Leaving Bagan, our plans called for us to take another one of those luxury buses over the mountains to Inle Lake. However, we were too late in making the reservations and they were sold out. We had to book a standard 15 person van instead. It took 9 hours to make the trip. The van was filled to capacity, mostly with backpackers who were going to the mountain pass to hike down to Inle Lake. The young van driver was wearing a mask, ostensibly to filter the smoke, dust and pollution from his breathing. At least he was considering his health. The rest of us were filtering the air with our lungs. On the way to the mountains we got to use the air conditioning. However, when we started to climb over the mountains, they had to turn off the AC to keep the engine from overheating. I guess it’s better for the passengers to overheat than the van. We had often taken this type of transportation in our earlier travels, but in recent years we have been treating ourselves to the more comfortable VIP transportation. Note to self: always make transit reservations sooner than we think we should.
When the van reached the top of the mountain pass they let out all the backpackers and then switched us to a different van that was headed to Inle Lake. Our original van was going somewhere else. The switch was a surprise to us, but it seemed to work out okay. However, after about 15 minutes in the new van, I realized that we had left our hand carry bag containing all our trip purchases (including that expensive piece of lacquerware we bought from Win at Jasmine Lacquer-Works the day before) in the original van. Yikes! What to do? Since we were going down the same road as our original van for a period of time, I asked the driver if there was any way we could retrieve our bag. He called the other van driver on his cellphone and found out that he had stopped for gas just a couple of miles up the road. He would wait for us to catch up and retrieve our bag. Disaster averted!!
Inle Lake is a huge body of very shallow water, mostly filled with plants, located in north central Myanmar at about 3000 ft elevation. The average depth of the water at this time of year is about 5 to 7 feet. It’s a bit like our Everglades. There is so much plant growth in the water that normal boat transportation is not possible. The propellers would constantly foul on the foliage or bottom out. So, they use the long, skinny, flat bottomed “Long-Tail” boats that are popular in SE Asia. The boats have a large engine mounted on a gimbal, directly connected to a propeller by a very long shaft. The engines are typically the one cylinder diesel type, with a huge fly-wheel. The boats can go very fast and maneuver well. They hold the propeller just below the water surface to avoid the foliage. They gun the engine and away we go. The propeller shoots a tall wide spray of water in the air as we speed through the waterways on the lake. There must be some courtesy rules for drivers, because they know exactly how close they can come to another boat without showering them with their spray. Several times I was convinced that we were going to be drenched, but at the last minute the drivers maneuvered to keep the water off of the passengers.
The most popular thing to do here is to take an all day trip around the lake in one of these long-tail boats. For 20,000 Kyat ($15), our hotel arranged it for us. We started out around 8:00 AM and got back around 4:00 PM. My GPS tracker said that we went about 45 miles in 8 hours and hit a top speed of 20 MPH. Those long-tail boats skim across the water really fast. Our “skipper” also brought his 6 year old son along for the ride. I guess he had to babysit that day.
There are a number of little villages along the lake that farm and make handicrafts to sell. The village houses are built on stilts right in the lake. This came about because the owners of the land originally would not let the people build houses on their land. Since no one owned the lake, they built their houses there. On our day trip in the boat we stopped to see them making silver jewelry, weaving silk, cotton and lotus cloth scarves & garments, and making cigars & cigarettes. At one stop there is a tribe of “Long Neck Ladies” who live too far inland for tourists to reach. They come down to the lake and weave their unique style of scarves to sell to the tourists. To show as a thing of beauty, they start extending their necks with brass rings when they are 9 years old, add 5 more rings every 5 years and finish with 25 rings. Their woven scarves are very unique and very soft. Carol bought one. There are some pictures and 15 second videos in the Photo gallery.
They farm on the lake as well. Their crops are actually floating in the water. The lake has fish and there are two kinds of fisherman working there. One type of fisherman uses a cage to trap fish underwater and then he spears them through the opening in the top of the cage. The other type of fisherman uses a net. He drops a net in the lake and then slaps the water with a pole to chase the fish into it. See pix in the gallery.
I mentioned in a previous travelog that recently, Myanmar changed from driving on the left side of the street to driving on the right. Well, to keep things even more confused, they still drive on the left in the waterways. Myanmar also has a peculiar time zone. It is one half hour different from the other nearby time zones. We had to set our watches ahead by 2 1/2 hours when we left Dubai to come here.
The main city, Nyaung Shwe, where we stayed, is just north of the lake. There are nice restaurants and hotels there for tourists. Our first morning here we woke up at 5:30 AM to listen to NPR streaming some news from Seattle. A few minutes after it got going the power failed. We later found out that they have a rolling blackout for a few hours every 5 days because the power grid is overloaded. I also noticed that all the air conditioners here are plugged into a device that allows the power company to intermittently and temporarily turn them off at will, if the overall power demand is too high. This is one way they control the demand on an overworked system. They don’t turn them all off at the same time, but selectively turn some off and then others. If it goes off you just have to wait a few minutes and it will eventually come back on.
One morning we rented very nice bicycles for the equivalent of $1 a day. We decided to take a 16 mile ride to some villages in the south end. On the way we passed their local winery, Red Mountain. It was a beautiful setting about 300 feet above the valley facing the mountains. Though the view was very nice, the mountains were mostly obscured by a haze of smoke, dust and other pollution. Their white wine was not only bad, it was completely “undrinkable”, according to Carol. After sending her first glass back and asking for a different kind, she ended up pouring it in the bushes. I hope it didn’t kill the vegetation!
We’ve become regulars at the local tea shop each morning for that fabulous Burmese Milk Tea. The owner knows exactly what we want when we walk in and orders it for us. The other day when we went in they had the original Rocky movie playing on a TV. He said he was a big fan of Sylvester Stallone and Rocky. There are dogs everywhere. All night long they bark and wine. All the females look like they have recently had a litter. However, they are very calm and shy, when they’re not waking people up in the middle of the night. But, the dogs aren’t the half of it. They have some kind of bird that screeches constantly, very loudly. It sounds just like a chimpanzee.
Carol discovered that there is a bakery here called Pucci Cake. So, on our last day, back in Yangon, before we left for home we went to see it. She had to buy some souvenirs to bring home. I mentioned in one of my previous travelogs that I didn’t think there was a shoe store in all there of Myanmar. Well, I did see one in a shopping center in Yangon the day we left. However, all the workers in this shoe store were barefoot. I figured the store was probably for tourists only. 😉 All the hotels have flip flops in the rooms for the guests to wear while in the hotels, but my feet couldn’t fit into any of them. Their feet are much smaller than ours.
Be sure to check out the photos and Carol’s blog below. I loaded a bunch of 15 second movies this time. I hope I didn’t put up too many pix for this last session. I had too manny good ones to choose from. Inle Lake is a very photogenic place.
Carol’s blog at: http://www.travel.carolpucci.com
That’s about it for this winter’s foreign adventure. When I sometimes write about things going wrong, I hope you don’t think we are struggling here or having a bad time. Don’t be fooled. That’s just my quirky writing style and maybe a bit of exaggeration, to make the stories more interesting. We had a blast here. We love mixing in and soaking up the culture in these places and sometimes bumbling through it just for fun.
Later…… your favorite travelers, Tom and Carol
Inle Lake Photos
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