Inle Lake, Myanmar

After spending 2 days in Bagan visiting the pagodas, our tour guard picked us from our hotel to the airport to continue our tour to Lake Inle the next morning.  It took us about an hour from Bagan airport to Heho airport .  From the airport we have to travel by van(1 hour drive) to the jetty before we can board the passenger  boat into Lake Inle.

Heho Airport

We board the passenger boat at the jetty, a boat can only seated with 6 people including the captain of the boat.

 This is one of the passenger boat going round the Inle Lake.

On the way to our hotel , we can see fishermen doing their catch in the lake.  To our knowledge, the fishermen in Inle Lake are the only fishermen  who use their ankles to row their boats while doing their fishing. This is the unique feature in Inle Lake.

Farmers scooping weeds from the lake for their farming. The weed as fertilizer for the farms.

Floating farms.  Another unique feature here.  According to our tour guard, the local here will cut a big piece of land from the side of the lake and drag it to the lake and do floating farming.  They have to use long bamboo sticks to stuck the piece of land into the shallow lake to prevent the land being float away.

Tomatoes are the most common vegetables planted in the floating farm, followed by cucumber, chili and local vegetables.

Floating houses and farms.

Our tour to Inle Lake include visit to some of the local cottage industries.  This is the traditional silk weaving.

Have anyone ever see tread make from lotus stem?  WE are really amazed to see this happening in front of our eyes. This lady use a knife to cut the stem of a lotus, twist a little and lightly pull, we can see the tiny silk like string being pull out. She will roll a few pull together to form tread. They will mix with silk to make their local costume.

The lotus tread

After the silk and lotus , we proceed to see the boat making.  At the same time we were able to see the traditional way of sawing wood.

On the road , we can see taxi station, bus station and railway station, but here we can see only boat station.

The next visit was the iron smith. They still using the olden way to make knifes and cutters.

Long necked women in Lake Inle.  There are only 5 such ladies left here.  They are the same as those we found in Nothern Chiangmei in Thailand.

After saying goodbye to the long necked women, we proceed to see the primitive way of melting silver and made into various silver wares and jewelery.

Finally, we were able to check into the hotel,Golden Island Cottage after completing our tour in Inle Lake. It was almost 5pm when we landed in the floating hotel.  There are 13 such hotels in this lake,according to our tour guard. All these hotels are very special because they are built in the lake but not on an in of land.

The environment is so...so clean and the air is so fresh....so natural.....so quite.. so peaceful.

This is one of the twin sharing cottage.  The beds were attached with mosquito net because there are many insects at night.  The place is so natural that the hotel do not install any fans or conditionals.  The electricity will cut off at 12 midnight.

The beautiful sunset at the hotel.

We spent a night in Lake Inle and really enjoyed the real quietness of this place.  We found that the people here are so humble and contented with what they have and their daily routines.  People here are mostly farmers and fishermen and some of the local cottage industries.

After a quite and good night rest, we were pick up by the boat at 7.30am after breakfast to proceed to the jetty(1 hour ride) to catch the van to the airport(1 hour drive) to fly back to Yangon. Upon arriver , we were pick up by my brother;s driver to check into City Golf Resort for our last night stay here.  After our rest, the driver came and send us to a restaurant to have dinner with my brother and family.

After our final packing the next morning, the driver came with my sister-in-law to send us to the airport to catch our flight home.  Finally we touch Malaysian ground at about 4,30pm.

It was a very interesting tour, from the busy city to a poor country side,the people in the country sides are very innocent and pure and poor,and the gap between the very rich and the poor is very big, just like many other countries in the world.