Beruwela (Sri Lanka)

Author's product rating:   

Value for Money
Shopping
Nightlife
Ease of getting around
Family Friendly

Advantages:	Cheaper than some of the other Indian Ocean destinations and most hotels are all inclusive, sunny, friendly people, cheap gold and saphires
Disadvantages:	Poverty, mosquitos, the driving oh and the civil war .  .  .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I went to Sri Lanka on my honeymoon and in stark contrast to the other opinion on Beruwela I can honestly say that it was one of the best holidays of my life.

We booked through JMC the year before we went and managed to get 12 days All inclusive for £1400. Flights were with SriLankan on the way and British Airways returning and the contrast between cannot be emphasised enough. The SriLankan aircraft was a thoroughly modern 747/airbus size aircraft with individual Tv screens even for those flying economy. The air stewards were polite and helpful and were always willing to bring you whatever you wanted. Beware - the direct flight was something like 14 hours but I can honestly say that I was never really uncomfortable the whole time. The food was above average for airline food and there were also numerous snacks available throughout the flight aswell as top-ups from the drinks trolley whenever you felt you needed another.

BA was somewhat different with only the standard 1 TV every five rows or so, average food and irregular service. Also the advertised snacks were not available apart from a slightly soggy cheese and tomato sandwich. In other words, typical BA! I believe that a lot of the package deal operators now use Emirates airlines and so I suppose this particular problem may not exist anymore. Never the less ask who you are flying with and if its BA ask if you can have an alternative.

By the way you may think that I'm basing a lot of my opion so far on the quality of food and I am completely unapologetic for that. I love food in all it's forms and it upsets me when no thought has gone into preparing what can be a key component of a holiday. Ok rant over back to Beruwela...

My wife and I stayed at the 3 star Hotel Neptune - a four hour bus ride from Columbo airport. As was noted in the previous opinion this trip can be quite arduous if you are prone to car sickness. The driving is "unique" and somewhat reminiscient of a mouse on speed being chased by a cat with a machete. The state of repair of the roads is also not good and so combined it makes for a bumpy ride. Luckily our flight arrived at 3 o'clock in the morning and I had had the good sense to drink enough to make me very drowsy thus the four hours seemed to fly by.

Hotel Neptune offers a choice of three types of room, interior rooms facing onto the interior courtyard, rooms with a view on the beach/pool and with a balcony and for a small extra charge a private bungalow in the hotel gardens. It being a honeymoon and all we went for the bungalow. Sparsely furnished and with only a shower it seems pretty basic but to be honest the main thing we minded about was the heat and for that you have very efficient air conditioning system. There was only a choice of four piped radio stations in the room, mostly playing a selection of 60's, 70's and 80's pop and MOR music. The hotel has a TV lounge in the main building but to be honest who comes on a tropical holiday to watch the TV and if you did then what the...???? is wrong with you. Overall accomodation was clean, comfortable and well kept and the service staff very polite and willing to help. For example, when my manly killing skills completely left me on the site of a beetle the size of my palm a quick call to reception at 10:00pm resulted in a poor porter arriving a few minutes later with a can of mace and a large bag - obviously they are prepared for such eventualities.

Whilst I'm on the subject of animal life be prepared for baby Gekkos. Lots of them. They are everywhere on the island but are completly harmless and quite scared of humans. The first night spent watching them run up the walls was slightly unerving but afterwards you just get used to them.

The first full day brought our first sight of the beach and it was lovely. Gorgeous sunshine, clear water and soft sand. As noted in the other opinion there are a lot of beach traders and beggars and the reason for this is simple, poverty. There is nothing like as good a wellfare state in Sri Lanka as their is in Britain. While I was there I made friends with a couple of the barmen and they told me what life can be like. They are considered lucky to be working in the hotels but even then only earn the equivalent of £30 a month. One chap told me how the previous year his son had been run over but becuase there is not a great ambulance service he had to take him to hospital on his old motorbike and pay for all of his treatment, something he could not afford to do. In general the health system is not anyway near good enough as evidenced by the large number of Polio victims on the beach missing arms, legs or both. You can view this in two ways. 1)They are a nuisance and they spoil your holiday or 2) I'm in their country, earn a great deal of money compared to them and the least I can do is buy a doormat from them ( a long story about a determined 70 year old woman, and a quarter mile beach chase!) The people are determined because it's the only way they can support their families but they are not rude or violent and in general a firm no will make them try their luck with someone else. In fact you can pick up some real bargains on the beach, leather goods and jewelry in particular. Sri Lanka is known as the land of the saphire and you can pick up a 14 Carat gold neckalce with a good sized blue saphire for a fraction of the cost in the UK -just remember to haggle - you can normally get at least a third off the original asking price.

The hotel pool is where we spent a lot of the time and it is probably better to sunbathe here for many reasons. 1) Its closer to the bar and snacks. 2) You can go for a cool dip everytime you get hot and 3) It's not that long a trip back to your room for a siesta. Just mind the Germans who all insist on using olive oil rather than sun tan lotion (I kid you not - you could have pricked them with a fork and called them bratwurst).

Any visit to Sri Lanka is not complete without a visit further up country. The advice when we were there was to avoid Columbo as that is where the majority of TTT attacks were taking place at the time - check the foreign office reports for the newest information and stick to it (one American couple decided to risk it and got blown up in an assasination attempt while we were there!) Just to note, in the previous opinioni t was stated that the motivation for the civil war is based on the Tamils being Hindu - this is actually slightly inaccurate. The majority of the country are Singalese and considered to be the "original" settlers although this also is a falacy and make up approxiately 60-65% of the population. The majority of the rest are Tamil, descended from the Indian slaves brought over by the British during the days of the empire. The civil war is essentially an attempt by the Tamil people to gain equal footing with their Singalese countrymen as they have relatively little representation and are treated as second class citizens in a lot of cases. Anyway, history lesson over, back to the Op!

Most of the trips tend to revolve around four things 1) The temple of the Golden Tooth in Kandy - a budhist shrine built to house (apparently) one of Budhas teeth. Wonder at the great hall and question why in a budhist temple all of the dates are in BC/AD?

2) A traditional night of Sri Lankan hospitality - mostly dancing and food from what I can gather - I elected not to go and enjoyed the room service in the luxurious Kandy mountaintop hotel, complete with monkeys!

3) Sigiria -The Lion rock. Basically an ancient mountain fortress. This is truly spectacular and well worth the climb to the top.

4) Pinawela Elephant Orphange - Just breathtaking. Go!
Note you will also be dragged to at least one jewelry shop - you can but if you want to but you can probably get the equivalent a great deal more cheaply by going to a beach shop or by asking a local taxi driver.

You can either book with your package operators or with one of the beach boys. I did the former, but many guests went with the latter and had a wonderful time, I was just a little worried about insurance.

Finally I couldn't describe my visit to Sri Lanka without mentioning the food. If you are a curry fiend like me then you will be in paradise. You can have it all day long and it is delicious. For those of you who prefer less spicier food there are also many European dishes available and also lots of fresh seafood - the Marlin in particular was divine.

All in all Sri Lanka and Beruwela effects you in the way you approach it. If you are looking for a completely luxurious beack holiday then maybe it isn't for you. However if you want good food,warm weather and warm people then I heartily reccomend it.