Sri Lanka Digital Nomad Review
We visited Sri Lanka during the start of the serious economic crisis in 2021-2022. If you're reading this in 2023, then this article by the BBC sums up the current situation. From a digital nomad's perspective, the main thing to look into before visiting is the current power cut situation. Sri Lanka often experiences scheduled power cuts during the day. By the time we left Sri Lanka, there were power cuts for 6+ hours per day. However, at least the mobile network didn't go down during the power cuts, so we were still able to work as long as we were careful enough to always have fully charged batteries.
In terms of accommodation, Sri Lanka does not offer many short-term apartments. This is mainly because the country has a strong 'family home' culture, and there is limited demand for apartment buildings suitable for couples or small families. While some countries with similar cultures have still developed such buildings with a primary focus on tourists, Sri Lanka is not one of them. Consequently, if you are a Digital Nomad, you will most likely have to stay in hotels. Warning: Pay attention to the proximity of any accomodation from any religious buildings. We had a somewhat unpleasant experience with a Buddhist temple drumming everyone awake every 30 minutes (with loud chanting over speakers in between) throughout the night. Having read up on this it seems that 'playing religious stuff loudly over speakers' is something all religions in Sri Lanka love to do, so just something to watch out for.
Overall, we would not higly recommend visiting Sri Lanka as a Digital Nomad destination. The country presents a lot of uncertainty and friction, without offering significant rewards. This is maybe a bit harsh to say, but many of the things Sri Lanka offers can be found in other countries as well.
Links to the tools/resources we used for Sri Lanka
Colombo
Colombo is the capital of Sri Lanka, and although it's not a particularly unpleasant capital city, there isn't much to see or do. Architecturally the most interesting is the Red Mosque, but it's so hidden away behind a bunch of other buildings that you will barely be able to see it. Our personal highlight in Colombo was the fact that we saw indian flying foxes, a type of gorgeous fluffy huge bats, hanging in the trees multiple times during the day. We have no idea how common they are in Sri Lanka, but we only saw them in Colombo.
If you arrive at Colombo Internal Airport (Bandaranaike) it's actually closer to Negombo, so many travellers - including us - tend to decide to spend their first days there. Negombo's beach is a quite pleasant mix between local fishermen with gorgeous fishing boats and touristy facilities.
Southern tourist beaches
In the south you have a bunch of towns that are defined by tourism, and they all offer basically the 'same'. Hikkaduwa stands for its turtles and Russian tourists, Weligama is a great place to learn to surf, and then there is countless of beatiful beaches. The one exception is Galle, which is a larger city with a beatiful fortification left behind by the Portuguese and Dutch invaders, but not offering much on the beach-side of things.
In general there is a large selection of accommodations and both transportation options and (mobile) internet access were good enough.
Central Sri Lanka
Central Sri Lanka offers two major tourist sites: Sigiriya - an ancient capital build on top of a rock - and Ella, where getting to both probably will involve a stop in Kandy.
Mobile internet access was generally speaking worse compared to the coast, so it probably makes sense to pay a bit more attention to Wifi quality in the reviews of accommodations.
On the tourist attraction side of things we did not believe Sigiriya was worth it, as they charge $30 per person and it just wasn't that special. If you do want to see it, but don't want to pay for Sigiriya itself we would recommend the climb up Pidurangala which overlooks Sigiriya. There is still an entrance fee, but if we could've gone back in time we would've just done this.
Links to the tools/resources we used for Kandy
Ella is this tourist hotspot that was probably amazing 15 years ago, but now definitely suffers a decently bad case of overtourism. None the less I would totally recommend visiting it, as there is a lot of nice things to see despite the crowds of tourists. Getting into Ella is easy with the overrated, but still very scenic train ride from Kandy, but continuing onwards to the south will require haggling with local taxi drivers that love overcharging tourists.
