There is a lot of buzz around at the moment about Passekudah on Sri Lanka’s East Coast – and it is certainly changing at a pace.
While it’s a great place if you want a luxury hotel on the beach for a few days – there is a limited amount to do and the area is something of a building site. The BBC have an interesting report on it which you can read here.
Unfortunately I can’t say I disagree with the reporter: the amount of building is far too high and I cannot see how they will fill all 1700 hotel rooms – at least in the short term. The infrastructure is just not there to get people to and from and the journey is at least 6 hours. It is interesting to me that none of Sri Lanka’s major hotel chains has built there yet – though they must own land in the vicinity. There is also very little to do in the surrounding area – though I enjoyed my visit to Batticoloa lagoon. For a few days doing very little – the bay is magnificent and Uga Bay is a great hotel and extremely reasonably priced, but for my money, having spent a fair amount of time on the east coast and Jaffna earlier this year, Trincomalee is a far better bet – in particular the fantastic Jungle Beach hotel – one of my absolute favourites in Sri Lanka.