hi tripplanner - I was wondering if you'd posted a planning thread and was going to ask, but here it is! and your itinerary is spookily similar to ours so it must be good.

I can't comment on any of your hotel choices specifically [except one] though being to type of hotels they are, I'm sure they'll be fine. the one I do know about is the Galle Face Regency, and you might like to think again about that after I tell you about our experience there, which was to be woken up at 1 am on our 2nd night and told to evacuate our room due to a fire in the other [unrenovated] part of the building. there was indeed smoke in the corridor and the actions of the staff in getting us out were exemplary, but it was a little surreal arriving in the lobby in our nightwear to see everyone else sitting around fully dressed and still in the building! There was no roll-call of guests so far as we could see, people were allowed to get dressed before leaving their rooms, they were sitting in the lobby rather than outside, and doors that might have been needed for emergency exit were padlocked from the outside. really it was pretty chaotic and lovely as it was, I wouldn't stay there again.

we had dinner one night at the nearby cinnamon grand, and you might like that instead if you decide to move.

PS - you say that you are going straight from Galle [which we loved BTW] to Shang-hai. Do you mean that? The journey from Galle to Colombo will take 2 hurs even on the new expressway, then at least an hour to get to the airport from there - you really need to allow 2 for safety. so it's a min of 4 hours from Galle to the airport plus check-in time.

Annhig, thanks for your advice regarding the Galle Face. What you described would not be a good way to start my Sri Lankan leg of the trip. I will check out the situation.

In response to your second question, yes, we will go straight from Galle to Shanghai; it'll be a very long travel day. We plan on leaving Galle early in the evening for the airport for an after-midnight flight out of Colombo. The flight has us connecting in Singapore and Hong Kong and we don't arrive into Shanghai until later in the afternoon. Right now, I have my Colombo-Shanghai ticket on Cathay Pacific using AAdvantage miles, but I hope to change it to Malaysia Airlines once its entry into Oneworld is official (it would save me a connection as the Malaysia flights go from Colombo to Kuala Lumpur and KL to Shanghai). Thanks for the information regarding the travel times.