A place to relax - Ngapali Beach

On Wednesday morning (05.10.), we said goodbye to Dennis at 8 o'clock and then we were driven to the airport by taxi at around 10 o'clock. Small Asian airports are interesting. When checking in, they weighed our luggage together, then left it in the middle of the room and gave us a sticker by which they could recognize which plane we would fly with later. The stickers differed in color, as we later found out. So after standing up three times incorrectly because it wasn't our turn yet, we boarded the plane heading to Ngapali Beach with a stopover in Heho (Inle), where we simply stayed on the plane. Of course, it was pouring rain when we said goodbye in Bagan.

After a while, we arrived at Ngapali Beach. Finally, five days of beach and doing nothing. When you are constantly on the go, even on vacation, you need a few days to do nothing. We were picked up at the airport and taken to the hotel. Unfortunately, there were no garden bungalows available, so we got an upgrade - a bungalow with a beach view in the second row. 🎉🙌🏽 After enjoying the view from our terrace for a moment, we went straight to the beach.. Lounger, book, water, sunscreen. What more do you need? So we spent the rest of the day until dinner. We quickly took a shower and then walked along the only road in Ngapali until we reached the Two Brothers Restaurant. There we had avocado salad and a grilled red snapper. Anja had the same but in white. My second whole fish. It unexpectedly went well! 😁 ...and it was delicious! We hadn't considered that it would be pitch dark in the evenings and had to cover some sections of our route with the light of our mobile phones - once to see, but also to be seen. The people from Ngapali like to ride scooters without lights. On Thursday, we just lay on the beach. Lounging, swimming, reading, fresh fruit 🍉 from the fruit seller walking along the beach, sunset, that's it. In the evening, we went back to Two Brothers, where we were already greeted with a smile. Friday was similar. However, we decided to walk along the beach and watch the sunset from a different spot. We found a small bar right on the beach, had a Moscow Mule and watched the event. It was beautiful!! Those colors in the sky!! 🌄 We walked back along the beach to the road, as we hadn't eaten anything yet. We didn't really like anything, so we ended up back at Two Brothers, greeted with a grin and bid farewell with a 'See you tomorrow'. The food just tastes too good! 😊

It started raining on Saturday morning. We were on our way to the beach and quickly turned back. It rained from 1 p.m. until the next morning at 7 - 18 hours... So heavily that we sat on our terrace and couldn't move. The power went out for several hours, so we couldn't charge anything or turn on the air conditioning. Since we didn't have internet in Ngapali either, we occupied ourselves with reading, sleeping, chatting, listening to music, sorting pictures, and watching the rain. By 7 p.m., we were so hungry that we ran along the small path to the hotel restaurant. We wouldn't have made it any further, as we were already wet when we arrived there. Anja ordered a plate of vermicelli with chicken and a few lightning strikes and thunder later, she decided to try to buy cigarettes. She took off her shoes, rolled up her pants, and grabbed an umbrella from the reception before running off. When she came back, she had waded through the water up to her knees and was completely wet, but she had cigarettes. The nice lady at the reception lent us two more umbrellas and followed us to our hut. It was pitch dark, we walked through ankle-high water, and then it happened... Something screamed, Anja screamed and jumped, and I couldn't stop laughing for several hours. She had stepped on a frog, but it managed to get away. The evening was saved, we had a lot of fun!

When we woke up the next morning, it had stopped raining after we had taken a shower. Only until we had breakfast. Then it started again.. 😕 So we spent another day on our terrace. Thankfully, it stopped in the evening, so we could at least go out again to eat something. This time we went to a restaurant further down the road. The waiter/owner was extremely accommodating, but constantly bowed and was almost submissive, which drove me a bit crazy.

The next day we would go to Two Brothers again.

On Monday, it was already our last day, so we decided to walk along the beach to the fishing village. Our hotel was the last one before the fishing village, so we already knew that the beach there was pretty dirty. That's something the Burmese can't do, but it doesn't bother them either. They don't have trash cans and throw EVERYTHING exactly where they walk, stand, and live. They live in the middle of rubbish. Unimaginable for us. But in Ngapali, we had already seen it because the clean tourist beach was only separated from the dirty local beach by a small stream with stones. Unfortunately, it wasn't just the trash, it was also the smell and the dead, bloated dog that no one removed, which made us quickly leave the beach section and the fishing village. For the rest of the day, we alternated between the beach and our terrace.

In the evening, our last one, we revived our 'tradition' once again and went to Two Brothers to eat and say goodbye.