Venice of the East - Inle Lake... Huh. And Wow!

Inle was one of the best places to go in Myanmar!  It’s a great place that showcases just how industrious the people of Myanmar are.

Upon arrival at the Heho airport for Inle lake around noon, we get out of the extremely small airport to a bunch of dry, hot landscape not having a clue of where we were at.  A taxi driver approaches us and takes us to Inle where we are to board a boat and take that to our hotel.  An hour long drive along the bumpiest, skinniest roads shared with a bunch of other motorcycles, trucks, ox pulled carts, ginormous buses filled with people inside, on top and around, tractors, bicycles and more.  I’m pretty sure our driver honked a minimum of 300 times at other people on the road or at absolutely nothing.

We get to Inle and board a long boat with three chairs in it.  We head out on the water and quickly realize that life here is on stilts over water that ranges from 3’ deep to around 10’ deep depending on what time of year it is.  The only cars that exist is in the town of Inle, which is where everything comes in and out of, everything else is by boat… even to your neighbor’s house or to retrieve a volleyball that got hit out into the water during a game. 

Everything gets elevated here including their crops.  In some of my pictures you’ll see lots of bamboo poles sticking up out of the ground or what appears to be ground – it’s actually floating bits of earth all lined up and staked down with the bamboo poles.  Produce is planted in it and when the rainy season comes, all of the crops rise up with the rising water.  To access it, people then go along by boat to maintain and pick their produce. 

Our boat operator became our tour guide for a couple days as well.  We nicknamed him “v-dub” since his Burmese name sounded something like it.  He took us around to all sorts of handicraft areas.  Each town specialized in their own crafts as well.  We saw how the traditional silk Myanmar fabrics are made including the extremely labor-intensive lotus thread, silver, sake (yes!  Sake!!!), natural cigarettes, paper, and umbrella making.   He also took us around to a pagoda, a local market (and our first traffic jam with boats!), a Burmese cat sanctuary, a monastery that had jumping cats (don’t go, it’s a waste of time), and to some good traditional Myanmar/Shan restaurants.

Inle is pretty awesome.  I think it was our favorite place in Myanmar.  Everything we saw deserved a response of either a huh or wow.  Huh as in, “that’s interesting/unusual/pretty awesome” and wow as in “holy shit!  That’s awesome!”.  Yeah, Inle was pretty WOW!

A world on stilts

Getting onboard

Washing clothes in the lake

Relaxing while working

On the lake looking for a good place to fish

Posing for the camera

A shout-out to all the mamas out there!

Floating "store"... selling some flowers

And selling some more flowers

People of Myanmar are generally all smiles and are happy to see Westerners

The fibers from the lotus stem are pulled out then twisted with other fibers to create a string.  Man on the right spinning the fibers onto a large spool.

Bags of dyes, a woman dying all of the silk thread by hand, and the final product

On the loom

A woman using the foot presses to set the various sets of threads in place

More to come...

Hey all!

So, I know I’m waaaayyy behind on updating the blog, blamethe lack of modern technology here in SE Asia.  I'm now in Vietnam and on the go here but will update more soon. Thank you all for being patient with me.  

Unruly Paint Jobs

Hands down, Yangon has some beautiful old architecture thanks to Brits combined with the Burmese.  BUT, they do a crappy job of painting these buildings which most are covered with black mineral deposits, mold, rust, betel spit, miscellaneous things I can’t identify, and more paint that doesn’t blend in with the rest of the building.  Strangely, it makes the building an odd combination of tenants doing whatever they want for their own viewing pleasure (or lazy landlords) and a beautiful mosaic of color.  Take a look…

Half blue, half brown window frames - it's ok!

Half of the building painted... not bad.

Love the partially painted window frames

Yangon...

One of the most noticeable things about Yangon is the old Colonial architecture.  Beautiful buildings but most have been run down unfortunately, be it paint peeling, mold, falling apart, or just abandoned.  The government-run buildings are in good shape though... which is another thing you'll see around Myanmar (Burma) is it's huge lack of balance between the government and it's people.  It’s strange to be in a place where the style of architecture doesn’t match what the stereotype is for Asian culture like a lot of right and acute angles, ornate detail with dragons, lotus, lions, and such, but we do have to keep in mind that Burma was once occupied so a lot of things here tend to be more Western… like the toilets (Yay!  No squat toilets for a change!)

I love these tiny and colorful trucks that are all over Yangon, they're like Mini's on steroids

The reality

Another detail that I love about Yangon is all of the color!  I'm pretty sure people just find some random color and slap it up on the wall, but with such a great effect!  

And this is how scaffolding goes up... with a lot of bamboo and teamwork.  It more closely resembles a very large lattice.

I love the red robes of the monks here

Allie, one of my travel companions from Seattle 

Chris, my other travel companion from Australia

The people of Myanmar love to see westerners.  We were constantly greeted with warm smiles and a lot of "hello!"  This lady ran across a very busy street to come and talk to us!

At an amusement park where I think we ended up being one of the attractions -- here a local who was peeking on us

Relaxing at the park

This would have made for a very different movie

Fresh cane juice throughout Asia... Delicious!  And I think it would be PERFECT in a margarita!

We decided to go to a leaning Buddha statue in Yangon before we went to the big pagoda in town and were befriended by a local wanting to give us a tour of the monastery there.   We agree to go and it ended up being really interesting.  He took us through different buildings of the monastery and how they are affected by the government, plus we even got to see some newly induced monks and nuns!  Nuns in their pink robes and freshly shaved heads along with the boys in their brick red robes.  They meditate and practice concentration... and watching someone practice concentration even in their walking is extremely difficult to watch especially when I have no patience to even watch such a practice!  But it was such  privilege to witness the inner workings of the monastery to see how they really live.
 

Young monks playing soccer

Meditation 

Um... many years of meditation being practiced

Practicing concentration

Our guide explaining something to Allie

Typical shot of Allie -- always shooting

Our guide explaining alms

They even do their own laundry...

And try to keep cool...

And relax a little...