Christmas on the beach

Thursday, December 22, 2011
Ngapali, Myanmar
It was dark and cold at 5.00am on Thursday morning. There were pockets of damp mist on the lake as we sped along in our boat for the last time, heading for the town of Nyaungshwe where our transport to Heho Airport was to meet us. It took about an hour to reach the airport. It was situated at nearly 4000 ft and so still cold although the sun was now up. Early morning flights are often delayed here in the winter because of the misty conditions and there were no planes on the tarmac when we arrived. At about 8.00am we were pleased to see several planes arriving and it wasn't too long before we were on our way south to, hopefully, warmer conditions and Christmas on the beach.

By the time we landed at Thandwe we had peeled off several layers of clothing . The sun was shining and the sky blue. The various hotels and resorts at Ngapali Beach all had their transport meeting the flight and our bags were loaded onto the minibus for the Pleasant View Resort. This was at the far end of the bay and so we had a chance to see the other resorts as we drove along the coast. Each hotel on the palm fringed beach had a clutch of restaurants and little shops nearby on the road but it was all very low key and laid back. We decided almost immediately that we were going to like it.

The Pleasant View Resort had some deluxe bungalows and some standard two storey blocks all overlooking the wide sandy beach. We had a very good upper room with a spacious balcony. The beach and the sea looked inviting but we decided to do a little exploring first.

Beyond our hotel was a small creek and a fishing village. We walked in the other direction, passing the local primary school which was just disgorging dozens of green and white uniformed children, and soon reached several small shops and restaurants . They all specialised in seafood and there seemed to be enough of them to give us a good choice of eating places for the next few days. We had a lunch time beer and a rather good noodle soup with prawns and squid before making some purchases to stock the fridge in the room.

Keith spent the afternoon relaxing in the sun whilst I hogged the one computer terminal in the hotel reception. Disappointingly there was no wifi but with a bit of ingenuity I worked out ways of transferring stuff from my laptop and was able to make a little progress with the blog which had got seriously behind. At first I was not able to access my emails and suspected that once again Orange was being blocked (in Mandalay it had been impossible to access Orange) but after numerous attempts I eventually managed to get them up and was quite excited to read the backlog of messages.

By 5.00pm the sun was sinking and we adjourned to a little bar just along the beach . With simple bamboo and palm tables, chairs and umbrellas it was a perfect spot to sink our feet into the warm sand and watch the sun set with a cold beer. After a better than usual meal at one of the restaurants on the road, we ended our first day at the beach lounging on the comfortable chairs on our balcony listening to the sea lapping on the sand and admiring a spectacular canopy of stars.

Ngapali was an idyllic spot and everyone we spoke to was enchanted by it. There were around a dozen hotels along the beach and we heard that the total capacity was just 1000. Yet it is the premier beach resort in Myanmar and, as it is only really practical to reach it by air, it is the playground for the country’s rich and famous. It must have been nearly full for the Christmas weekend yet still seemed quiet and peaceful. What visitors there were were a mix of European, American and Australian tourists and affluent Myanmar families. We wondered if we were in fact rubbing shoulders with some of the infamous military leaders . As we ordered our second bottle of Myanmar beer at the beach bar one day the proprietor excitedly confided to us that the family who had just left the table behind us were actually the owners of the Myanmar Brewery.

The beach was wide, clean and peaceful. Boat trips were available but there were no noisy water sports and the only beach vendors were a handful of ladies selling fruit. They were very friendly and not persistent. This area had not suffered any fatalities during the 2004 tsunami. When the sea receded, we were told, the locals, having no idea what was happening, rushed down the beach to grab armfuls of the fish that were left flapping around! The subsequent wave caused minimal damage although there were a couple of properties along the beach that still looked today as if they had not recovered.

The hotel was good and our room very large and comfortable but badly lit. Anything important had to be done in daylight hours as after dark it was very gloomy . Breakfast was passable but not too exciting. We were never up at the crack of dawn and suspected that we therefore missed the best pickings at the breakfast buffet. In general we found the food in Ngapali much better than elsewhere in the country. Maybe this was a regional thing or maybe they had more experience of cooking for foreign palates here. Seafood was the speciality but there were also many meat dishes on offer for Keith.

We were here for six days. Most days were spent relaxing on the beach. Keith topped up his tan whilst I finally had a little time for some reading (when not in the queue for the computer in the hotel reception). At lunchtime we adjourned to a beach bar and in the evening we walked into the village. The hotel had a restaurant on a little island which was reached by foot at low tide and by boat at high tide. It was a lovely spot and we had several sunset drinks there.

All the hotel guests had had to pay $30 for the Christmas Dinner to be served on Christmas Eve . We had expected to see frenetic activity throughout the day as the staff prepared for the banquet but nothing much seemed to be happening and although the food provided was good it wasn’t really special and took the form of a buffet. We had a choice of salads, two soups and then roast beef, crab curry, prawns with pineapple and fish fried with ginger, accompanied by rice, noodles and mixed vegetables. There was fruit and cake to follow (called Christmas cake but not as we know it) and free gin sourz and rum sourz. The staff were all sporting Santa hats with white plaits which looked quite bizarre against their dark skins. Some disco music was put on after the meal and a few of the French contingent with children were persuaded to dance. By 10.00pm it was all over, the food had been cleared away and the place was in darkness. A few stubborn Aussies sat in the dark and continued to refill their glasses with the free gin sourz.

On Christmas morning we opened our cards (which had doubled in number this year), and stood them both on the dressing table . After breakfast we went for a dip in the warm Indian Ocean, momentarily sparing a thought for our compatriots doing the same in the Serpentine. Then it was another lazy day on the beach. For Christmas lunch Keith had a beer and I had some delicious grilled tiger prawns. In the evening we walked into the village as normal but made a poor choice of restaurant and had an indifferent meal. Walking back along the beach in the moonlight we watched as thousands of bright orange crabs scurried off back to their holes in the sand at our approach. Groups of villagers were celebrating on the beach. They had lit bonfires and were playing guitars and singing.

The next couple of days flew by in a whirl of inactivity and before we knew it our stay here was coming to an end. We were going to be really sad to leave this little bit of heaven. We hoped for the sake of the lovely people here that the resort would develop and that they would get more visitors, but considered ourselves fortunate to have experienced Ngapali Beach before that happens.

Our visit to Myanmar was now nearly over but we had one more little adventure ahead of us. We were going to spend a few days in Rakhine state, an area close to the border with Bangladesh and little visited by foreigners.

 
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Comments

Hilary
2011-12-30

It looks really lovely J and K. Am green with envy! Just very windy in Scotland where I went for Christmas!

2025-02-11

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