Sethawadiya Hotel Kalpitiya Puttalam Sri Lanka - Review Photos and Video - Setha Wadiya Dolphin View Eco Lodge

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(More photos and video at end of review)
Kalpitiya (around 160km from Colombo, 3.5 to 4 hours drive during the day) is the hype capital of Sri Lankan tourism. "Blah blah Kalpitiya blah blah dolphins blah blah" says everyone from Hi Magazine to Jetwing to Sri Lanka Tourism. As I am a sucker for peer pressure, I went there a few weekends ago.

What you first notice is that, for all the hullabaloo, Kalpitiya is still fairly undeveloped. (The last 40km of road is also pretty awful - but our beloved Marga/RDA is hard at work so this should change soon.) Most of the grand hotel plans are still just twinkles in George Michael's eyes and most of the places Kalpitiya has to stay in are bungalows where you have to take the whole place.

As it was just the two of us, a bungalow was out of the question. So, looking through the Hit Ad magazine - Wijeya's greatest contribution to Sri Lankan entrepreneurs - I found Sethawadiya. It is about 3-4 km from Kalpitiya town. You come to the Al Aksha junction around the 40km post, turn left and pray that there will be people to tell you how to go the rest of the way. You approach Sethawadiya on a road alongside what seems to have been a shrimp pond. I was in quite a bad mood - cursing the road, the car and the directions - but the breathtaking first glimpse of the hotel turned it all around.


Sethawadiya is a collection of beach chalets / beach cabanas made of wood and coconut thatch like the fishermen's huts you pass on the way. But the mattresses are spring mattresses, the linen is quite good and the bathroom, as per Sri Lankan design's legal requirements, is a mixture of tile and unpolished cement.

The more expensive beach chalets (LKR 10,000 and LKR 8,000 fullboard) have attached bathrooms but the cheapest beach hut (LKR 6,000 fullboard) does not. There is no electricity except for around 4 hours in the evening when they run the generator. No electricity means no fans and no air conditioning.

As the room is right on the beach and Kalpitiya is such a narrow landmass with the lagoon on one side and the sea on the other, it is pretty windy all the time and even during midday we didn't feel the heat. At night, because the beach cabana we were in inexplicably had only two windows, it can be a bit muggy.

The design of the chalet felt a little off as well: the front of the chalet doesn't have a window so you don't have a view of the beach from the bed. In order to lie down, read and see the sea, we pulled out the extra bed/mattress from the back of the hut and put it on the verandah.

The food was quite good basic Sri Lankan food with quite generous portions of seafood. And that is well: there isn't a place to eat within 3-4km of here. The well trained, friendly staff were flexible and accomodating - they even agreed to cook lagoon crabs if I brought some.

We were pleased with Sethawadiya but not overjoyed. The cabanas are slightly overpriced for what they are - LKR 6,000 to 8,000 would be a much more reasonable price for the facilities offered - but they are - currently, anyway - the best of what Kalpitiya has to offer.

Hotel Name:Sethawadiya Dolphin View Eco Lodge
Address: Kalpitiya Puttalam Sri Lanka
Directions: You come to the Al Aksha junction around the 40km post, turn left and pray that there will be people to tell you how to go the rest of the way.
Phone: +94 772 395370
Email: book@sethawadiya.com
Website: www.sethawadiya.com
Rates (full board): LKR 8,000-10,000 for a chalet with attached bathroom or 6,000 for chalet without attached bathroom.
More Photos: Visit Sethawadiya Dolphin View Eco Lodge Kalpitiya Puttalam Sri Lanka on Picasaweb
Video:


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