Myeik Archipelago in south Myanmar. 

Myeik is about half way from the former capital of Yangon to Kawthaung at the south end of the country and could be a great destination for tours and island trips plus diving trips and other water-sport activities the problem is there is no infrastructure although beaches are plenty.

All islands of south Myanmar in the archipelago are practically off limit unless you travel on your own and just do what you want . Connecting flight's to the north and south are several every day it could be an easy trip since there are also some reasonable hotels in town. This place also has a rich heritage since plenty of people passed through and many settled here. Until about 200 years ago this was Siam territory under the control of the court in Ayutthaya.

Tourism is almost zero although one of the best travel destination in the whole world is in the archipelago of the Andaman Sea. Until now only live aboard trips from Phuket are coming in for scuba diving. The almost 800 islands just in front have no infrastructure at all.


Some of the spots are inhabited by sea gypsies who came from somewhere east of Indonesia several hundred years ago, actually nobody know when. They make a living from fishing hunting (there are plenty of animals on the islands) pearl diving and collection amber.
Here is the island world at the border of Thailand with over 1000 tropical islands. An ideal vacation destination too but the government who is responsible for that just sit and do nothing. That goes on now (2018) since about 10 years but nothing happens. 

Myeik Archipelago Myanmar 

The current government people are traveling around in Asia and begging for "investment" preferably from Japanese sources because the Japanese are well known to pay kickbacks and don't ask much questions. 

Cultured south sea pearls. 

The cultured pearl operations were started together with a local company as a JV and after a while it became evident that the communist/military mentality won't works together with Japanese business peoples and they split. It took another decade until the Myanmar were capable of doing the south sea pearls culturing on their own job on their own.

Paradise Beaches.

Here are Paradise Beaches on the mainland and the nearly one thousand islands whose inhabitants in Myanmar are called Salone and they are the same Negritos as the en Moken in Thailand. One of the largest Moken village is at Rawai Beach in Phuket. 

But since they do not have any property papers because they have been living there for hundreds of years other Thais with all sorts of tricks try to drive the Moken off to get their land because the land is very valuable since Phuket's beach-land can be sold for very high prices and in Thailand money is the god.

A good example was the aftermath of the Tsunami catastrophe when Thais from all over the country arrived and fell over the island like greedy vultures invaded to reclaim land by the water because the majority of the original owners (Moken) drowned in the huge wave. 

There are lots of real estate sharks around always looking for quick money.