Warm Sunday greetings from Colombo. It has been a fabulous day of rest here as I take a break before boomeranging back to East Asia on Monday. The Shangri-La has truly impressed me.
I realize I haven’t discussed my Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Colombo, which I will save for tomorrow. I deliberately scheduled a full day (about 36 hours actually) in Colombo so that I could have one day in the middle of this crazy trip to rest.
It was no coincidence that this was on a Sunday, the one day I try to unplug (from sundown Saturday to sundown Sunday). This is not by religious compulsion, but because the body needs a day of rest and this is the best time to do it: email and phone calls from all my businesses are a minimum and Kyle and Carly cover the posts at Live and Let’s Fly, allowing me to actually take a day off without feeling guilty about the work piling up. I’m not as strict as my Jewish friends who observe Sabbath (I’m writing this post on a Sunday, after all), but I do make an effort at least to take a day off.
The Shangri-La Colombo
But let’s talk about the hotel. Sadly for the hotel and for Sri Lanka but happily for me, the hotel is like a ghost town. Thus far, I’ve seen very few other guests. That’s really not a good thing, but Sri Lanka was recently rocked by violence and has experienced varying degrees of civil unrest for years. While the airport was jammed packed last night, people are not staying here…
In fact, the hotel is so empty it seems that all guests have been given access to the Horizon Club (club lounge), which is the only hotel venue other than room service offering breakfast. Hey, no complaints from me, especially because there will be evening hors d’oeuvres tonight.
The room is beautiful and I was upgraded to an oceanview room, though it appears Colombo is constructing a man-made island like you see in Dubai just across the street from the hotel.
There’s an Anglican church right down the street called Christ Church – Galle Face, first constructed in 1901, that I attended this morning — it was an easy walk from the hotel, despite the humidity and high temperatures.
I booked for $165/night through the American Express Fine Hotels & Resorts program and it came with a $100 spa credit, so now it’s time for a nice 90-minute massage and then a nap!
CONCLUSION
My first experience at a Shangri-La has been a very pleasant one. I’ll post a very detailed review later on, but this hotel is highly recommenced and frankly much nicer than the nearby Hilton.
> Read More: Hilton Colombo Review
Understandable that this hotel is a ghost town as it was targeted during the Easter bombings.
Are all of the facilities back to normal or is there still reparative construction going on?
Also was there extra security at this hotel now?
All kinds of security to enter the premises. Two restaurants are still closed.
“The Shangri-La has truly impressed me.” Shangri-La, Raffles, Mandarin Oriental, Peninsula and many more Asian hotels are amazing and usually very cheap in countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, but most American bloggers insist to stay in American hotel chains.