Lovely Inle Lake

The second stop of our trip around Myanmar was Inle Lake, and its primitive beauty.

Inle Lake is a large lake somewhere close to the center of the country. The lake is quite vast, and has no exact border to the land. It includes stilt-house villages, quite a few islands, countless temples and monasteries, floating gardens, and is surrounded by a set of mountains, very dense in vegetation. The scenery could not be more beautiful.

To explore the region, Gorda and I took a one-day boat trip, just the two of us and the boat captain. Captain is certainly not the right word to characterize the person who drove our boat today - a young local man (boy?), dressed in sportswear, with a few tattoos on his arms and a earring in his right ear, who barely spoke English or actually did not speak English at all. The truth is that he knew where to stop and we were able to figure out what each stop was ourselves. The trip was amazing!

The first part of the boat trip allowed us to see fishermen and their unique technique of leg-rowing - which consists of balancing themselves in just one leg and wrapping the other leg around the blade, driving it through the water more effectively, while using their hands to fish. It also led us through small water channels, were locals would bath themselves and their animals (we saw, for instance, a man brushing his cow), wash their clothes, sell products in flat bottom boats, or simply commute between regions.

The second part of the boat trip allowed us to hop at different locations to:
   - visit a lovely local market, where we could hardly identify many of the goods being sold and only saw two tourists besides ourselves;
   - contemplate more temples (most of them golden);
   - visit a lovely peaceful monastery, with the most amazing views;
   - have a cheap local lunch in a stilt-house restaurant;
   - get to understand what these people live from (textile, tabaco, jewelry, iron, and a few other industries, agriculture, fishing, and tourism, still in na initial stage of progress) and learn a bit about their (quite primitive) techniques;
   - date a lot, think a lot, laugh a lot.

The hops included Phaung Daw Oo (a bit of a disappointment), Nga Hpe Kyaung (beautiful!), In-phaw kon village, Naung-taw village, Nam-pan village, and Ywa-ma, among others.

Last but not least, I need to tell you about our priceless experiences at Heho airport. We first fell in love with Heho airport when we arrived on Monday. We left our turbo-helice airplane on foot and were given umbrellas to protect ourselves from the light rain. The terminal was a small box, with an immigration control desk (one person), one information desk (with one person, but only right after each flight arrives), a toilet (with a lady that kindly gives us toilet paper, and opens and closes the water tab for us), and one or two airline counters (not all of them opened). We found it remarkable, however, that such terminal had free wifi!

Our best experience at the airport only happened today, the day of the departure. We had asked our hotel concierge to pre-book us two flights for Bagan. As we arrived to the airport, we went straight to the airline counter but were told we should buy the tickets at the check-in desk instead. At the check-in desk, we tried to pay with credit card and were first told that would not be possible. After a few phone calls, one of the three ladies helping us concluded we would be able to pay with credit card, if we waited a couple of minutes. A fourth lady then arrived with the credit card machine, turned off. The four of them tried to turn in on, as they spoke on the phone with someone that I believe that should be their “IT support”. The credit card machine showed a few technical messages, which ne of the four ladies would read to the IT support. As it stopped showing messages, ready to receive my payment, they tried to insert my credit card in a few artistic ways, listening carefully to instructions via cell phone. After a few interesting minutes, I asked if I could help. I inserted my credit card correctly, introduced the correct amount, inserted my pin (with eight eyes seeing my pin as well), pressed the green button and it all worked. They were all very pleased and impressed. Gorda and I had a blast. Finally, we got our boarding passes and our sticky on the chest to prove that we had done the check-in. However, could not leave the check-in desk without being asked for my credit card number again. They thought they had to introduce my credit card number on the computer, instead of our booking reference. I said I should not have share my credit card number with them. Another phone call to the IT service, lots of vows, and we were free to go!

This post could not finish without mentioning another remarkable part of this trip to Inle Lake: the most incredible sunset ever. 

And now it's time for Bagan!