In 2018, the pioneering Myanmar tourism company Memories Group brought Burma Boating Cruises into its roster. The Memories Group offers an assortment of luxury travel opportunities in Myanmar, with entrenched local roots, an awareness of sustainability, and ties to environmental and social ethics. The Burma Boating Cruise Line Fleet exemplifies these values by allying itself with social, cultural, health, and environmental initiatives. Its Mergui cruises focus special attention on the communities of Moken people who inhabit the archipelago as their ancestors have done for centuries.
Why Book a Burma Boating Cruise
Choosing a sailboat over a motor yacht is guaranteed to increase the atmosphere, peace, and exploratory feeling of your adventure. For those who love to voyage on the ocean by wind, the Burma Boating fleet offers a high-class tour. Of course, the boat is equipped with engines for days when the breeze doesn’t cooperate, and the seasonal variations in wind and waves also change the sailing experience at different times of the year. However, Burma Boating Cruise Line Fleet achieves an elegant, low-impact presence in many ways besides its general use of wind power. The fleet pays its environmental dues by using solar panels for half of its electricity, offsetting carbon emissions, and providing each guest with plant-based body products in a linen bag. Burma Boating also holds local stakeholder meetings with island communities to help devise meaningful social projects like its Sailing Clinic, a week of medical clinics staffed by volunteer doctors and transported by the Burma Boating fleet. Through efforts like this, Burma Boating emphasizes its commitment to non-intrusive, culturally and socially meaningful tourism in Myanmar.
The intimate Burma cruises offered by this cruise company bring guests up close and personal with the glory of Myanmar’s nature and the warmth of its hospitable people; the only thing missing is other tourists crowding the scene. You can expect to go jungle trekking, snorkeling, swimming, and birdwatching, enjoy perfect sundowners, and relax on lonely beaches. There are SCUBA diving options on the six-day tour. Specialized tours, such as a sailing spa experience, photography expeditions, and guided adventures led by experts on local culture or biodiversity, are also available. You may also visit a Moken village. These nomadic, sea-based communities are found throughout the archipelagos of Southeast Asia. The Moken people are famous for their freediving and fishing abilities; their entire “Sea Gypsy” culture is lived on, over, or under the water in stilt-house communities navigated by dugout canoes. These canoes are still made in a timeless tradition that may be thousands of years old.
Burma Boating Cruise Ships
The S/Y Meta IV is a spacious, twenty-five-meter sailboat made of Thai teak wood. It was built in 1998 by a famous naval architect, refurbished in 2012, and graced the waters of seas worldwide. Its luxurious teak timber is a highly-regarded building material for seagoing vessels, nowadays unfortunately endangered. Intimate yet roomy, the Meta IV houses eight guests in four cabins and offers cruise lengths of either four or six days. The beds in the rooms are either queen-size or twin-size. You can expect to spend most of your time outside in the al-fresco lounging, sunbathing, and dining areas, but equally classy indoor facilities are also available. Extra water-based activities include fishing, kayaking, and stand-up paddling.
Areas the Burma Boating Cruise Covers
Burma Boating Cruises sails the waters of the Mergui Archipelago, a collection of eight hundred lush green islands which rise from clear tropical seas. This archipelago, along with the rest of Myanmar, was closed to tourism until the 1990s. Perhaps this circumstance makes some visitors swear that Myanmar today feels like Thailand many decades ago. The Mergui Archipelago dots the waters west of Myanmar’s mainland, in the Andaman Sea, whose coasts are also shared by Thailand and Malaysia. The Andaman has long been renowned for diving and experiences its fair share of tourists each year, but its northern reaches in Myanmar waters are much more peaceful than the rest.
The Mergui Archipelago is under consideration for classification as a new UNESCO World Heritage Site. Much of its biodiversity is uncharted, but enough biological treasures have already been discovered to establish the area's importance. Burma Boating Cruise Lines supports Mergui’s preservation by spreading exciting conservation news and giving a platform and partnership opportunity to conservation scientists investigating the archipelago. As a guest of Burma Boating, you’ll see firsthand evidence of the Mergui’s profusion of life: sea eagles, toucans, hornbills, monitor lizards, gibbons, and bounteous fish and corals just below the surface. If you’re lucky, you may also experience a starry night mirrored by shining bioluminescent phytoplankton in the ocean's dark waters.
Some destinations included in a Burma Boating Cruise Line Tour are Barwell Island, Tang La Bo Island, Pony Island, Nyaung Wee Island, Lampi National Park, Pulo Bunai Island, Nga Namm Island, Kyun Pila Island, and 115 Island. The name of the northern route tour is “Hidden Paradise Islands”. The southern route takes a sailing time of four days and is named “Famous Mergui Islands.” It includes Zardet Kyee Kyun Island, Horseshoe Island (Myin Khwar), Kyet Mauk Island, and McLeod Island. Burma Boating cruises set sail from the city of Kawthaung.
