1. No matter where you have been in the world, and even if you are a very well-travelled person, nothing compares to Sri Lanka. It is not India Lite. It is not Mauritius with coconut instead of sugar cane. It is not the Maldives with culture. It is Sri Lanka, and it will win you over - beaches, countryside and hills - in twelve hours flat.
2. Every day of your trip, if you change town, village or area, it feels like changing country. The landscape alters dramatically within a couple of hours, the sea on the East Coast will be rough, on the West side calm (and vice versa). You can change atmosphere and temperature by driving for two hours. Within a week you can go from coconut plantation to tea country and hills to mountains and forests to miles-long streches of beach, from golden sand to rocks and surf, from historical ramparts in Galle to the modern administrative city of Colombo. Get a driver: you will need him.
3. Sri Lanka has the most genuine food I have ever encountered. Although the national 'dish' is simplistically called 'rice and curry', rice can be red, white, basmati or noodles. Curry is any permutation of vegetable and a couple of bowls of fish or meat. What Sri Lankans call 'hot' is a very balanced Indian medium. it is all local and season except for, maybe, that in Colombo, the only place where staff knew what 'sweetener' was and where coffee at the Galle Face Hotel room came in a little Nescafe' sachet.
4. Sri Lankans do not really have a sense of humour. Do not try to 'joke' with your driver or the serving staff as they will not get it and you will both end up wondering if you offended each other. Wife jokes, though, seem to work everywhere, as I realised when The Writer and the driver ganged up on me. The Sri Lankans are smart, creative and proud. They are all, without fail, happy that the 30-year civil war is at last over (it stopped in March '09 and throughout, not a single tourist or foreigner was killed) and they, especially the majority of Singhalese, seem very happy with their president.
5. In Sri Lanka everybody is connected to each other. You may find that the owner of a heritage home you stay it is a partner in the travel company you use, used to lease a piece of land you visited, and so on.  It is a very large country with a very small, connected society. As yet, the populace is not hell bent on cheating tourists. They view Europeans as one would look at a large and beautiful dog. In most small shops, you can purchase items without being ripped off once. Having said that, prices in general are ludicrously cheap, with a ginger beer in an expensive outlet costing less than a euro. The absolute cheapest in room food probably worldwide (it is, after all, a 5-star) is at the Galle Face Hotel: massive club sandwiches cost €4 and coktails on the beach the same.
6. In Colombo, scammers are everywhere. Their ruses include telling you that they 'met you at your hotel bar' or they 'work at your hotel' that 'there is a festival' nobody told you about, that they 'have a professional background' (teacher, lawyer), that the shop you wanted 'has just closed' but 'try this one'. All their ideas involve taxi rides and if you tell them you have a driver, they vanish quite quickly. The great thing is that all this is very, very transparent. At our hotel, even the reception staff were in on it, so it seems to be a kind of status quo. Use reputable agencies like Sri Lanka in Style and you should be fine.
7. Sri Lankans adore television which is why a posh suite in a business hotel will have two. European-run heritage homes have none, but they do have board games. In the poorest streets in Galle, the front room is taken over by the box  and bizarrely on your way into the airport just after you land, you can buy all manner of white goods...and televisions.
8. The choice of heritage hotels is quite extraordinary and I really suggest you plan your trip around them. Lilly and her staff at Royal Travel, as well as all the staff at Sri Lanka in Style, will be able to guide you accordingly. In a nutshell, Kahanda Kanda on the outskirts of Galle is frankly unmissable: a four-suite 'hotel' belonging to the affable British designer George Cooper, the service is amazing, the views gorgeous, the decor stunning an extremely chic, the book selection extensive, the wi-fi available, the pool fleaming and the food fresh and delicious.
9. The shopping is not that amazing. With a few judicious nudges your driver will take you to where you are interested in going, rather than, erm, where he'd like you go.Top of the list: the thick, hand-woven fabrics made by the ladies on the premises in a factory outlet called Selyn, off the village of Kurunegala (on the road from Colombo to Kandy). The hand-woven fabrics retail from €2.50 to €4.00 a metre and the staff are protected by the Fair Trade movement. Do not even try to bargain (even if you are buying hundreds of metres) as it is useless: they do not budge a rupee, and much like the humour point, it will be embarassing all 'round.  For very little more, albeit with less choice, you can buy the same fabrics at Barefoot (in Colombo and Galle). Barefoot is also good for books (in Sri Lanka, 'bookshops' sell mostly newspapers) and beauty products. For real indulgence - minimalist elephants, cutlery, oil lamps, linen tableware, Sri Lankan flip flops for adults and children, literature and coffee table books, nothing beats the small but perfectly formed Elephant Walk in Geoffrey Bawa's Gallery in Colombo. 9.The Insects are everywhere and they are absolutely huge and voracious. KK have some great natural sprays but I'd go armed. Every bed is a four-poster with lovely mosquito nets draped over it. You will soon understand why.

10.  The drivers are all making a commission from every single shop they take you to. This is why they will insist, over and over, that they take you to massive jewellery shops, where the prices are not that great. At Sri Lanka in Style they are absolutely adamant that their drivers do not take commission but even then...how on earth do you control it? At Selyn they do not give commission: the outlet is actually a Fair Trade shop. In Galle we walked into a jewellery and antiques shop and when the old lady behind the counter realised there was no driver (she actually asked me where he was) she knocked 50% off the price!

11. In Sri Lanka there is a two-tier payment system for everything. To get into the safari, you pay 20 times as much as a Sri Lankan. To get into the Botanical Gardens at Galle you pay a heck of a lot more. The Sri Lankan prices are in Sinhalese so you will only notice if you ask. It's not such a big deal since prices are cheap anyway.