Yala Golden Park

Yala Golden Wild was a real find at an affordable price. The rooms were clean and lovely, the food was excellent, and we had an extensive, very tasty Sri Lankan breakfast. The staff were helpful too. They suggested a dinner place, with seafood from an exclusive chef lady or food at Flavours. There’s a cute pool and a small lawn where we enjoyed tea. A lot of places around Yala charge more just to show off a lake view, and some weren’t good. Skip that and stay here. Highly recommend.

We booked a deluxe double through Booking, but got a different room from the one shown in the photos. That alone would have been fine, but the sheets had dirty yellow stains. The manager said they were washed, but those sheets weren’t acceptable for a hotel. We chose to leave for another hotel and pay for just one night. The manager didn’t seem very eager to fix the problem. We were willing to pay for a better room, but the upgrade price he asked for was unreasonably high, so we left. It’s a shame, as we’d had a good first impression. The pool looked nice and the location was okay, but our view changed quickly.

We liked the owner a lot, he was very kind and even went out to buy curd for us. There’s a swimming pool, though we didn’t use it, and the hotel has a safari driver if that’s useful. We made other arrangements ourselves. The only disappointing part was the takeaway breakfast for our early safari, which really wasn’t good.

Very welcoming place. The pool stays open late, which was great for a swim after a full day on safari.