PALM hotel
With jet lag setting in after a four hour drive from Colombo airport, our early morning arrival at PALM was a little blurry but I do remember feeling at home straight away - perhaps it was the juice laced with vodka (recommend this to anyone struggling with timezone trickery), or maybe it was owner the Miriam, her smile and the fact that she let us snooze uninterrupted on cushions whilst she quietly fast-tracked our cabana.
You’ll find the hotel hidden between the Indian ocean and the Ahangama jungle and to get there, local tuktuk drivers negotiate winding lanes, whizz expertly around blind corners and fly through wet rice paddies. A transplant from East London, PALM arrived to the scene in 2019 - it’s new, but has found its feet very quickly. Owned and run by former Londoners, Miriam and Laurie, it feels familiar but the breezy architecture and location (an old coconut plantation) is distinctly tropical.
Black A-Frame cabanas are dotted around the grounds (six in total, with a further two deluxe suites), and the main pavilion houses a restaurant, open kitchen, retail space and garden lounge which overlooks a picturesque pool. The corrugated metal cabanas are incredibly chic - polished concrete floors, king sized beds framed by airy mosquito nets, outdoor rain showers and a private terrace for nightcaps and morning coffees. The homemade toiletries are just as special, the highlight being a body cream cum mosquito repellent. In fact, we loved the tangy lemongrass scent so much that it became the unofficial perfume of the trip after we bought a bottle to take home and doused ourselves in it morning, noon and night. Take that, mosquitoes.
We were in agreement that our stay at PALM should be a lazy one, so you would have found us either stretched out under parasols sipping coconuts or slowly making our way through a tray of homemade papadams and chutneys. We quickly fell into a rhythm of grabbing a 6pm tuktuk to Ahangama beach to catch sunset (we loved Lighthouse for rooftop beers and a dreamy view), before meandering our way back in the dark for dinner under the stars. The all-day food offering at PALM is impressive, with the menu packed full of fun Sri Lankan flavours and local ingredients, and we took pride in working our way through the cocktail list. The service, much like Miriam and Laurie, was relaxed and friendly, and no ask was too big or small.
We stayed for three nights before hopping along the Southern coast to our next hideaway, but we could have stayed for longer. We left with a plan to come back soon - to reclaim our spot by the pool, to rediscover the joy of cool polished concrete underneath hot feet and to whizz through the green rice paddies at high speed once more.
Prices from $100 per night.
