Undiscovered and off-limits to tourists for a long time, this is what awaits you: An archipelago surrounded by brilliant azure sea waters dotted with hundreds of remote islands with pristine white-sand beaches lined with palm trees and covered in abundant wildlife in dense jungle. Swim amongst spectacular marine life, untouched corals, and seashells.
Why travel to the Myeik / Mergui Archipelago?
- The low-down: The Myeik Archipelago is still unspoiled by tourism. The tourist infrastructure remains limited with the result that travels in this part of the world is still expensive.
- The brightest highlight: Scuba diving is debatably the best feature of this large area that has been off-limits to tourists – but not to fishermen. Still, diving is great.
- Intrepid destination: Absolutely, though independent travel is difficult, expensive, and in some areas prohibited. You need an expensive permit in some areas.
- Globerovers score (10 is highest): I have spent four days around the islands on a luxury yacht, rubber dinghy, and stayed in a luxury eco-friendly resort. I also travelled along the coast and visited multiple beaches and islands. Awesome! I’ll score it 8/10.
Table of Contents
Myeik / Mergui Archipelago – An Introduction
Let your mind go wild for a moment and just imagine this… You are transposed to a location on planet earth described as: “Nature’s unexplored lost kingdom where nobody knows all the species that live in the dense jungle and in the turquoise waters. A pristine paradise of primal seclusion which is irresistibly lovely, and one of the last few paradises on earth. Here everything is alive, even the shells are crawling”.
The Mergui (Myeik) Archipelago, an unspoiled paradise, is located in the Andaman Sea off southern Myanmar.
Wake up and stop dreaming. It is real! You are in Myanmar’s Myeik Archipelago!
This is the place for adventure dreamers to make their dreams come true. This is a place for explorers. A place for those who are yearning for destinations that still remain untouched, immaculate, and unspoiled by mass tourism. This is a place where tourism is a brand-new terminology.
The Myeik Archipelago ranks in beauty among the Seychelles, Maldives, Tahiti, Bora Bora (French Polynesia), and Hawaii’s Lanikai Beach.
Known as the Myeik or Mergui Archipelago, this name is as confusing as the country’s name. In their effort to erase some of the remaining reminders of their former colonial rulers, the military government changed the country’s name from Burma to Myanmar, together with many other colonial-era names, including the Mergui Archipelago which became the Myeik Archipelago. While both the colonial name and the Myanmar names are still used interchangeably, it is more correct to refer to it as the Myeik Archipelago.
The Mergui Archipelago is an immense area that covers approximately 36,000 square kilometres (13,900 square miles) and lies in the Andaman Sea off the Tanintharyi Region’s coast in the extreme south of Myanmar.
The Tanintharyi Region encompasses the long narrow southern part of the country known as the Kra Isthmus. It borders the Andaman Sea to the west, and the 1,700 km (1,056 mi) long Tenasserim mountain range, beyond which lies Thailand, to the east. To the north is Myanmar’s Mon State, and to the south is Thailand and the idyllic Thai islands of Surin and Similan.
The archipelago lies in a 400 km (248 mi) long north-south scattering across the Andaman Sea, in tropical waters where temperatures are consistently pleasant with average lows between 20-24°C (68-75°F) and average highs ranging between 28-33°C (82-91°F). These are ideal conditions for tropical wildlife to thrive, both in the sea and on land.
The archipelago consists of more than 800 scattered islands mainly composed of limestone and granite. They vary in size from small jagged rocky outcrops to large islands many miles in diameter.
Most of the islands are covered in evergreen forests and very dense jungles that drop into the turquoise waters, interrupted only by brilliant white powder-soft sandy beaches and rocky headlands. Some of the islands have tidal rivers and are fringed by large mangrove forests where fish and other small creatures flourish. The islands are surrounded by a coral reef and beds of seagrass that add to its diverse fauna and flora. The majority of islands remain uninhabited and untouched, except for some of the larger islands which are home to small communities of Burmese fishermen and the Moken people.
History of the Myeik / Mergui Archipelago
While the archipelago, at least for now, remains undeveloped and almost unnoticed by the world, it has an interesting history.
Centuries ago the port at the mainland was an essential stopover for European trading ships crossing the Malay Peninsula on their way to reach the city of Ayutthaya, capital of Siam, now Thailand. Talking about ancient Siam, it has been reported that the Mergui Archipelago’s indigenous Moken people, the so-called “sea-gypsies”, are the ones who introduced the people of Siam to brown cowrie shells. Cowrie shells were used by the Siamese as their currency, centuries before they started to mint coins.
During the days when Burma was ruled by British India, some of the islands were named after captains of the empire, such as the islands of Great Swinton and Lord Loughborough. Some were even called Cocks Comb Island, Bushby Island and the Alladin Islands.
Creative naming seems to have come to an end, so we are left with islands with name tags such as “Island No.115”.
Most, if not all of the islands in the Mergui Archipelago, were officially off-limits to foreigners for decades, until 1997 when the first dive operators from Thailand negotiated limited access to selected dive spots.
Several of author W.E. Johns’ books of the ’50s and ’60s make reference to “Burma”, often mentioning the “Mergui Archipelago”.
For years this part of the world enjoyed scant international media coverage, except for a few mentions such as in Captain W.E. Johns’ “Biggles” air adventure books.
In the 1965 James Bond movie “Thunderball”, the ruthless Persian cat-petting Ernst Stavro Blofeld demands a vast ransom in diamonds. The British government then plans to drop the “blood money” ransom in the form of blue-white diamonds worth £100 million on an island off the coast of Burma.
Another early historical event that placed the region in the Australian newspapers was back on November 8, 1935. Air pioneer Sir Charles Edward Kingsford Smith and his co-pilot John Thompson “Tommy” Pethybridge flew the Lockheed Altair monoplane named “Lady Southern Cross” overnight from Allahabad, India, to Singapore in their attempt to break the England-to-Australia speed record. Sadly they perished in the area. An intensive search failed to find them alive, or to recover their bodies. Eighteen months later, Burmese fishermen found the landing gear from their plane which washed ashore at Aye Island to the north.
The Mergui Archipelago undoubtedly has a rich history unknown to most of the world. Most stories remain untold.
The Moken People of the Mergui Archipelago
Guarding this paradise are indigenous people of Malayo-Polynesian descent, an Austronesian subgroup of people.
Meet the Moken, as they call themselves, or Salone, as they are referred to in Myanmar. They are known by the Thais as the Chao Lay.
In the myths of the nomadic Moken seafarers, who have lived here for about 4,000 years, the islands broke off from the mainland following a great mythological flood.
They are also referred to as the “Sea Gypsies” or “Sea Nomads” and described in the romantic lexicon of Western writers as a quasi-amphibious race living in a tropical paradise.
They are considered hunter-gatherers rather than fishermen as they do not use nets. The men use three-pronged spears to hunt big fish spotted from their boats, while women dive to the bottom of the sea to collect a variety of molluscs and sea urchins with their bare hands. They are also known to collect sea cucumbers at low tide, often as deep as 10 to 12 m.
The Moken seafaring people have lived among these islands, undisturbed for centuries, and are one of Myanmar’s most distinct ethnic groups. Living a rather nomadic sea-based life, these people have adapted themselves to the water over many hundreds of years. Traditionally they have lived on the seas in their houseboats for months on end and made seasonal migrations.
They are the masters of free diving, and while holding their breaths for a very long time, they are able to perfectly focus their vision under water.
When living on land during the rough monsoon season, they build their huts close to shore so they can constantly monitor the sea and their boats.
Sometimes they embark on multi-day fishing trips in search of food, though the trend seems to be shorter trips which are due to a decrease in the number of their traditional Moken big houseboats, called kabang. These days the government does not allow them to cut the thickest trees needed to construct these kabangs. They increasingly use smaller dug-out canoes and row close to the coastline in search of fish and other food items harvested from the water and on land.
While the Moken believe one should not be greedy and only take from the sea what you need, they also believe that resources are infinite.
As they have traditionally moved from one island to another and kept their population numbers small, resources could easily replenish. However, as they now tend to move less and remain in established villages, their population is growing. The current Moken population is estimated to be between 2,000 and 3,000, increasingly corralled into small permanent villages on the islands.
Spread over the archipelago, about 400 live within Lampi Marine National Park in the villages of Makyone Galet, Nyaung Wee and Ko Phawt.
They are made to live like fish out of water while large trawlers and squid boats infringe on their territories. The Moken can’t compete with these large boats for the limited resources. The seas they presided over for centuries are now getting busy, even though the Myanmar government is trying to control the influx of foreign boats. As they are threatened by the competition for fish resources by large fishing boats, it is not clear how they will live a sustainable existence. They likely will turn to the lucrative influx of tourists and abandon their traditional lifestyles.
As we visited a typical Moken village on a remote island, we found several stalls selling foods and candies, much of it packaged individually in plastic. Lots of locally produced dried fish are also available.
The customers are Moken who now have settled down permanently on land, as well as Burmese from nearby islands or even from the mainland. Sections of the village paths are carpeted with discarded glass, plastics and cans, though the beach itself is fairly free of litter.
The kids are friendly and very welcoming to foreign visitors, though some gasp in shock. Perhaps they have never seen white people. Their faces are painted almost comically with the typical Burmese thanaka, a yellowish-white paint made from ground bark. Several young kids were rolling in the powdery white sand and then ran off to play with a small wooden boat in the clear turquoise waters. They really do seem very much at home in the water and I can believe these kids can swim before they can walk.
Some adults smoke the locally rolled green-coloured cheroots, a potent Burmese cigar, as they lazily sit outside their homes and shops gossiping about the latest news. Some are happy to see foreign visitors while others seem to be nonchalant or even aloof. Babies casually sway in small hammocks hanging between palm trees and on the small verandas of the stilted adobe homes. Life is truly very peaceful here and fits my image of life on a small remote tropical island.
British photographer Cat Vinton, who spent several weeks in 2009 aboard a kabang documenting a Moken family, wrote that she was amazed by “their nomadic free spirit, their lack of a routine, their knowledge of the sea and the jungle, their love of nature, their raw energy, their smiles and their hearts”. She continues with “their nomadic life is spent wandering around the islands as hunter-gatherers; they are the sea gypsies, floating nomads, living on ancient-designed, roofed boats called kabangs. These elusive people are born, live and die at sea. The Moken children can swim before they can walk. Their philosophy focuses on pride in the face of scarcity. Kabangs symbolise the ownership of nothing”.
However, the lives of the Moken have changed significantly over recent years and are set to change even more as these islands are increasingly opening up to outsiders and tourists!
Opening Up After Years of Isolation
Since the end of World War II, dangerous sea pirates and Myanmar’s military dictatorship have kept unwanted outsiders away from this beautiful part of the world.
The region’s decades-long isolation and the absence of tourism meant that this large uninhabited archipelago remained one of the world’s best kept natural environments not tainted by property developments and the destruction caused by mass tourism.
The white sand beaches that rim the steep jungled interiors stand as empty as neighbouring Thailand must have been about 50 years ago. But for a few intrepid travellers, this was the best travel secret waiting to be discovered at the right time.
Fortunately, Myanmar’s military government started lifting some travel bans into the area in 1997, while keeping very strict regulations in place. When opposition leader and activist Aung San Suu Kyi joined the government, it became politically and morally acceptable among international travellers to visit Myanmar, hence a further push to open up the area to tourism.
Today, the vast majority of islands remain undiscovered by tourists with many of them inhabited only by colourful wildlife and the odd fishing village. While tourism has been on the increase since the late 1990’s, the lack of any kind of tourism infrastructure, even basic means of transport and lodging, resulted in only a couple of dozen visitors to the entire area each month mainly via chartered yachts and live-aboard diving operators from Thailand or Indonesia. However, the region is poised for change as the almighty tourist dollars are knocking on the door!
The Change of Times
As the Myanmar government’s permit policy continues to slowly loosen, more tourist vessels have been setting sail among these islands. A few resorts have been constructed on some of the unspoilt islands, and so have golf courses and even a casino!
Recently some media even proclaimed: “The end of a way of life: Burmese islands – that are home to 2,000 sea gypsies – set to be turned into a ‘new Phuket’ with 30 hotels and a casino”. With the government having their eyes on the lucrative income from tourism, one of the planet’s most unspoilt destinations is possibly under serious threat.
It has recently been reported that about 2,000 tourists visited the region by boat between October and May when sea conditions are most favourable. Some reporters claim that 90% of the coral reefs on a famous island, Cocks Comb, have been damaged by the uncontrolled influx of visitors during the past two years. Apparently Chinese and Thai tourists comprise the majority of visitors to this island.
In early 2018 it was reported that the Myanmar Investment Commission has given permission to six properties in the Mergui Archipelago to construct hotels. However, for now, they only permit tourism on 12 of the over 800 islands in the archipelago. Things are sure to change, and we can only hope that the protection of the islands and marine life will be a priority.
The Islands of the Mergui Archipelago
From flying high above, or just looking at a map of the Mergui Archipelago, the many islands appear to form three vague strings or columns, strung down over many miles. The inner string is closest to the coast while a vast scattering forms the middle column. The outer string of isles, furthest from the coast, remains even more undiscovered.
With so many islands in varying sizes, there are many pristine sandy beaches, most as yet unnamed.
“These beaches never have footprints. I’m alone on this planet!”
Jonathan Everest, Backpacker
Common features of the islands are the turquoise waters and pristine white beaches skirting the heavily forested interiors, untouched by any significant human intervention.
Taking a closer look at the islands, you will see stretches of mangroves and white-sand beaches that are interspersed with rocky headlands, tidal creeks and some freshwater rivers.
“The beach was fringed with turquoise water, with the dry and powdery white sand full of white shells and little white crabs busily scurrying backward and forward. Farther from the shore, tiny balls of sand were arranged in geometric patterns around little holes made by sand crabs..”
Yvonne Gordon, Award-winning travel writer
While the beauty is comparable to the scatterings of the Maldivian Islands, the Maldives is half sunken atolls while the Mergui Archipelago looks more like rock formations that shot out of the seabed towards the sky.
“The beach. The word doesn’t quite conjure the perfection of the place, of sand so fine it felt like flour between my toes.”
CNN, Condé Nast Traveler
With way too many islands to discuss here, let us just talk about Lampi, the long L-shaped island, Bo Cho Island at the southernmost tip of Lampi, and Wa Ale, its small neighbouring island at its most western edge.
Lampi Island
Lampi Island lies almost 20 km off the mainland of Myanmar, at a similar latitude as Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital. The island is one of the largest at about 48 km long and about 5 km wide and looks like an L-shaped boomerang with a short western side. Its highest hills are 150 to 220 metres above the surrounding seas.
No roads, no resorts, no sun loungers or umbrellas, no man-made structures of any kind, just raw nature. Though this paradise is going to change!
Lampi is home to the National Wild Life and Marine Park which was established in 1994 and declared an ASEAN Heritage Park in 2003. The park covers a group of islands in the Mergui Archipelago, is the only marine national park in Myanmar, and protects a rich biodiversity of over 1,000 species of animals, plants and marine life.
The park is rich in biodiversity with 195 evergreen plant species and 63 plants associated with its vast mangrove forests. There are 228 bird species, 19 of which are classified as “a threatened species”, including the plain-pouched hornbill and the Wallace hawk eagle. The park is also home to 10 amphibians and 19 reptile species, three species of sea turtles, and 19 species of small, medium and large mammals. Furthermore, surveys have reported 42 species of fish, 42 crabs, 50 sea snails and sea slugs, 41 bivalve molluscs, 35 sea-cucumbers, 73 seaweeds, 11 seagrass, and 333 species of plankton.
Among these are many globally threatened species. Some of the most incredible creatures on and around the island are the loggerhead and green sea turtles, the Sunda pangolin and the dugong.
Some of the activities include canoeing among the mangroves and on the two perennial rivers on the west side of the island where the best-conserved mangrove forests are to be found, and hiking in the jungle, even though there are not yet any official hiking trails.
Observing the sea turtles at their nesting sites from January to March and spotting the babies hatching from the eggs and dashing into the rolling waves is a spectacle not to be missed.
Visit the traditional Moken villages where houses are built on stilts and join them for diving and snorkelling in the pristine waters of the Andaman Sea.
Bo Cho Island
The village of Ma Kyone Galet, located on Bo Cho Island across a narrow channel at the southernmost tip of Lampi Island, has a number of Moken residents permanently settled in houses built on stilts. The long curved beach at the village is lined with palm trees and the shore is laden with wooden fishing boats. Here you will find a Buddhist monastery with friendly monks. Enjoy some fresh coconut water or tea along with traditional Moken food. Buy dried cuttlefish and watch the men building dugout canoes as their ancestors did centuries ago.
Sit back and see life go by in a small island community.
Towards the end of the dry season around February, the “Salone Festival” is held in the village to mark the annual migration of the fisherman from living on the sea to the islands as the monsoon season approaches.
After living on their boats for a long time, they now return to the safety of the islands to escape the choppy waters and occasional stormy seas. During the festival, they will perform animal sacrifices, traditional and spiritual dances, diving and rowing competitions, and perform uplifting folk songs.
You will also be treated with a traditional Moken feast of curries, tea leaf salad, rice, and fresh fish to further demonstrate their fascinating way of life.
While fishing is too dangerous during the monsoon season, they live off the wildlife on the islands by setting up snares to catch the tiny lesser mouse deer. They also hunt wild pigs with their dogs and kill wild birds with slingshots.
The festival was created by the government to promote tourism to the area, so not everybody will find it authentic and in the spirit of the Moken people.
Wa Ale Island
Arguably one of the most beautiful islands of the archipelago is the quaint island of Wa Ale at the most western edge of Lampi Island.
The 9,000 acre Wa Ale Island can be described as an annexe of Lampi Island with a 220 metres wide channel (Salet Galet cove) that separates Kyunn Tann Shey on Lampi with Wa Ale Island. This cove is a popular anchor to the fishing boats in 10 to 12 metres waters and popular among the Moken people, particularly during periods of turbulent weather. The cove is also home to a small community of Moken people settled on a tiny island.
Along the shores of Wa Ale are dense mangrove forests with inlets perfect for kayaking.
Wa Ale Island is part of the vast Lampi Marine National Park, an ASEAN Marine Heritage site. The island is known for its pristine kilometre-long dazzling white-sand beaches, flanked by rocky cliffs, and backed by lush evergreen jungles.
Its crystal clear deep turquoise waters teem with wildlife, including whale sharks, dolphins, dugongs, turtles and manta rays. The shores are ideal for snorkelling the reefs, and paddle boarding or kayaking through the mangroves.
The only accommodation on Wa Ale Island is the brand-new Wa Ale Island Resort. The entire luxury resort was creatively constructed with local materials including river stones and reclaimed wood to minimise its impact on the surrounding environment.
The Resort’s 11 luxury tented beach villas and three treetop villas overlook the beautiful beaches at its doorsteps. The restaurant serves Asian-Mediterranean cuisine created by a top British chef, using ingredients coming from the resort’s organic garden and local fishermen who are strictly required to use sustainable fishing methods.
☛ Read more: Review of the Wa Ale Island Resort
Recreational activities on offer include snorkelling and scuba diving, paddle boarding and kayaking through the mangroves, long hikes through the dense jungle, and relaxation on the white-sand beaches.
Conservation of the Mergui Archipelago
UNESCO recently examined the Mergui Archipelago as a tentative World Heritage Site for its biodiversity, and its report concludes with:
“The Myeik Archipelago contains most of Myanmar’s coral reef, along with some of its best-preserved mangrove forests, lowland evergreen forests, and seagrass meadows, and forms an ecological system of outstanding biodiversity and integrity. Surveys have recorded 50 globally threatened plants and animals in the Lampi Marine National Park alone, including 20 dipterocarp species, three species of sea turtles, dugong, and a variety of fish, coral, sea cucumbers, and other marine species. The Myeik Archipelago is large enough to support landscape species like the plain-pouched hornbill and maintain the full suite of ecological and evolutionary processes.”
While it is too early to determine what long-term prospects are for this fragile ecosystem, hopefully, the increasing interest in ecotourism will provide enough incentive for the local authorities to take action and protect the fauna and flora of the reefs and islands before it is too late.
Fortunately, the Wa Ale Island Resort has committed themselves as the guardians of Wa Ale Island, including the protection of its population of nesting green-, hawksbill- and leatherback turtles, and is instrumental in the creation and funding of the Lampi Foundation, in partnership with Global Medical Volunteers and The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
ABOUT THE LAMPI FOUNDATION
To help fund social welfare and conservation projects in and around the Lampi Island Marine National Park, the Lampi Foundation was founded by Christopher and Farina Kingsley. According to their website:
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“The Foundation is funded through efforts of the Wa Ale Island Resort and other partner contributions including: Global Medical Volunteers and The Wildlife Conservation Society. Through eco-tourism, Wa Ale Island Resort pledges to annually donate 20% of net profits and 2% of room revenue from Wa Ale Island Resort to the Lampi Foundation. It is Wa Ale Island Resorts’ commitment to help preserve and protect the Lampi Marine National Park under the guidance of the Myanmar government with the hope to set a precedent for future tourism projects in the Myeik Archipelago”.
The Foundation built the first sea turtle hatchery in Lampi Marine National Park with the support of the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Ministry of Environmental Conservation and Forestry of the Union of Myanmar.
The Lampi Foundation has empowered local villagers to safeguard all future nesting grounds of the green, hawksbill and leatherback turtles that nest on nearby Wa Ale Island. Wa Ale lies a mere 220 metres, at the shortest crossing, off the southwestern point of Lampi Island.
Activities to Enjoy
The Mergui Archipelago is vast and offers almost unlimited activities to the adventure-spirited intrepid traveller. Among the many activities are just lounging around on one of the many beautiful beaches, snorkelling, scuba diving, wildlife spotting during jungle hikes, island hopping, kayaking, paddle boarding, and anything else you like to do on remote tropical islands.
While official hiking trails are still very limited, if you are adventurous enough to take on the dense forests, you will find jungles on the islands to be one of the most rewarding experiences in the archipelago.
A diverse range of wildlife can be found including the cute spectacled leaf monkey, gibbons, Sunda pangolin, pythons, monitor lizards, oriental small-clawed otter, lesser mouse-deer, monitor lizards, civets, chevrotains, gibbons, and many more. Watch out for the scampering crab-eating macaques foraging for crabs on the islands’ rocky shores. Among the most unique birds in the Mergui Archipelago are the plain-pouched hornbill, Wallace’s hawk-eagle, white-bellied sea eagles, crested partridge, red-throated sunbird, brown-winged kingfisher, Pacific reef herons, emerald doves, and more.
Kayaking and paddle boarding offer great opportunities to slowly move across the shallows that skirt the enchanted mangrove forests and up the small rivers. Get a glimpse into the lives of the many small critters that live in these shallow protected waters.
Yachting is one of the most sustainable forms of ecotourism and leaves the areas they visit exactly as nature intended, provided their guests follow strict rules to respect nature and not to litter. If the yachts and their guests leave no traces of pollution, and no signs of disruption to the reefs, beaches, and jungles and their inhabitants, then this is the best way to experience the archipelago. While the jungle is home to so many creatures, likely many not been identified, the diversity on the islands is more than matched by life in the sea, showcasing an incredible variety of marine life.
Diving here is still in its infancy, as the entire region has been off-limits to divers since the late 1940s. After years of negotiation by several of the Phuket-based dive operators, the archipelago was opened to them in 1997, though much of this vast area remains virgin territory to divers. Today, an increasing number of boats visit the area, so one of the best activities across the archipelago is scuba diving, as well as snorkelling. There is no better way to enjoy this adventure than to embark on a live-aboard boat and set off on a multi-day excursion that covers a wide area.
The area has a fascinating topography and prolific fish and invertebrate life. In the more shallow waters, you will come across many species of corals as well as parrotfish, domino fish, butterfly fish, snapper, grouper and colourful sea anemones.
While diving, on a good day, you may see several shark species such as the nurse, grey reef, and bull sharks, as well as eagle and manta rays, the dugong, giant stingrays, octopus, seahorses, frogfish, scorpionfish, ribbon eels, ornate ghost pipefish, schools of barracudas, rainbow runners, tuna, trevallies, and Spanish mackerels, and the list goes on and on.
The diving spots across the region are diverse and far apart, most of which have not been explored. In the far western corner of the archipelago where the continental shelf drops off into the deep sea, is a range of underwater mountains known as the Burma Banks which consist of the islands of Rainbow, Silvertip, and Roe Bank, plus the Coral and Heckford Banks. This area offers some serious adrenaline-pumping open ocean diving where friendly shark encounters are virtually guaranteed.
Other highly recommended diving sites include Black Rock, Little Torres Islands, and also Shark Cave which is home to a group of nurse sharks. Tower Rock at the northern part of the archipelago has a dramatic topography with deep walls studded with corals and fans, providing ample shelter to lobsters, shrimps, oysters and clams. Often massive manta rays glide silently past this impressive backdrop. The number of dive sites surveyed so far is numerous, yet the area is vast with much of it unexplored by divers.
A great way to find a suitable live-aboard is to visit liveaboard.com which currently has a listing of 384 liveaboards with 23,073 cruises. Choose from a variety of destinations such as the Maldives, Egypt, Indonesia, Thailand, the Galapagos Islands, Mexico, and many more, including of course Myanmar’s Mergui Archipelago. See their advertisement below for a 30% discount off a selected cruise.
For an exceptional liveaboard experience, join The Smiling Seahorse team which covers several of the most beautiful dive spots across the region. They guarantee that their friendly and professional service, combined with their yummy food, means “time cruising between uninhabited secluded islands on sapphire-like blue water will be nearly as wonderful as the time you will spend underwater.” Their boats to the Mergui Archipelago depart from Ranong in Thailand and Kawthaung in Myanmar. Their brand-new boat, the 25 metres long MV Smiling Seahorse, started sailing on the 26th of October 2018.
The gateway to the Mergui Archipelago is mainly the town of Kawthaung, Myanmar’s most southern town. Liveaboard boats also leave from Thailand towns such as Phuket and Ranong. One-day trips (and overnights) to islands closer to land, though still beautiful, can be arranged from the towns of Dawei and Mergui, and possibly Kawthaung and elsewhere.
Further reading
- Mystic Hill Tribes of Myanmar’s Shan State
- Ayeyarwady River Boat Journey: Myanmar
- Portraits of Nagaland – Myanmar
- Top Islands of the Mergui Archipelago
- Are tropical islands in Myanmar Asia’s last untouched paradise?
- 7 once-in-a-lifetime experiences at the new destination Mergui Archipelago
Blog post and photos by Peter who has been travelling almost full-time since 2005 and has been to over 122 countries. He visited several countries, such as Japan, more than 20 times. Peter is Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of GlobeRovers Magazine, an independent travel magazine focused on intrepid destinations.
2 comments
Amazing post. There are many important offices, hospitals, hotels, banks, schools, universities and shopping centres. Many high-rise buildings have been built. Myeik is famous for its products such as pearl, rubber, edible bird’s nest, dried fish, dried prawn and ngapi.
Yes but maybe Myeik is developing too fast.