The Best SE Asia Finale I could ask for - Myanmar Part II

My final stop in Myanmar was a place called Inle Lake, quite literally a 22km lake surrounded by marshes, farm land, mountains and many different local tribal villages.  Inle is an incredibly beautiful, more temperate region of the country famous for its stilt houses, floating gardens and the unique rowing / fishing techniques of the Intha people that live on the lake.

As a visitor, the obvious must-do is to take a half or full day tour of the lake on a long, motorized canoe-ish boat. So, as soon as I arrived, I went with two others I met from my hostel for a half day trip around the main part of the lake.  Sadly, the main part of the lake is becoming well-known (if you read the right travel resources), as one of the biggest tourist traps in Myanmar because after you see the sights, you can be taken to up to 6 different workshops (aka working demonstrations of how the locals make clothing, sliver, cigars, etc with an attached store for you to buy their work).   On our boat trip, we were only taken to the lotus shop where they weave lotus, silk and cotton into clothing and the silver shop where they extract silver (by hand and some chemicals!) to be made into utensils, jewelry, etc.  Despite the claims of it being "touristy", I really enjoyed the experience - come on, it's still Myanmar with a tiny fraction of the number of tourists as the neighboring countries. Here are some pictures from the boat trip:

The famous leg rowing technique...many say that this is just a sham for tourists these days, but I definitely saw it happening when they didn't know we were around...

A man and his wife...

Stilted villages

A pagoda in the distance - just beautiful scenery

Getting a wave from the little cutie

Beautiful

One of the women weaving lotus to make clothing

On my second day in Inle, I figured it would be a good idea to break up the boat rides with some physical activity, so I booked a day hike into the surrounding mountains.  The hike ended up being a ridiculous experience in many ways.  To start off the day, my guide and I set off at 8am and starting climbing into the hills - one thing they didn't share with you was that we were going up and over, (aka we were going from sea level to 1500 meters and in a very abrupt fashion.)  Yes, it's quite possible I've gotten soft, but it was incredibly tough.  I also saw 3 lovely snakes on the way up and was definitely nervous - apparently more people die in Myanmar than any other country in the world from snakebites because they just started making anti-venom a few years ago.  Luckily the snakes were not interested in us, so I can show you some views from the way up:

There was a cave in the side of the mountain and you had to go through the cave to get to a small pagoda...at the exit of the cave was this monk meditating - so cool!

After ~3 hours, we stopped at our first village where we visited with some local women and children and were invited into one of their homes/huts from some tea, bananas and a much needed break.  While we were relaxing, one of the elder grandmothers came in to tell us that a village about 2 hours away was having their annual rain festival and that we should definitely try to make it...so of course we quickly packed up and set off.

A little cutie from the first village

Two hours later, we arrived at what was probably the coolest experience I had in Myanmar...people from villages near and far had to come to partake in the festival involving a religious ceremony with the monks, traditional dancing, lots of consumed rice whiskey, and finally, the launching of "firecrackers" to help kick off the rainy season.  It's pretty hard to explain why this was so cool, but hopefully the pictures below help you see what I was experiencing as the only Westerner to witness a once a year spectacle (hopefully the video below works - not as awesome without sound but still cool)!

Many women and children watching the festivities

Making their way inside before the rain comes

The elder man sitting next to men as we huddled under a tin roof to stay dry in the down pour

Everyone huddled under whatever sort of covering they could find!

A novice trying to stay dry as he ran to go check out the status of the firecrackers

Me with one of my many photo opps

Waiting for the firecrackers to go off post rain storm

After a strong afternoon rain and pictures with lots of the local men (at their request), my guide and I started to head back down as it was getting late and he said it would take 90 minutes to get down.  Things continued to get interesting... My guide said that he knew many "shortcuts" which actually meant that we'd turn around 15 minutes later to trudge back uphill because he was actually lost.  Finally, we made it down the mountain four exhausting hours later and well after dark.  If it weren't for the beautiful sunset that we saw as we descended or the motorbike ride that we hitched-hiked to bring us the last hour from the base of the mountain to my hostel, I would have been quite peeved...but somehow it all ended up fine in the end!

Pre sunset but still great colors

On my final day in Inle, I went on a longer boat ride to a much more remote part of Inle Lake with a girl I met at a neighboring hostel.  Beyond the more touristy part of Inle, there's another, more southern lake that's accessed by a two hour ride in a canal off the main lake.  This extra two hour ride was incredibly cool because there were villages lining the canal the entire way, and the villagers had much less exposure to tourists than those living on the main lake.  What that meant is that many more people stopped what they were doing to wave at you!  My favorite was the little boys who would either blow kisses at you or would try to do a cool front or back flip into the water to impress you.

Once we arrived at the southern part of the lake, we visited a local, quiet pagoda and walked through a village where we had lunch at a local's.  On the way back, we got rained on a bit, but it was simply an amazing day. Here are some scenes from the trip to the southern part:

Friendly Burmese we saw along the way

One of my favorite pics from the trip - caught this little guy mid back flip!

Post trick - all smiles!

Blowing kisses!

Post bath time in the lake - the guy on the left was all about it but his friends on the right were a bit more embarrassed!

Local pagoda and village scenes:

Another one of my favorites from the trip

What they used for farming...

Local markets

Packing up from the market

On my final day in Myanmar, I had a flight back to the big Yangon airport in the morning and a six hour layover before my international flight back to Thailand later that evening.  I was originally going to stay in the airport and finish the great book I was reading, but I decided last minute to head back into Yangon for some final street exploring and my last Burmese meal.  Luckily, I was hitting the city right around lunch time so after an hour of wandering around, I had lunch at one of the busiest street food spots and just took it all in.  Here are a few more scenes from Yangon:

Two little novices

This bathroom attendant guy really really wanted me to take his picture!

With a mix of sadness and excitement, it was finally time to leave Myanmar after a solid, intense week.  The Burmese were absolutely lovely but it was a physically and emotionally demanding experience - but one I wouldn't trade for the world.  Here are a few of my thoughts based on the time I spent there...

Myanmar is changing rapidly as it's a country very much in transition.  In Inle Lake, people were farming and making clothing with methods we used in the late 1800's - seriously.  When you walk down the street in Yangon, you can see smart phones from China on sale right next to sewing machines that were used in the US in the 30's and 40's (I fact checked with google!). While Myanmar is desperately trying to catch up, its still a good 10-20 years behind its neighboring countries.  As they try to grow and expand the tourism industry, however, they're going to have to find a delicate balance...prices for accommodation and transportation have gone up significantly (up 100% in some places) - accommodation in Myanmar is now more expensive than in any of its neighboring countries.

Well folks, that was Myanmar.  Tomorrow I'm going to post some super short, final thoughts recapping the past six weeks in Asia before I start telling you about Australia!