On the beach

Nyaung Shwe  is the kind of place that grows on you, particularly when you realise there's a winery you can visit just up the road from the town. Red Mountain winery is one of very few in Myanmar (its kind of mind-boggling there's any at all) and its produces a total of four wines; two white and two red. And they're not half bad, to be honest - we partake of the sampling option - a little dribble of each of the possibilities accompanied by a bit of cheese for ballast - then eat at the winery restaurant; lovely views across the mountains and down onto the town below, very peaceful and quiet, all washed down with a further glass of the white wine we particularly enjoyed. But all this not-badness comes at a cost - limited economies of scale (this isn't a vast operation, even by UK wine production standards) - meaning that a half bottle of even the cheapest wine costs a fiver, while the most expensive red tops out at nearly £15 a bottle. OK, not huge sums to us, but in a country where the average professional wage is probably still only a couple of hundred dollars a month (and where home-produced 'whisky' can be bought for less that two quid a bottle), you can be sure Myanmar wine doesn't feature on too many family dinner tables.
Anyway, we travel on., waving goodbye to our cheerfully dysfunctional hotel experience (chaos not helped by the very limited English spoken by the staff and our even more limited  Burmese - two words, since you're asking - Min-gla-bar - hello/how y'doing and Jez-su-bar thank you )- and take a flight from Heho airport to Thandwe, nearest point for Ngapali (named after Napoli and pronounced pretty much the same), our last port of call before returning to Yangon for our flight home. Ngapali lies on the south western coast of Myanmar, and, as befitting somewhere on the coast, it has a beach. In fact, its fair to say it's all beach - mile upon mile of it, peppered with fishing communities and the odd swanky beachfront resort such as the one we are destined for. It is here that we encounter our first and so far only visible sign of security - as in, men in uniforms prowling around looking stern-faced and purposeful - which feels somewhat at odds in a country where we have at no time felt anything other than 100% safe. A reflection, perhaps, of the vast -and some might say discomfiting - gulf in wealth between the rich, mostly western clientele at our (yes, OK, rather lovely) hotel and our neighbours just along the road.
So we could fill the remainder of this post waxing lyrical about the warm waters of the Bay of Bengal; the endless empty stretches of light golden sands and the deep amber-hued sunsets viewed from our beachfront balcony, but that begins to sound like rubbing it in (particularly in bleak mid-January), and anyway, at the end of the day, its only a blooming beach*. So instead, a few random jottings about other stuff we've encountered here and haven't commented on yet:

Dogs - One of the first things we noticed on arrival in the country is how many wild dogs there are. This, we immediately concluded, was Not a Good Thing - thinking of the wild dogs of, say, Sarajevo in Bosnia or Kyrenia, Northern Cyprus; who prowl the streets in menacing, growling packs. But the pooches here seem to have swallowed the Buddhist ethos whole: totally chilled, they amble about looking contented and (fairly) well-nourished, or else lie peacefully by the side of the road, or in the middle of it, pending whatever Karma awaits them - which is usually good, since the drivers and riders of Myanmar usually take care to avoid their canine brothers, rather than mercilessly mowing them down as in parts of central and southern America (and places closer to home, too)
These peaceful mutts also seem to have excellent toilet habits - as evidenced by the almost total absence of tell-tale poop anywhere on the ground. Go figure...

Driving As aforementioned, not anywhere near as cut-throat as one might expect; in fact would go as far as to say the roads here seem pretty safe. But here's the thing - the rule of the road here is to drive (mostly) on the right - as in mainland europe - yet all of the cars and trucks we saw were right hand drive - ie, as in the UK. Go figure #2.

Odd things Like the posters we saw around Mandalay advertising something by the name of "Iron Cross". To our eyes the rather queasy symbolism of the branding is further underlined by a logo mounted in Gothic script featuring an eagle's head insignia plucked straight from the annals of the Third Reich, but it turns out "Iron Cross" is a band - apparently the most popular rock group in Myanmar. Sure they'd find a following among certain 'populist' politicians closer to home too..
(On a similar culture cross-wired theme, we saw at least one taxi bedecked with swastika-like symbols stuck like kill-totems to the front offside wing. When we later quizzed our guide about this we were assured it was done purely 'for the beauty'. Hmmm...
By the way, Kipling never went to Mandalay, just like Darwin was never in Darwin. Seems we just keep on falling for it...

Food/ drink  As hopefully clearly signalled, all good - really good, in fact; a fusion of Thai, Chinese and Indian flavours without being quite like any of the above. Oddly, the hardest place to get a good meal is in the cities - Yangon and Mandalay, not because good places to eat (they almost certainly do) but because so few are geared in any way to the tourist market. Most venues don't exactly throw out the welcome, and, in terms of finding the good ones, its mostly down to pot luck. The other places we stayed - Bagan, Lake Inle and here in Ngapali - have a recognised if still developing tourist trade, so its relatively easy to find a choice of places to eat.
One particular favourite dish of ours was Tea leaf salad, which sounds disgusting but is actually delicious - a blend of fresh tea leaves with ingredients such as garlic, tomato and  - crucially, to my mind - crushed peanuts to give a pleasing, crunchy texture. Speaking of tea - green tea: can't abide it at home, can't get enough of it out here. What's that about??

*I have been asked by my companion to point out that my earlier ill-considered, satirical comment 'its only a blooming beach' in no way does justice to this staggeringly beautiful piece of paradise that we feel humbled and privileged to be able to spend time in. I apologize, wholly and unreservedly, for this wretched slur, and any confusion that may have been caused.