Accomodation in Negombo 2006

We had a good look at most of the major accommodation options in Negombo this year. The tsunami inflicted only minor damage here, which has long since been repaired.

We were most impressed by the CAMELOT, a luxurious and rather new hotel of extremely good design, with pool and sunbeds facing into the sunset across the sea, and on a raised patio to prevent harassment form beach touts. It was cheaper than some others too, though this may be a temporary promotional effort.

The 5 star [Royal Oceanic] THE BEACH hotel has Jacuzzis in the room but is vastly overpriced.

BROWNS BEACH is nicelooking especially at night, but one cannot lounge by the pool and see the sea at the same time. The latter applies also to BLUE OCEANIC, which however is in all other respects an excellent hotel with electronic safes and great service, used by Thos Cook, Cosmos, Jetaway and many Germans; this was in fact where we stayed. We paid about 6000 rupees [£30] per room per night half board.

GOLDI SANDS and the SUNSET BEACH HOTEL [5, Carron Place, Negombo.Sri Lanka. Tel : 94-31-22350, Fax: 94-074-87023] both have pools overlooking the sea, and the Sunset has, appropriately, a nice beach bar too [as has Blue Oceanic]. GS has nice rooms, with electronic safes, which we saw – the garden rooms may be just as desirable as the sea view rooms. However both Sunset hotel and pool are very small, and we were warned off GS, and encountered a grumpy receptionist there too.

We did not really look at the SEA GARDEN HOTEL, which looked a bit monolithic.

There are two friendly and cheap European – owned guesthouses, ICEBEAR and PUNCHI ROME, whose main drawback is having no proper safe deposits in the rooms.

There are only 2 ATMs in Negombo, at Commercial Bank and Standard Chartered, near each other at the southern end of town. Annoyingly, neither accepted my Visa card, and nor did the airport machines this time either.

A friendly chap touts for lagoon tours which may well be worth a try, tho we had no time this time around.

WARNING: A VERY STRONG UNDERTOW MAKES SWIMMING VERY HAZARDOUS ON THIS BEACH, ESPECIALLY IN THE MONSOON SEASON MAY THROUGH OCTOBER…. Although we did see an old chap swimming happily at low tide opposite Sunset Beach, at sunset time. Its also worth noting that Negombo is only about 70kms down the coast from the Tiger area, and that the Tigers have a small boat navy……although I would expect these waters between Colombo, Jaffna and India to be heavily patrolled by the govt.

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