We sat down with the fabulous Phoebe and Seddy, owners and co founders of The Kip Sri Lanka. Phoebe and Seddy met in Melbourne, Seddy originally from Italy and Phoebe from Australia. They decided to leave Melbourne on an adventure with dreams of setting up a dreamy boutique hotel / creative space / brunch spot in Sri Lanka, and this is what they did!

The Kip is our number 1 recommendation for Sri Lanka - it embraces the slow life and is pure magic full of laugher, new friends and generally joy! ps. Their raw vegan cakes and iced cashew lattes are incredible…

What was it about Sri Lanka that made you want to make the move from Melbourne?
Where to start hahah. There were so many things about Sri Lanka that made us want to pack up our life in Melbourne and move here; from its authenticity/rawness, to it’s slow vibes, to it’s super infections magical energy.
Sri Lanka is a place that really gets under your skin. A place that embraces creativity, simplicity & balance. A place that makes you feel like anything is possible. So, it was pretty much all these things, combined with the fact Seddy and I were craving a lifestyle a million miles away from the modern, fast paced city life that we were living in Melbourne, that made this little island the perfect choice for us!

You and Seddy have created such a beautiful, creative space and cafe. Who’s behind what, or do you both work on everything?
Thanks gorgeous.
When we first started out, Seddy and I worked on everything together but now days the roles tend to be more split based on what we are most passionate about. For example, I love the creative side of the business (organising the workshops, setting up a tiny lifestyle shop, doing Instagram, etc..) where as Seddy loves the more operational side of things, especially when it comes to the cafe. At the end of the day though, as we are such a small business our roles do still cross over all the time.

The Kip is such a beautiful old house, how did you find it and in what condition? Did you have to do a lot of renovations?
Seddy and I had such a strong vision of the type of property we wanted for The Kip , that it was a dream come true when we found this place. Although the property itself wasn’t completely dilapidated when we found it, it still needed a lot of work. With neither of us having any construction or design experience we definitely had our work cut out for us. On-top of this, as Sri Lanka is a developing country, a lot of the time we couldn’t just pop down to the shops to buy things off the shelf. This meant that during the renovations we had to get creative and think outside the box while also learning to embrace perfection in imperfection. Although this was sometimes challenging, it was one of the best parts of the experience.“Necessity is the mother of invention” and never has a truer word been spoken about life in Sri Lanka. As such, it is a country that breeds creativity, which we absolutely love!

You guys work super hard - what do you do on your days off?
As we are in such a social industry, our days off are generally very quite and low key. They usually always start with a mandatory sleep in, followed by breakfast at our favourite local spot and then some beach time. We then always try and head home by late afternoon for a little siesta and some more down time to read, get creative or literally just potter around. In the evenings, we love nothing more than being home, with our dogs, listening to chilled tunes or watching a good Netflix mini-series while enjoying a couple of beers! We are all about the simple life.