Ngwe Saung Beach for Papa's Bday

We normally make an annual trip to a National Park for some camping during Papa's birthday weekend, but this year we made the 147 mile, 5:30 minute drive from Yangon to Ngwe Saung Beach on the Indian Ocean (West) coast of Myanmar.  The roads are crazy, the people on the roads are crazy, but it was still a fun four day weekend at a pretty amazing beach side resort.

On the way out we drove through a myriad of roadside village, shanty towns and rice paddy farms with locals carry all sorts of things by cow, by tractor, by moped, by truck and often by bike.  Since most of these villages lacked electricity, firewood and cooking oil are primary sources of heat for cooking.  Here is a guy loaded down with firewood. 

The guys was loaded down with all sorts of snacks.  We passed him and then he passed us and then we saw him again at the top of the mountain pass where he was picking up a bunch of his snacks that had fallen off his moped or was likely clipped by large truck or bus on the narrow roads.

We left at 5:15am to beat some of the traffic and to enjoy almost the entire day at the beach.  The scenery did not disappoint upon arrival.  This photo is untouched and was taken with an iPhone 5c!

Do not mind the worried look on my face, I was only whining about something. Probably the fact that Eamonn and his buddy Oskar are in the background sharing that floating lounge chair and would not let me on.  Note how the pool just disappears into the ocean.

This is one of those shots that you often see in picture frames when you buy them at the store and wonder why they decided to insert that stock photo into the frame.  I was making potion with the sand with my friend Oskar who is just outside the picture frame.

Mama asked me to smile so I just laughed, which has become my general practice and most favored choice of defiance.  Well that and completely melting down when I am tired and super hungry, aka HANGRY!

One night we went to Umi restaurant which was an outside restaurant that had a fire show during dinner.  It started raining and crazy high winds at the end of dinner so it was not clear if the show was going to happen, but it did.  The funny part is Eamonn and I saw a few of our teachers from our school partying at the bar.....bon jure enseignant!

Local fisherman and their morning haul.

The last night we were there we had a beach bbq with our new German friends.  The spread included pasta salad, German potato salad, chicken, pork, beef, and shrimp skewers, giant prawns, and some pretty amazing fish fillets.  We brought coolers of beer and wine down and enjoyed the sunset.  This is Oskar and I with the chef.