Video
Best 5 Star Hotel in Kandy, SRI LANKA 🇱🇰
· 36 min · Watch on YouTube
Best 5 Star Hotel in Kandy, SRI LANKA 🇱🇰
Three or four nights in a five-star hotel in Kandy with Mac, Ali and Luke, and the honest reason is stated in the first two minutes: they came for the wi-fi.
They had been in a remote part of the country with bad internet, and all four of them are uploading daily. The first thing that happens on arrival is a speed test, before anyone looks at a room.
Obs: the hotel gave the group a free upgrade to a deluxe room. Under the bundle’s rule on advertising it is therefore described but not named. The video also carries a paid sponsor read for an online learning platform, unrelated to travel; nothing from it is recorded here.
Why a five-star hotel is a work decision
- Bad wi-fi is the constraint on the whole trip, not comfort. Four channels, daily uploads, and hundreds of gigabytes to push.
- The lobby test comes back at about 12.9 Mbps, which Harry judges survivable. In the room Mac reads 52.9 down and 35.6 up, and says it is better than most places he has stayed — Harry says out loud that he isn’t sure he believes it.
- The restaurant doubles as an office, and so does the balcony. He films them editing in every room of the hotel and calls it two birds with one stone.
The hotel
- About 100 rooms, with a gym, a spa and salon, a sky lounge, a rooftop pool and a restaurant.
- Staff give them a full tour nobody asked for, which he notes with some surprise.
- They were upgraded to a deluxe room for nothing.
- The minibar is empty because of the pandemic — you scan a QR code to order.
- The room has a balcony over the city and the mountains, a bathtub, and a clock that gives world times.
- The price is never said on camera. Harry asks a staff member why it isn’t more expensive and is told it is a promotion, with the hotel busy; the description says only that they paid a reasonable price.
What you can see from it: the Bahirawakanda temple and its Buddha statue on the hill, floodlit at night; a cricket ground with a school match in progress; and the Temple of the Sacred Tooth, which is hidden behind trees but is, he is told, the thing to look at after dark.
The food
Dinner is a chicken biryani in what he is told is the Sri Lankan style, and the differences are the point: it comes with a sauce, which he did not expect of biryani, plus nuts, raisins, pineapple and a whole egg buried in the rice. A cooling yoghurt sauce comes alongside. He rates it highly and says the sweetness from the dried fruit is what makes it.
Breakfast is a buffet of continental and Sri Lankan food together:
- String hoppers, which he is told are the thing to have and which have run out before he gets there.
- Milk rice, dosa made to order, an omelette station, vegetable sambar, beef curry, chicken curry, and a potato dish in a sauce he compares to Thai green curry — his favourite thing on the table.
- A bakery section and a fruit section, the latter unusually wide: pear and apple as well as the pineapple and watermelon he says is standard.
He is warned not to sit outside because of the crows, ignores it, and spends the meal fighting off flies. His broader note is that he likes seeing how hotel breakfast changes country to country — Colombia, England and America each different — and that he always has an omelette wherever he is.
Key moments
[01:03]The speed test, before the room.[02:05]The reason for the hotel, stated: they need the wi-fi.[04:10]Asking a staff member why it isn’t more expensive.[08:19]The gym, the spa and the salon.[09:53]What is visible from the roof, including the temple hidden by trees.[12:27]52.9 down, 35.6 up, and Harry’s scepticism.[12:57]The free upgrade to a deluxe room.[15:30]Sri Lankan-style biryani: sauce, nuts, raisins, egg.[19:07]The sponsor read begins.[22:40]String hoppers, sold out, and the rest of the buffet.[26:14]On hotel breakfasts around the world.