Recently i went to
Cox's Bazaar in Bangladesh for a conference. This place is in south of Bangladesh and has some good beaches in Bangladesh. We went from Dhaka to Cox's Bazaar by Regent Airlines. This is a new airline and hence were not taking cards and tickets had to be paid in cash. Initially not accepting cards as a means for buying ticket made me circumspect on the airline as my
past experience with Bimal airlines was really bad. The airline turned out to be pleasant experience with less than hour journey to the destination.
Cox's Bazaar airport looks like a small bus stand with parking showing some vestiges of old aircraft of yesteryears. It was a strike or hartal in the area but we did not have any issue reaching our hotel. We were put up at Hotel Long Beach which was really good with neat rooms. Though the name has a beach there is no beach next to it. As a part of the event we went to Seagull and Ocean paradise hotel nearby for events both were good. Seagull has a nice and clean beach opposite to it. The buffet had a wide variety of non-veg with fish taking the pride of place as expected. Food was good in all the three hotels. It was bit chilly and it seems it is the coldest climate in Jan for the previous many years. So being in beach late in the night without proper woolen clothing was hard for me.
We went to Inani beach which is supposed to be a coral beach. I was not quite impressed by the beach as it was rocky (though my friends were telling me it is coral) and not being well maintained. By 5.30 Bangladesh time we could see sunset. So be there before it in any beach to see the sunset. We took an auto from the hotel to the beach and it costed us Tk 500 for a to and fro trip, though i had bengali friends to negotiate.
The return flight being in the afternoon, i had to stay back at Dhaka to get following day flight back to Bangalore through Kolkata. It seems all morning flights are to chittagong which is a commercial place and afternoon they run the same flight to Cox's Bazaar. There are two other flights which are after regent to Cox's bazaar, viz., United and Novoair. They also seem to running similar bombardier type flights. I could not go to other places for lack of time as there seems to be no good public transport and may have to take auto to other places as well.