I took a long weekend (4 days/nights in-country) trip to Sri Lanka out of Kuwait.
It's a nice place. It's super-humid this time of year, which is monsoon season. That was OK with me after being in the Iraqi desert with 10% humidity. Colombo was more like 90F / 89% relative humidity - at saturation. It rained sporadically, but not for long. I was told that November - March is high season, the seas are calm and the skies sunny.
I stayed at the Mount Lavinia Hotel south of Colombo.
http://www.mountlaviniahotel.com/It's an old Victorian/Edwardian place with lots of great woodwork, including parquet floors, high ceilings, potted palms, a patio with swimming pool, located on the beach. This was $99 a night with a large and varied breakfast buffet included. They have some good chefs on staff and dinner is worth staying for.
The Mt. Lavinia is adjacent to a train station which has several trains a day to central Colombo. Colombo itself is not that impressive, but not particularly nasty, either. I went to a couple of Buddhist temples and to the botanical gardens/park.
There is still a very heavy military and police presence on the street with checkpoints, following the long Tamil Tiger insurgency. When my tuk-tuk was waved over at checkpoints, we would be waved on immediately, so they are apparently not hassling tourists. I had no problems taking pictures on the street and in railway stations.
The touts and "guides" are not aggressive and will go away if you say no thank you a few times.
I took a day trip to Kandy by train. The train ride itself is worth it, through rice paddies, hills and valleys. I went to a Buddhist temple which has a relic (tooth) of Buddha and there were a lot of pilgrims, including Japanese TV filming. I had lunch at the Queen's Hotel, another Victorian building which was right out of 1900. Kandy appeared cleaner and more interesting than Colombo, would like to have had more time there.
Because of social commitments, friends of friends, and because I got drunk with some Saudis at the hotel who were making up for lost time drinking, I didn't get to check out the nightlife, but I was told there's not much in Colombo, you have to go south to Galle to see a lot of that.
I plan to go back for a longer trip.