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| Signs of the times |
IT USED to be known as the Garden City; now Colombo is a city of chaos. It’s not just bombs going off that throws Sri Lanka’s capital city into confusion, it’s also the unexpected closing of roads because a politician is on the move and wants priority for his motorcade, the hapless change in traffic flow making two-way boulevards one way requiring a long and frustrating detour wherever you are heading, and the rash of checkpoints by police and military. There is a gauntlet of them within sight of each other to run on the waterfront drive alongside Galle Face Green to get from the Cinnamon Grand in Colombo’s prime shopping area to the Hilton in the colonial commercial district.
Colombo regulars have learned to put up with delays in getting from one place to another during the day, and consequently quieter streets at night as people stay at home. But despite the checkpoints (always carry ID everywhere and be patient) and unruly rich kids on the loose in nightclubs, Colombo can be a dazzling place in which to shop, eat and party (but not after 1pm as even the 24-hour casinos stop serving alcohol then).
 Hotel Contact Information
Welcome to Colombo, Sri Lanka, the capital of the island of Serendipity. Here's a quick guide to Colombo business hotels, leisure digs, restaurants, bars, and sights. There's enough in this Colombo guide for a languorous holiday or a busy business trip. Business travellers and vacation planners, dive right in.
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| Tintagel: 1930s villa/ photo: hotel |
By day, Colombo's population is swollen by more than a million commuters who join residents to fill its streets to overflowing with sluggish traffic - and it can take more than 90 minutes for the 35km taxi ride from the airport to Fort, the city centre. At night, when only determined night owls are around, it takes 40 minutes.
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Colombo Airport and airport hotels
The peak time for arrivals at Colombo's international airport is between 5am and 10am. The airport has recently undergone massive extension work with the happy result that arriving and departing queues flow smoothly. There are good duty-free shops accessible on arrival as well as departure. (Smokers be warned – there is no duty-free allowance for bringing cigarettes into Sri Lanka.)
Beyond customs is a hall of counters for currency exchange and tourist and taxi assistance where no outsiders linger. Hotel representatives with name boards greet guests outside this hall and direct them to hotel cars. Expect to pay from US$30 in Sri Lankan rupees for a hotel car to Colombo (exchange rate roughly US$1=SLRs108).
On departure, all passengers must have their luggage x-rayed before they can enter the airport. Consider hiring a porter (at SLRs50 a bag) who will steer you through and then guide you to the right check-in desk.
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| Room at Cinnamon Grand/ photo: hotel |
The great news for departing business class passengers (or those in transit) on SriLankan and Emirates Airlines (the two main carriers serving Colombo) is the newly opened business class lounge after passport control. It has hot and cold buffets, a selection of wines and draft beers and ice-cream, eight free Internet stations, a smoking room, three sleeping rooms, toilets with showers, a TV with the volume turned off and headphones provided, and a free ayurveda(local herbal oil) massage parlour. There are other VIP lounges including one for Skywards members, the frequent flyer club of Emirates and SriLankan Airlines. For non-club members there is a British style pub, The Hangar Bar, and two coffee lounges as well as a restaurant.
While there is no hotel within the airport perimeter, the Taj Airport Garden is 10 minutes away by free shuttle. With 120 rooms in a lagoon-side garden, this hotel has Broadband access in rooms as well as public areas. These include a Chinese restaurant and the Cricketers' Arms pub and swimming pool. Another option post-arrival or pre-departure is the Jetwing Beach Hotel, 20 minutes away on the beach at Negombo. A five-star property with 75 spacious rooms with extras like a CD/DVD player and a kettle, the hotel has a great wine list although the bar is more like a dispensary counter than a place to await or recover from a flight.
Drag queens and alcohol restrictions
While office and apartment blocks have sprung up, only recently have new hotels opened. These are in the boutique mould with stunning, designer-smart conversions of colonial villas off the main highways, providing a pleasant place to stay cocooned away from hustle and bustle. Recently some restaurants (many in British-built bungalows) have opened – and closed, including those presided over by one of Colombo’s favourite characters, a master chef who doubles as a drag queen known to everyone as “Koluu”. He now does private catering and teaching while being consultant for such fun restaurants as Barefoot. Koluu can be seen as a symbol of Colombo's split personality. It wants to be trendy and daring, but remains really rather old-fashioned and respectable. It has swanky boutiques, posh lifestyle stores and a modern office infrastructure, yet beneath its bustle old mores hold sway.
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| Tall pints at Cricket Club |
Every full moon day is a holiday, which means Sri Lankans have more holidays in a year than working days. While some city banks are open seven days a week, and some supermarkets and casinos are open 24 hours a day, restaurants and bars can only serve drinks from 11am to 2pm, and from 5pm to 11pm. This rule is a hangover from colonial days and had been pretty much forgotten until late 2005, when the police decided to crack down on transgressors. Now anyone who lunches or dines outside those hours must do so without wine, a pity, as Colombo's restaurants are top-notch and fine dining is no longer confined to five-star hotels.
In fact restaurants have to struggle to attract custom as many of Colombo’s partying crowd, deterred by sudden vehicle checks by police searching for arms or drunks, party at home. A new organisation , Room Service (www.roomservice.lk), has a hot line telephone number (Tel: 011- 5768768) and promises to deliver meals from the menus of a score of popular restaurants anywhere in Colombo within an hour, from 11am-11pm daily, for a delivery charge of Rs175 per order per service outlet. Menus and meal prices are listed in the free magazine Room Service.
Colombo guide to dining and nightlife
Probably the leader in independent restaurants in Colombo is The Gallery Café (2 Alfred House Road, Colombo 3; tel: [94-11] 258-2162, open daily 10am to midnight) in the courtyard of what was once an architect's residence. Tables are packed into a pavilion and under shade trees and all comings and goings are eagerly watched by the "in crowd" enjoying Mediterranean-style dishes. Prices are around US$20 per person for a meal. More informal, and popular with the city’s intelligentsia rather than the fashionistas is the garden café at Barefoot (701 Galle Road, Colombo 3; tel: 258-9305; open daily) guided by the aforementioned Koluu and offering innovative dishes in a peaceful atmosphere despite its main road location.
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| Party time at Bistro Latino |
In complete contrast, Chesa Swiss (3 Deal Place, Colombo 3; tel: 471-2716; open Tuesday-Sunday, dinner only) caters for serious diners at the top end of the market. For food prepared and served quickly in a friendly ambience, there is the Cricket Club Café (34 Queens Road, Colombo 3; tel: 250-1384; open daily 11am-11pm) where a meal for two costs around US$15. Opened to cater for Colombo 's cognoscenti, Bay Leaf (79 Gregory's Road, Colombo 7; tel: 535-9653, open daily 11am-11pm ) is housed in a magnificent mansion complete with verandah and balcony tables, private dining rooms and party garden. With its own bakery and swish cocktail bar, this locally-run restaurant serves prettily presented, delicious dishes and has a gentle, cosmopolitan flair.
Some 20 minutes' drive (taxi about Rs450) from the centre of town, the bar and restaurant of a brand new country club, Water's Edge (316 Ethul Kotte Road, Battaramulla; tel: 286-3863; open daily) are open to non-members. Meals are around US$15 per person. Non-members can also play a round of golf (at SLRs2,000 plus caddie fee of SLRs250) on the nine existing holes of what is planned to eventually be an 18-hole course. The club's tranquil setting, near the parliament building, is a welcome breath of fresh air. The Royal Colombo Golf Course (Model Farm Road, Colombo 8; tel: 269-5431) offers temporary membership at Rs7,350 a week, and green fee of SLRs1,837.50.
Sri Lanka is the source of Ceylon tea and Colombo has at last got a dedicated tea bar, Tea Breeze (68A Dharmapala Mawatha, Colombo 3; tel: 474-1311, open daily 9am-8pm). Close to the Liberty Plaza shopping complex, this is on the first floor of Arkipelago, a gallery selling imported statues and artistic furniture. By showroom windows overlooking the traffic, pots of exclusive estate-grown leaf teas, unusual tea milk shakes, delicious pastries and sandwiches are served elegantly by smart stewards in dark green livery. Packaged tea can be purchased there as well as from the Mlesna Tea Counters at the Crescat, Liberty Plaza and Majestic City shopping malls) and from the Dilmah outlet at Odel.
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| Golf at Water's Edge |
Restaurants featuring Sri Lankan cuisine are scarce, beyond the buffets of the major hotels and the evenings-only Curry Leaf at the Hilton. Enjoy cheap (from SLRs500) and justifiably popular buffet meals at Raja Bojun (Ceylinco Seylan Towers, 90 Galle Road, Colombo 3; tel: 471-6171; open daily 12 noon-3pm, 7pm-midnight). Thambapani (496/6 Duplication Road, Colombo 3; open daily 11am-11pm) is more sophisticated, specialising in "island cuisine" and seafood in a garden setting.
At night, the well-healed head for the five-star hotels, some of which have nightclubs-cum-discos open at weekends, and all have music by band or piano every evening in their lobby bars. Billing itself as “your lifestyle club” h2o (447 Union Place, Colombo 2; tel: 537-4444, www.h2olanka.lk, from 8pm) is Colombo’s largest club with tight security, valet parking, restaurant, glitzy cocktail bar and a cigar lounge. The Bistro Latino (Duplication Road, Colombo 4; tel: 258 0063) throbs with Latin American music (and dancing) until 11pm . There are several casinos open 24 hours with Bally's (near Liberty Plaza) almost exclusively for visitors, the MGM (near Majestic City) for locals and visitors, and Bellagio (Duplication Road) a glitzy and vast venue, popular with all comers.
Colombo shopping tips
Colombo's reputation for trendy fashion shopping stems from the success of Odel (5 Alexandra Place, Colombo 7, open daily 10am-8pm), now a fully-fledged department store after starting out as a cut-price local garment outlet. The Labels Wine Bar in the store serves New World wines by the glass (from Rs350) and is next to Nihonbashi for counter service of super sushi and sashimi platters (from Rs450). Crowds flock to House of Fashion (28 Duplication Road, Colombo 5; tel: 250-4639) in search of imported items (not just clothes) at low prices.
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| Bay Leaf restaurant: Mansion moods |
Colombo has an amazing number of shops with unusual household goods and artefacts for stylish modern homes. Barefoot specialises in fabrics in gorgeous hues, while Paradise Road (213 Dharmapala Mawatha, Colombo 7, tel: 268-6043, open daily 9am-7pm) is ideal for ingenious gifts and upmarket décor. Hermitage (28 Gower Street , Colombo 5, tel: 250-2196) has an Indian antique ambience while Elephant Walk (61 Ward Place , Colombo 7, tel: 269-1056) promotes colonial knick-knacks with modern themes.
The air-conditioned shopping malls of Liberty Plaza, Crescat Boulevard and Majestic City all have shops selling the latest DVDs (you'll be assured they are "genuine copies"). There are inexpensive (from Rs200) food counters with different cuisines (Sri Lankan, Chinese, Thai, Korean, etc) in the basements of Majestic City and Crescat.
Colombo business hotels
Crescat has the advantage of adjoining the hotel with the most action, the Cinnamon Grand, formerly the Lanka Oberoi, now expanded and modernised as one of the local Keels group of hotels. For years Colombo hotels have soldiered on with low occupancy as tourists usually head straight for the beach or a round-island tour. Led by the Hilton the hotels have branched out with lots of restaurant options and now Cinnamon Grand leads the way with the most popular seafood restaurant in town, The Lagoon; an elegant Italian restaurant; a genuine 1970s vintage steak house, London Grill; a saloon-bar pub (Cheers); a fusion restaurant (Tao); and Sequel champagne bar serving dinner as well as caviar and oysters with premium wines and spirits against a background of romantic music (open from 6pm, closed Sunday and Monday). All its 501 rooms offer Broadband access and full five-star hotel amenities; there is also a premium executive floor with an exclusive, dedicated bar lounge (and smoking room). This is a dependable Colombo business hotel choice.
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| Galle Face Hotel: Colonial echoes |
The Keels’ newly owned Trans Asia awaits its new name but meanwhile the restaurants have improved and it is challenging its sister property, Cinnamon Grand, for business. It has a seafood market at night as well as specialist Thai, Indian and Singaporean restaurants by the Beira Lake, and a sushi bar in its lobby. Facing the sea, the Taj Samudra has 300 rooms with Broadband access and a stylish coffee shop, Latitudes, as well as traditional Indian, Chinese and steak restaurants.
There is a triangle of hotels in the old part of town under the shadow of the city’s tall twin towers World Trade Centre. The Hilton Colombo, with 384 rooms including two categories of executive floor, charges US$20 net for Broadband. Its Echelon pub is a designer bar, and it has a main restaurant (Spices) with extensive buffet meals, as well as Chinese, Italian, Sri Lankan, and a slick fine-dining restaurant, Spoons. Its neighbour, the Galadari, is a top Colombo business hotel. It has a cocktail bar with sea view (Margarita Blue) and the best doormen in Colombo, suiting its dedicated-to-business image. Across the road, the former InterContinental has become the Ceylon Continental and retains some of its old style in its 250 rooms. Its executive floor has a High Tea and Cocktail Lounge with stimulating views of the Indian Ocean while the ground floor Tandoori Indian restaurant gets the family crowd. The hotel works equally well for leisure travellers as well as those on business.
The Hilton Residence has self-contained apartments available for long or short lease and is next to a supermarket offering straight-to-the-kitchen delivery. All apartments have high-speed Internet access and WiFi. Not as central, and not quite so smart, Global Towers is an apartment hotel. Every bedroom has Internet connection.
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| Champagne at Sequel |
Colombo heritage hotels and boutique stays
For Colombo colonial hotels with true character – and not just a hint of must – there are three unique accommodation options. The Galle Face on the sea front has rooms and huge suites in its Classic Wing, and Broadband access in its business centre. It has spawned an executive-class hotel within its walls, The Regency, where the 1864 fine dining restaurant and wine bar attracts loyal guests. This is a splendid Sri Lanka heritage hotel with a wide following.
At the Grand Oriental, by the old port gates, rooms are smaller but have the atmosphere of bygone days. Among the first Colombo boutique hotels to open was the Havelock Place Bungalow with only six colonial style rooms, Broadband access and WiFi in the restaurant and swimming pool areas. This has been followed by the Park Street Hotel, a huge bungalow with 12 rooms and an atmosphere of discretion. Casa Colombo off the Galle Road in Bambalapitiya is dubbed a ‘retro-chic designer hotel’ and each of its 12 suites is a fantasy (some come with in-room laptops) and it exudes an atmosphere of extravagance and fun in this conversion from a 200-year-old mansion.
Newest (it opened in December 2007) is Tintagel, created with taste and style from a famous 1930s villa (it was the home of three prime ministers) by Shanth Fernando, the designing genius behind the Paradise Road stores and the Gallery Café. A classic and impressive place to stay and a good Colombo boutique hotel choice. And a small ways out at Mount Lavinia is the Berjaya Mount Royal Beach Hotel.
Colombo budget hotels guide
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| The stately town hall |
For Colombo budget hotel choices there are two linked, well-established, lower-rate hotels in the centre of Colombo: Renuka and City. Both have Broadband Internet connectivity and WiFi access, and a swimming pool down the street. Occupancy at the Juliana often exceeds 100 percent since its 51 huge but basic rooms can be booked for day use too. Its Moon Shanghai restaurant is popular for good cheap Chinese dishes.
The Indra Regent has only 29 rooms but its facilities include a pool bar, a coffee shop and the Hot Rock Lounge. In a similar style, but without the fun, the Pearl has 77 rooms and is located by a busy junction. Overlooking the sea the Westeern (yes, this is Western spelt with an extra "e") has 42 rooms and a friendly informality to match its low rates.
It may not have the style of its more glamorous neighbours like Singapore and Dubai, but Colombo has enough accommodation, eateries and activities to suit every pocket and whim. Dazzling in fact.
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