What a visitor's money does in Sri Lanka: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Sri Lankan Rupee (LKR) · 1 EUR = 380 LKR · 1 USD = 331 LKR
Change money at banks or licensed exchange counters rather than at the airport arrivals hall, where the rate is poorest. Cards are fine in hotels and city restaurants; everything else is cash.
Avoid: airport arrivals exchange counters, hotel front desks
Use: Commercial Bank, Sampath Bank, HNB, Bank of Ceylon
Most machines charge a local fee of a few hundred rupees on top of your own bank’s, so draw larger amounts less often. Almost everything outside hotels is cash.
A short ride in Sri Lanka: Rs 300–800 across town — very cheap
From the airport: Colombo airport to Fort Rs 3,500–5,000
Far cheaper than a tuk-tuk hailed on the street, where the price triples for a foreigner.
Rice and curry is not one dish but a spread of six or eight, and the best of it is in small places with no menu. Look for hoppers at breakfast, kottu roti after dark, and short eats at any bus stop. Ceylon tea is grown here and drunk sweet and milky.
Seafood on the coast and rice and curry in the fort. The fort’s cafés are expensive by Sri Lankan standards and good; the best crab is in the villages either side.
Rice and curry, and the town’s cafés cook for backpackers — which means good coffee and banana pancakes alongside the real thing. Buy tea at a factory rather than a shop.
Rice and curry in the villages, and the guesthouses cook better than the restaurants. Buffalo curd with treacle is the local dessert and is sold from roadside stalls in clay pots.
Rice and curry with a dozen bowls, hoppers at breakfast, and kottu chopped on a griddle in the evening — you hear it before you find it. Ceylon tea from the hills behind the town.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
Sri LankaSri LankaTea hills, ruined capitals and two coasts with opposite seasons
EllaSri LankaA gap in the hills with tea on every slope, reached on the best train journey in Asia
GalleSri LankaA Dutch fort on a headland, walled, walkable and lived in, with the south coast beaches beside it
Sigiriya & DambullaSri LankaA palace on top of a two-hundred-metre rock, and a cave temple full of Buddhas an hour away
KandySri LankaThe last kingdom of Sri Lanka, around a lake, with the Buddha’s tooth in a temple above it