I am an Indian and me and my husband decided to travel to Sri Lanka in April 2005, just after the Tsunami had stuck the country. We generally are quite well planned before we leave for any destination, and as always we were all set and had our plans in place for Sri Lanka too.
We went from New Delhi to Colombo by Sri Lankan Airlines, which was a pleasurable experience in itself. We had plans to go to the new Aman
resort that had opened in Sri Lanka not very long ago. We got into the car which was sent by the Amanwella authorities to cover a 5 hrs long journey from Colombo thru Galle to Tangalle.
We stopped at another hotel Amangala at Galle at 7 am for the
breakfast. We were
really astonished to find the level of innovativeness with which the New Oriental Hotel had been renovated and redesigned. It was designed and made up in all Dutch style as was the native style in Galle. We received a warm welcome and had some tea and fruit juice as we still had to cover a 1.5 hrs journey to Tangalle.
A sad
thing that we found out as we travelled just parallel to the coastline of Sri Lanka, were all the devastations done to the houses and vegetation done by Tsunami and camps set up at some places in order to provide some medical facilities to the affected.
Anyhow we reached Amanwella finally after covering a few kilometers deep into the vegetation of the Tangalle village.
We were received by the Manager and the country manager of the Aman resorts there who introduced us to some of the staff members and led us soon to our
room.
As we walked through the corridor, we were all surprised to find a resort of this quality in a relatively remote village of Sri Lanka like Tangalle. The quality of construction and design was just superb and was worth a million. It was designed by Kerry Hill, a gem in the field of building design.
Our room/ villa had a private pool and the balcony in all rooms faced the beautiful
beach directly. As the staff member guided us thru the facilities in the room, the most amazing thing I found was that even the rest room had a glass wall giving the entire view of the sea. The furniture and the rest of the setup were just remarkable and we were welcomed with a serving of sweets in the room.
The balcony was huge with all the palm and coconut trees hovering over in the balcony which had a day bed and a tea table too. The beach view from the balcony was really a visual delight.
After a short rest we moved to the restaurant for some breakfast where they served us with full Sri Lankan breakfast which tasted delicious.
We felt really good to know that all the 150 staff members were the local villagers who had been trained to work for the Aman resort. All of them were very joyfull and extremely friendly and we had set up a good repot with most of them as they really liked Indians and were specially fond of Indian cinema. The most attractive place in the resort was the swimming pool which was about 45 mts long infinity edge pool facing the clear blue sea surrounded by the beautiful palms all around the place. The best thing I liked about the resort was the kind of service we were offered.
We were never asked to sign a cheque for anything we had in the restaurant or anywhere in the resort. The entire restaurants bar and the beach club were fully functional even if only one room out of 30 was occupied. We were always pampered as we were offered cold towels and water and drinks whether we were on the beach or at the pool. We could chill out at the beach club which was right on the beach and always had a grill to serve hot tempting grilled dishes.
Once we met the Swiss Chef at the restaurant, we could well figure out why every small dish, soup or dessert looked so tempting and attractive. The presentation of everything from a bowl of soup to the full main course meal was just out-of-the-world.
A surprising thing was that both the managers used to come and meet everybody both during breakfast and dinner and many timess even during lunch. They would sit down with people and would casually talk to them for a while to share their traveling experiences. I had never found this level of interaction with the managers of the hotel anywhere else.
The Aman resorts were offering a 50 % discount of the bookings to encourage tuourism in Sri Lanka after Tsunami. A brand which is well known to not offer anything called discounts anywhere in their resorts throughout the world, had been offering a straight 50% off. It was really a great effort on their part. Besides that it was even good to know that the prosperity was flowing down to the local village as people were being employed from the local areas only.
Although I have been to many places in Europe , rest of Asia and America, I would still prefer to visit Sri Lanka again and again if given a choice.
Published: September 26, 2005
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