Our family stayed in Blue Parrot Villa for 6 nights in March 2018. The villa came recommended by a friend who had stayed there previously. It made for a great authentic experience. The villa is functional and pretty, the beach is right on the doorstep, and Sudath (the owner) drops by daily to make sure everyone is happy or to offer advice on trips. Our tuktuk and taxi drivers (organised by Sudath) were utter gems, they themselves offered advice regarding places to eat and other places to visit. It was because of this that we felt we really got to the heart of the place, not just seeing Sri Lanka from behind a glass wall. We heard first-hand stories from locals about the tsunami, we watched fishermen bring in their catch, we chatted with the owner of the turtle conservation project down the road from the villa. It was a week full of beautiful experiences with Blue Parrot villa as our base.
Things to be noted would be: there are plenty of stray dogs in Sri Lanka and several on the beach in front of the villa. They are friendly and will walk up to the villa door (one dog slept on the outdoor table every night), but it's something to take note of if someone is scared of dogs!
Another thing is that the windows at Blue Parrot villa have no insect screens and there is no way of closing parts of them. Stock up on insect repellant and/or incense and/or sprays on your first day. The beds all have nets around them but we often found mosquitoes (huge ones!) lurking within the nets in the evening, so keep an eye out for that.
The kitchen tends to get full of ants. We had been warned about this so we took a few zip-lock food bags which served us well as any snacks left on the countertop otherwise would have been a write-off.
I would absolutely recommend the Blue Parrot Villa to a friend, bearing in mind the above notes. The staff were excellent and kind (though many times messages didn't get across due to language barriers, wrong food orders, misunderstanding requests etc, so be as clear as possible!), food was delicious (the chicken noodles were a favourite with us!), and our overall experience was a superb one. We were all sad to leave.
