In a pristine corner of a country in flux, a remarkable
new resort is pointing the way to sustainable development.
Just over one year ago, Chris and Farina Kingsley, the owners of Wa Ale Island Resort, approached me about photographing an image library for the grand opening of their brand new boutique resort property hidden in Myanmar’s Mergui Archipelago. Wa Ale, a “low‑impact, high-style resort opened last October within the Lampi Marine National Park, Myanmar’s only marine conservation zone”, and I was fortunate enough to visit just weeks before they welcomed their first official guests. During my week on Wa Ale, my small production team and I made a collection around 50 landscape, interior and lifestyle images showcasing the beautiful, unique property and its 11 luxury tented beach villas and three intimate wooden tree houses. The custom photography bank we created has been used to populate the Wa Ale website, in the property’s PR initiatives and featured in many dozens of international publications.
The resort has had an outstanding first year and has been met with resounding accolades from travel media around the globe, including being named one of the best new hotels on the prestigious Condé Nast Traveler 2019 ‘Hot List’. But this latest recognition — being featured on the cover and across four pages in this past weekend’s Financial Times’ ‘How To Spend It’ — might be the property’s biggest honour yet. I am very excited about what Chris and Farina and their small Wa Ale team have built with their own hands while “camped on the beach here for two years”. And I am proud of the photography that we made together to help promote this special sustainable resort in the Andaman Sea, “Asia’s last ocean frontier”.
Browse Scott’s entire Wa Ale Island Resort photography series here.
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