The coastline of Southern Burma is lined with beaches. Huge, beautiful white and yellow sand beaches that go on for miles and miles and miles, with not a soul on them.
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Nabule beach near Dawei
Ok, there are the ‘popular’ ones, like Maungmakan near Dawei, which is lined with little bamboo huts serving drinks and seafood, and has a few locals playing in the waves and some stray dogs harassing you while you’re trying to read, but I still wouldn’t call it busy by any stretch.
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Maungmakan beach at low tide.
But most of them are completely empty. Undiscovered and unknown and unpopulated, except by a few locals from the nearby fishing village who come to collect their dinner.
It’s only a matter of time before this all gets ‘discovered’. I bet investors and developers already have their eyes on this area as the next big beach destination, and with Burma opening up more and more it won’t be long before big resorts start popping up here.
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One of the sole occupants of the beach.
Also, there is a Deep Sea Port planned for Dawei. At the moment, it consists of nothing more than some decent dirt roads going out to the quiet beach at its planned location, but I was told that it’s supposed to be finished in 2015! Not very likely, from the looks of it.
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Future location of Dawei’s deep sea port.
For now, it’s not super easy to get here. The roads are long and rough, amenities are scarce, and thus the beaches are still empty, peaceful, and oh, so beautiful. Let’s hope they stay that way for just a little while longer.
Have you been to a place like this, completely undeveloped and undiscovered? Tell us about it! How can we help preserve these places?
Be safe and happy Jenny and keep posting. I love your blog 🙂
Thanks Kim! It’s hard to keep up with it while I’m on the road (I’m so far behind on posts right now!) but I’ll keep going at it when I can!
wow Jen, it looks so beautiful! It is amazing to look at the beach where there will be a deep sea port soon enough, i cannot even fathom how that would happen. be expensive i bet. you look like you are having a great time. 😀
It’s a lovely area, and amazing that all those beaches are basically untouched. When I asked my driver when the deep sea port was supposed to be finished and he said 2015 I just about fell over laughing! There’s just no way. Apparently it’s partially being funded by the Thais, because from there it’s just 5-6 hours drive to the Thai border, so I guess the road going through will be upgraded into a highway for big trucks too. Huge changes for that area!
Hi Jenny,
really loved reading all your travels in the south, they are well written and easily connect me with the places, as i have had similar experiences in my time in the south too. I did a lot of work mapping the area and developing town maps amd the southernmyanmar.com website and its really rewarding then reading the blogs of travelers who have since moved through the area and connected with the people in the way you have. – awesome, this is atleast the 2nd time i have re-read this blog. many thanks
Hi Steve,
The info on southernmyanmar.com was incredibly useful to me when I was planning my trip, so thank you for that! It means a lot to me that you enjoy reading about my experiences in the South. It’s such a beautiful area and I would love to go back and spend more time there one day. Maybe soon, who knows?