Ngwe Saung Beach

The alarm goes off at 4.30am … we’ve been told to leave an hour and a half for the journey so we are getting in a cab at 5am with two girls we met at our hotel in Yangon who are also going to Ngwe Saung.  They had tried to get flights to another beach resort further north but they had all sold out.  Its one of their birthdays today and she was desperate to be on the beach so we told them about this place last night and they decided to join us.

We arrive at the bus station very early!  Its a crazy place with people and buses everywhere.  As we arrive lots of boys run after our cab trying to get us to buy tickets from them.  The cab driver drops us by our bus stop, we let them know we’re here then have a coffee in one of the many cafes and watch the sun come up and the world go by.  Its a fascinating place and is full of life at that time of the morning.  We wander up and down and buy some snacks for the bus journey.  Our bus leaves bang on 7am, although the girls have got on an earlier 6.30 one which wasn’t mentioned when we booked our tickets.  We stop for lunch in Pathein and arrive at our destination by 1pm.  A really easy bus journey except for an American lady sitting behind us who was very loudly putting the world to rights for half of it … thank goodness for headphones!  We chat to some Swiss girls on the bus about accommodation and are going to go with them when a tout jumps on with a better price so we get off.  We end up with a big beach hut right on the almost empty endless stretch of golden beach.

Its an amazing spot and we spend the afternoon on the beach swimming and sunbathing then we go for a run as it cools down, watch the sunset and go across the road for dinner.  The locals ride up and down the beach on their motorbikes, but there aren’t too many of them to disturb us.  There are also some horses and we spot this man taking his cows somewhere.  We’re very glad we chose to come here :-)