I went to Ngapali in April to stay away from the six-day long severe Thingyan (Water festival) of Yangon. I would like to give a brief account of how we spent six days there.

Ngapali beach has two parts the part where there are guesthouses and the other with hotels. Although I said hotels and guest houses, there are only six hotels Sandway Resort Hotel with good environment, Amata Resort Hotel opened only this year, Bayview Hotel (nice function), Ngapali Beach Hotel under overall renovation after the change of management, Silver Beach Hotel with good interior decoration, Lin Thar Oo Guest House with all the rooms facing the sea. There are also a lot of hotels under construction at the beach. Number of hotels will be significantly increased in two years.

Visitors can have food at a hotel or at local restaurants at the back of the hotels. Menus mainly focus on seafood. Foods are fresh and even local restaurants serve tasty foods. Prices are lower compared to Yangon. Visitors can place orders for lobsters and fish in advance with the staff of the hotels and local fishermen and take them to the restaurants to have them cooked to their taste.

Visitors can go snorkeling and fishing on a chartered boat. But it is expensive to hire a boat at the hotel. It is cheap to hire a boat at the row of restaurants behind the hotels. To give you some price idea, it costs K10,000 to set off for an island from morning to before lunch. You can have fishing gears and snorkels free of charge at the hotel. The day return trip including lunch costs K 30,000.

One can go fishing along the beach without taking a boat. But, you cannot go fishing at high tide. Please take notice that. While fishing from the boat, although the catches were small, they took the bait once we dropped it in the water.

Europeans like the beach because they can spend their time sun bathing and reading at the beach where there were no other thing apart from the sea and the sandy beach. As a Japanese I did not think it was interesting much. But indeed, I really had a good time there.

To compare Ngapali to the other beach resort Ngwe Hsaung, hotels and restaurants are of the same standard. It is the best to play in the sea in Ngwe Hsaung. If you want to travel in comfort, pick out the trip to Ngapali, which is only 45 minutes by aircraft from Yangon. Chaung Tha Beach used to be popular. What I have told you here is just my impression about the beaches based on my own experience. You can experience yourselves.

The final point I would like to make is that the seawater has become a bit muddy in April. Seawater is the clearest from the end of the rainy season to mid-January. But, I am not sure you can go into the sea because it is a bit cool in the morning and evening in this period.