKR cash only.

9.00am saw us at the airport loading our bags on to a trolly and bidding a very sad farewell to Suminda. He really had been a gem.
We soon booked our bags in and very quickly passed through emigration. The departure lounge has some nice duty free shops and a few food outlets. We wandered down to gate 9 with plenty of time to find lots of people already going through. At this point our hand baggage and ourselves were scanned again for the 3rd time and you’re only allowed 100m of liquid. We only had to wait at the gate a short while before our seat numbers were called. Sri Lankan Airlines very sensibly fill from the back. The flight was a few minutes late taking off. Once again the meals and entertainment were good. 11 hours 45 minutes later we landed at Heathrow. We were quite quickly through the immigration e-gates and our baggage soon arrived. We gave Stuart, our driver, a call and 10 minutes later he picked us up…. Even with the road works we were home by 10.00pm……. What a great adventure we had had…. Thank you Sri Lanka you are a beautiful country… Thanks to Rosie Price at Dialaflight. – UK tel no. 0161-841-8179 or rosie.price@dialaflight.co.uk – and to Jetwing Travel for sorting out all the on the ground details of our trip and most of all thank you to Suminda who made our trip exciting and was a good fun travelling companion. His details are Suminda Dissanayake he can be contacted at Suminda711@gmail.com. or what’s app/ phone number is + 94772279050
When we finish the unpacking etc we will post a final blog on Sri Lanka with a few tips to help enhance your holiday. In the meantime thank you to those of you who have followed us.

Day 23– 27th February 2024- Our Last Full Day in Sri Lanka – sun, sea watching, pool and packing.

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The waves were really crashing in during the night. They woke me a couple of times and I could not only hear their force but also felt as if I could feel it. Finally back to sleep and didn’t hear John get up and join the sun lounger saving brigade…oh! we are hypocritical!!! But sometimes if you can’t beat them you have to join them. I woke about 8.00 am, John was sitting up editing photos and uploading to our 2Jsworldofadventure Flickr account which you can find at https://www.flickr.com/photos/worldwildlife/

He once again took on the task of making coffee…unfortunately the plug socket which worked yesterday no longer wanted to do its duty…having tried all plug sockets we decided we would wait a bit and see if the electricity strengthened…after all during the night several, lights in the bedroom, which had never worked, decided to flash on and off several times….sure enough half an hour later the kettle started to boil…yeah coffee time…

We headed off to breakfast at 9.00 am and our friendly Floor Manager, told us he was The Food and Beverage Manager…the FBM …he has a great sense of humour…he added “ But I do everything else as well”, which actually he does. He also has a great memory and from day one he remembered we both have black coffee no sugar, no milk, fruit, pancakes and toast, no eggs or omelettes. Having finished with the breakfast ritual, we retired exhausted to the sun lounger, John had earlier reserved….even though some one had already nicked one of the parasols, we still managed to get some shade.

The waves weren’t quite as big as on previous days so quite a few from several hotels were in the sea…The waves were still too rough for us to venture in, so we had several pool swims instead and enjoyed watching others braver than ourselves.

Having had a doze we both looked out across the sand to the sea and said in unison “Mad dogs and Englishmen, go out in the midday sun” ….sure enough it was midday and a jogger who could of been English went past us on the sand..Really!! In this heat !!! …time for the cool solace of our room.
We went down for lunch and occupied our usual table. The FBM came for a chat..

Having eaten, the chef came out of the kitchen to ask what we wanted for supper as he was about to go and buy fresh fish…after a brief discussion he said he’d get me some tuna….i love it straight from the sea….and John fancied jumbo prawns again…..That sorted we took up residency on our sun beds again. I was pleased when the 2 couples of Russians who had arrived yesterday decided to go into town….One of the men was loud and his tone was always brash…. it interrupted my peaceful ideal world. We had a swim and a long chat with a family who had been there for two weeks. They were Ukrainian, but the day before war broke out they had gone to Moldova to carry on to Romania for a holiday with their 2 children, they have been living in Moldova ever since. It was interesting talking to them and learning about their views.

We spent a little more time sunning and beach watching.

As the heat of the searing sun began to disappear we returned to our room and virtually packed our bags. Tomorrow Suminda will be collecting us for our transfer to the airport.

Our friendly FBM came to say goodbye as he was taking his daughter to Colombo. We gave a tip big enough to make him smile and thanked him for his kind service.

We went for supper at around 7.30. Our chosen meals were soon served….I am afraid my tuna became a bit insignificant and I turned into a green eyed monster when I saw Johns…

I am certain we would have called them lobsters!!! John was kind enough to give me a mouthful…yuuuummmmmy!! The elderly Indian and English couples who we had been chatting to for a couple of days ( the 2 men met at Oxford University probably 50/55 years ago and have been friends ever since) had ordered baked Red Snapper it looked devine and the chef carved and deboned it at the table. What a lovely meal. We thanked the chef profusely.

With the FBM on leave it meant the Manager had to stay late. Some guests arrived around 7.30 ish accompanied by, we can only presume, the owner. Suddenly everything was singing and dancing…the water-feature wall was switched on, the shallow end of the pool it seems is a jacuzzi, all frothy and foaming..wow… I asked the manager why in 4 days of staying we hadn’t experienced this…no answer..I said perhaps we just weren’t VIP enough…he looked embarrassed and said “ no, no, not at all”…..but that’s what it felt like….the hotel had been full at the weekend and even then it wasn’t shown off at its full potential, but when the owners friends arrive that’s a different story…what a shame……when we got back to our room the bathroom leak which had been fixed was no longer fixed and a steady drip began to soak through the 4 towels we piled up …

Having said that…the FBM and the Chef were superb and the waiter lads were very professional, it’s just a shame that some of the facilities are hidden and only aired for the very most important guests. However we retired to bed happy with our great meal and our last few sun drenched days.

Day 22 – 26th February 2024- Same again Please – sun, sea watching, pool and not a lot else.

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We awoke in the early hours to find the bathroom wet and mopped the large puddle up with a towel, realising the water was coming through the ceiling in a steady drip we put another towel down so we wouldn’t slip and promptly went back to sleep!!!! John made me a lovely cup of our own coffee in the room after a couple of false starts when the socket he’d used yesterday had stopped working….but not to be deterred he walked the kettle around the room until he found a socket which did work….what heaven at last a decent cuppa coffee!!! I’d forgotten about it whilst we’d been having our early morning get-ups.
We made it down stairs for breakfast by 8.30 am to find that although there were few people about most the sun-loungers facing the sea with a parasol had already been ‘baggied” by none viewable people who had obviously then gone back to bed..grrrr…..this is a real pet hate of mine and really cheeses me off particularly when we are cruising…it’s so selfish, especially as some people don’t pitch up to take up residency until late morning by which time we would have gone for some cool-off time in our room….any way RANT over particularly as we then hypocritically put our towels on the last two remaining front row loungers and sat at a table nearby for breakfast….this was much the same as yesterday only this morning one of us got pineapple and one of us got passion fruit…..we also managed to get the pancake served without sugar sprinkles all over it…and of course it was all swilled down by the normal undrinkable coffee!

Breakfast finished and having told the manager about the water coming through our bathroom ceiling we took up our positions on the sun beds. A kind Austrian man helped us move a rather heavy parasol to give us some shade and eventually I asked the waiter to move another so we both had shade. The sea wasn’t quite as rough as it had been and some brave souls went for a swim, however we only got as far as thinking about it when some rollers came in and knocked people flying. So we took our hot bodies to the pool to cool of.

After a few repeats of sun and pool we retired to our room to enjoy the view from air conditioned surroundings. Thankfully the leak had been stopped and the bathroom no longer had an identity crisis thinking it was the swimming pool!!!

Having rested, away from the intense heat, we went down to have lunch under the fans. We both had the same as yesterday …John a cheese and a tomato sandwich and I had seafood Ton Yum again. We then had another hour or so of sun and pool and generally enjoying the beautiful surroundings.

The heat of the afternoon sun soon got the better of us and we retired for a siesta prior to getting ready to go for supper. We sat at our usual table under the fan for our evening meal. I think you would call him the floor manager, brought us menus. He is a very hardworking man…there at 7.00am and stays until the last person goes to bed…he seats people, hands the menus out, takes orders, organises the other young staff, collects the sun lounger cushions in etc, etc. in fact I don’t think there is anything he doesn’t do….he has a dry sense of humour which we both like. Soon after he had handed the menus to us the chef appeared and greeted us like his favourite customers. He once again told us what fresh fish he had and ended off with jumbo tiger prawns ….well that was us sold….we did ask how much he said £10 for 10 but because it was me he would give us 12…..well that was the budget blown but you only live once so we went for it and we’re very glad we did….

The floor manager came back and said he could see from our empty plates we hadn’t enjoyed the meal and why hadn’t we finished the soup (that was the finger bowl). He then asked if we wanted the same as last night for desert…well! It would have been rude to say no….so we rounded the evening off with John having his fruit salad and ice cream and me having banana fritters and coconut honey….what a scrummy meal. We thanked both the chef and the Floor Manager for yet another lovely meal and retired to our room …sleepy and contented.

Day 21 – 25th February 2024- Sun, sea watching, pool and not a lot else.

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After a wonderful nights sleep, listening to the large waves rolling in we had a slow start to the day and meandered down to breakfast just after 9.00am. We selected a table at the edge of the deck closest to the sea.

I must say that although breakfast was very pleasant it was slightly under par compared to Sea World Botique. We were offered either a plate of fruit or a fruit juice, we’ve been having both since we arrived in Sri Lanka. The plate of fruit was nice and today it included half a passion fruit along with a small banana, pineapple, papaya and a rather dry quarter of a tangerine type fruit. This was followed by toast and the usual jelly type jam and a small pancake wrapped around another banana with coconut honey and coloured sprinkles…..all wash down by an undrinkable cup of coffee.

Breakfast ended and my what’s app pinged………Sue and Steve Turner who used to teach PE in Bedford, have been working in an International School in Sri Lanka for the past 12 years. They were staying just down the road over the holiday weekend……they walked along the beach to us and we spent an hour or so catching up and having a drink…not having seen them for about 14 years it was nice to exchange news. After they left we had a swim, sunbathe, and watched the people strolling along the magnificent beach….its such a shame we couldn’t go in the water but the waves are pretty massive, it’s quite a steep drop and we were told that there are some strong undercurrents……hence the reason we hadn’t seen anyone swim on this fantastic stretch of golden sand.

Soon a siesta was needed back in the room…..it’s so tiring doing absolutely nothing !!!!!

We succumbed to a late lunch, I had seafood Tom yum soup and John had a cheese and tomato sandwich…which actually arrived as one cheese sandwich and one tomato sandwich!!!! We repeated the morning activities again – swim, sunbathing, people and seascape watching…

It didn’t seem long before we were returning to our room to shower and ready for supper…looking in the mirror I find that my usual Rudolf impersonation ( with a sunburnt nose) has progressed to one of a lobster impersonation ( sun kissed whole body !!!!), whilst John is just turning an enviable shade of bronze.

Once at supper, the chef showed us a fresh red snapper he had…but knowing how bony they are I declined. He also had barracuda which I’d never had so I went for it. John had battered calamari. Both were excellent, thoroughly enjoyed my barracuda a tasty fish not as firm as tuna or sword fish, but meatier than sea bass or white mullet. John also enjoyed his.

After such a busy old day!!!! …time for bed.