Polonnaruwa Tour Packages

ion and the poor man was following instructions from Tour East Lanka on itinerary and taking us to tourist traps. We hired a guide at Anuradhapura and Kandy Tooth Temple; while the guide at Anuradhapura was good, the guide at Kandy was unnecessary we felt. Overall I would say that this trip of 7N8D made us feel like we visited a "Surprisingly Beautiful Sri Lanka", with some tourist traps that are laid with the help of Travel Companies like Tour East Lanka and these tourist traps are surviving with the help of Travel agents ! I booked a Travel Agent because I wanted protection from Tourist traps and wanted professionalism. Unfortunately, TE Lanka and all Travel Agents are hand in glove with Tourist Traps it appears and there is no professionalism! (Memory) Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Dambulla Cave Temple, Nuwara Eliya are the locations we loved and would repeat if possible! Yala is so-so although we spotted the elusive leopards within 5 min from the entrance. Kandy also is not so great except for the Tooth Temple. The best thing about Sri Lanka are the people in smaller towns; all of them had a nice smile and were very welcoming. People at Colombo and Kandy had no smile on their face; may be they are rushing through the rat race and are just delivering their job without passion. Great country and Great people and also many tourist traps! The Spice gardens, Mask factory, Batik Factory and the Tea factory are tourist traps. We bought Glenloch Tea from their factory and realized after reaching home that it has no MFD date or Batch No or EXP date. The Batik and masks are available at a fraction of the price at the airport! Hence, I suggest that Tour East Lanka remove such unprofessional sellers from their itinerary and maintain some professionalism. This is the fault of the Management of Tour East Lanka for asking the trainee agent Suresh to include such unprofessional items in the itinerary. I strongly recommend that TE Lanka and other travel agents remove Tourists Traps from their itinerary and include Airport Shopping like Prasanna Batik, Global Hands, ODEL and LAKSALA which are professional companies in the Itinerary ! In the end we probably wasted about 100 USD because of these tourist traps ! The Kandy Cultural Show is a farce! They charge 1000 LKR per person and round the year they have 1000 seats per day. That is at least 300 Million rupees Income per annum. In-spite of that, the performers ask for Tips meaning that they are not paid well. Most of the money goes into the pockets of the Organizers who are the Travel agents association it appears; this I think because there is another Cultural Show next to what we visited and that one is for walk-in guests who do not have travel agents and there are touts around that one. Hope my comments are useful in cleaning up the Sri Lankan tourist sector a little. Sri Lanka with its ancient history, people from small towns are an asset. The tour operators and tourist traps are heavily cartelized and are a shame on this rich culture and heritage. In spite of these bad experiences, I still recommend Tour East Lanka, Driver Asanka was excellent and Agent Suresh is a good employee. This is because it was my fault that I fell for the traps and paid more money. I could have bargained a lot. CHEERS, PK, SINGAPORE

e surprised that Sri Lanka's food and fruit juice are so delicious. Anyway, we didn't manage to visit Polonnaruwa as we spent too long in Anuradhapura. The driver should remind us about the time we should spent in one place. Anyway, we have a good time and will recommend Tour East to our friends. We had a memorable and good time in Pasikkudah. The view of the hill and beach on the way to all the places are awesome!