Ngapali Beach Hotel

... any tourists and those that are here are all staying in the same hotel/resort. There are some Myanmar tourists here though and, although they think we are mad for trying to get a sun tan, (and going into the sea with just shorts on), they are friendly enough and I end up playing beach football with a group of local guys for a couple of days. My time here runs out and I head off back to Yangon for a couple of days before I fly home. This is probably the last sun I will see for a while.

... my subversive ideas? Perhaps they are a plant. Westerners want to feel good about letting the people know they are on their side. This is a safe way for us to feel good and to keep us away from the population at large? Pretty outlandish, but at the same time, I have heard enough stories for my mind to be focused on these things. The next morning we bought delicious fruits (Avocados and Bananas) for the train ride to Mandalay.

... no public transportation and there being no shuttle bus for the Grand Resort at the airport unlike all the other resorts expecting guests, I decided I'd just walk the 5 km to the resort. I bought myself a bottle of water and asked around about the Grand Resort. A couple other resort employees told me it was no longer open but I wasn't sure I believed them since that's a typical ploy of touts to get you to stay at their place (which I fell for ...

... Fresh seafood. Amazing sunsets. Cool fishing villages and markets. Quiet streets. Very generous, kind people. And still relatively untouched by tourism.  I finally added a few photos and it has been almost a year since my visit. I plan to come back to this place again in 2009...maybe for my birthday again. 

... Danijela had, in the three days she'd been in Ngapali, hooked up with an American couple, Suzanne and John. Now, on my first day in Ngapali, we celebrated Suzanne's birthday at Bamboo (with a wonderful chocolate birthday cake) and during the conversation it turned out, they'd met an English guy, who lived in Malaysia, was an underwater phtographer and was called... Matt. This bloke is everywhere!

HE SAID: I must admit that we knew nothing about this place prior to booking our flight from Inle Lake. Upon reaching the beach in front of our hotel, I was really surprised with how amazing this place is. The water is exceptionally clear with a beautiful blue green color. The sand is soft and ...

... pain in our hearts. Completely exhausted now we walk back to town, to see if we can get a bus out of hear. Stopping at a monastery so S. can wash, I fall asleep on the ground for an hour. When we make our way slowly to town, a woman starts talking to S. What are our plans? After we explain her, we insists on coming to her house to rest before we do anything else. The change to be with local (non-monk) people for a bit sounds really nice. We stay. As a good luck ...

... and even building new ones. Women worked collectively cleaning the nets at the shore. Acres of fish dried in the sun. Inland it was a thriving town, but I only saw part of it. My rented bicycle lost a pedal partway into this long little metropolis and I had a warm walk home. Bands of children insisted on helping me push the crippled vehicle at various stages. I suspect this was a socially acceptable way to inspect the foreign devil ...

... venant de Bagan, il faut s'arreter a Pyay, y passer une journee a attendre et reprendre ce fameux bus le soir. Bref, on sommes allees dans un petit hotel adorable juste sur le bord de la plage et je dois dire que ca fait vraiment du bien! Comme on est au bord de la mer, on peut manger du poisson grille, ce qui change de leur friture a tout va!

... he stared at the horizon. I on the other hand was more preoccupied with the cockroaches that were coming out of the cracks in the boat as the motor started. At first there were just two or three small ones but as we rocked and bobbed over the waves to the island, bigger and bigger ones came out on the deck to sun themselves. Soon there were over 30 in the bottom of the boat - and those were the ones I could see. So instead of looking at the horizon I was too busy ...