Condé Nast Traveller Middle East
ISLES OF BLISS
Ed Peters sails around the Mergui Islands and discovers what might be Asia’s last unspoilt paradise
Back in the Nineties, one of the first tourists to ever step on to one of the Mergui’s 800 islands turned to his guide and asked how to pronounce the archipelago’s name. The guide looked around for a moment – his gaze taking in azure waters, pristine beach, gently waving palm trees and a cloudless sky that might all have been teleported from some conjurer’s Instagram post. “Bliss,” he replied, with a gentle smile.
Three decades on, the description is still thoroughly apt. Mergui – trickling off the south-western coast of Myanmar and properly pronounced “Merr-gwee” – is still very much the perfect destination for anyone who wants to revel in untrammelled nature, dive in waters that seem like a Photoshoped maelstrom of tropical fish, bake on beaches where the only other living things are crabs and birds, and marvel at the heavens that, night after night, put on a dazzling display of asterisks unimpeded by even a glimmer of artificial light.
In short, Mergui is the Maldives without the masses. There’s no international airport and no big-name hotels, no shopping malls nor theme parks. Whether sailing on a live-aboard or staying in one of the cluster of eco-friendly boutique resorts, anybody spending time here is more or less guaranteed a glimpse of what could well be Asia’s last untouched utopia.
Mergui has only recently come into contact with the modern world. For centuries its only inhabitants were the Moken, seminomadic sea gypsies who took to the land when the weather turned fierce or if they needed to fell a tree to make a new boat but otherwise voyaged from island to island, eating the fish they caught and eking out an existence untroubled by any outside authority. Visitors from the mainland, let alone foreigners, were a rarity, although a 17th-century pirate, Samuel “Siamese” White made the Mergui his lair, sallying forth to prey on passing merchant ships.
As the years went by, divers started to catch on to the Mergui’s potential, raving about the undersea life – veritable academies of fish including sharks and rays and gorgeous coral gardens – and dropping anchor wherever it suited them. Then, in 2011, following a series of nationwide political reforms, the bolder sort of investor was allowed to lease an island for development and a new chapter opened in the life of the Mergui. Most of the new resorts are in reach of the town of Kawthaung, two hours’ flight from the capital Yangon, or a 30-minute boat ride from Ranong in Thailand.
It is not an environment that speaks to concrete, as the developers were quick to realise, and the handful of resorts that have opened so far blend into their surrounds both physically and metaphorically. One of the first to welcome guests, Boulder Bay ( from AED 685 per person per night, including meals and soft drinks, boulderasia.com) on Nga Khin Nyo Gyee Island runs to a score of bungalows (local sustainable timber, thatched roofs) and has been at pains to minimise its footprint, employing solar energy and reusable aluminium containers. A dozen dive sites lie a short distance from the resort, which also lays on yoga retreats.
Touting similarly praiseworthy eco-credentials, Wa Ale ( from AED 1,560 per person per night, waaleresort.com) splits its accommodation between beautifully fitted-out beachside villas and rustic wooden tree-houses. Like everywhere in the Mergui, diving is on the doorstep, but guests are also free to indulge in a massage, paddle the island’s rivers and mangrove forests, and explore nearby Lampi Marine National Park. Offshore, fans of life on the ocean wave will find an armada of live-aboards to choose from, with all-inclusive rates at around AED 1,050 per night.
Guests find that, wherever they are staying, meals tend to be one of the highlights of the day, not least because chefs mainly use produce that has been grown nearby and seafood that’s sustainably sourced from the archipelago. One of Mergui’s gustatory delights is either catching your supper yourself, or hailing a passing fishing boat and negotiating – at times, rather a brisk process – for some of their catch. Burmese seafood curry – heavy on the turmeric and chillies, and crucially dependent on fresh mussels – is one of the more popular local dishes, and justifiably so. And a starlit driftwood beach barbecue beautifully caps any day on these untouched isles.
REVEL IN UNTRAMMELLED NATURE, DIVE IN WATERS THAT SEEM LIKE A PHOTOSHOP-ED MAELSTROM OF TROPICAL FISH AND MARVEL AT THE NIGHT SKY’S DAZZLING DISPLAY