Laboni

The read

The oldest strip, and the most Bangladeshi one

Laboni is the beach the country actually goes to. It is the closest sand to the town centre, so the crowd is domestic, the jetty is busy with speedboats, and every twenty metres someone will offer you a horse ride or a plate of fried fish. If you want to see Cox’s Bazar as a Bangladeshi holiday rather than a beach resort, stay here.

Prices are marginally higher than Kolatoli for equivalent rooms, largely because you are paying for the location: markets, the bus stand and the town’s banks are all a short walk away. The shacks along the front are overpriced; the streets one block back are not.

What Laboni actually looks like

Laboni is the beach at the foot of the town, and the entrance road onto the sand is effectively the region’s promenade. It is lined with beach shacks selling coconuts and fried fish, stalls of shell jewellery and Burmese slippers, photographers with printers, horse handlers, kite sellers and the speedboat touts who work the jetty. On a Friday evening in December there can be tens of thousands of people on this single kilometre of sand, and it is one of the great sights of Bangladeshi public life.

The hotels here are older than Kolatoli’s — this was the original tourist quarter — and they are arranged along the streets that run back towards the town centre rather than in a single beachfront wall. That means fewer sea views but shorter walks to everything else: the main market, the bus stand, the banks, the pharmacies and the Burmese Market are all within ten to fifteen minutes on foot.

It also means that the difference between a good and a bad room is larger here than anywhere else on the coast. Some of these buildings have been refurbished twice; others have not been touched since the 1990s. Photographs on booking sites are frequently years out of date, so the price is a more reliable guide than the pictures.

Beach chairs, touts and the price of everything

Laboni runs on small negotiated transactions, and knowing the going rate removes most of the friction. A pair of beach loungers with an umbrella should be 200 to 300 taka for a few hours, not per person. A horse ride along the sand is 200 to 500 depending on distance and your negotiating stamina. Photographers will take and print a set of pictures for 100 to 300. The shell and pearl jewellery opens at roughly triple what it sells for, so halve the first number and walk away once if you want the real price.

Speedboat operators at the jetty offer short coastal runs when the sea is calm; expect 300 to 800 taka a head for a fifteen-minute ride, and be honest with yourself about whether life jackets are being offered before you get in. Jet ski rentals cost considerably more and are best judged by the state of the machine.

None of this is aggressive by the standards of South Asian beach resorts, but it is persistent. A firm, friendly refusal and continued walking works. Prices on the sand are always higher than prices twenty metres inland, for the same object.

Staying here with family, and staying here cheaply

Laboni is the most practical base for a family travelling without a car. Everything is walkable, the beach has the widest shallow section at low tide, the hotels are used to extra beds in the room — usually $5 to $10 for a mattress — and the pharmacies and clinics of the town are minutes away rather than a CNG ride. The counterweight is noise and crowd: small children who nap early will nap through a lot of car horns.

For budget travellers, the streets running inland from the beach entrance hold the cheapest acceptable rooms on the main coast — $12 to $20 for a clean double with a fan, more like $22 to $30 with air conditioning. Look at the room before paying, check that the bathroom drains and that the door locks from inside, and prefer a room away from the road if you are on a low floor. In peak season these places fill first because they are closest to the bus stand, so arriving before noon matters.

One night in Laboni and two or three in Sugandha or Inani is a common and sensible split: you see the spectacle of the domestic holiday beach, then move somewhere you can hear the sea.

Beyond the sand: the town at your back

Laboni’s real advantage is that it is not only a beach. The Burmese Market, a ten-minute walk inland, is the best handicraft shopping between Chittagong and the border — Rakhine textiles, lacquerware, bamboo, dried fish, blankets and a great deal of imported plastic. Haggle hard and expect the opening price to be roughly double. Nearby, the Aggmeda Khyang monastery in the town and the fish landing centre at the southern end of the beach are both worth an hour.

For timing, the fish market moves in the early morning and the shopping streets are at their best between five and nine in the evening, after the heat. The sunset crowd on Laboni peaks about twenty minutes before the sun actually reaches the water, and thins fast afterwards — which makes the following half hour the nicest time to be on the sand.

Hotels in Laboni

Live prices, re-checked this morning. Tap through for room types and cancellation terms.

Getting here and around

Laboni in pictures

Questions about Laboni