Inle Lake

Inle is a roughly 5km long lake nestled in the mountains of Myanmar. With lower temperatures and a unique lifestyle, it made a relaxing stopover in our long and bumpy journey.

After finding a room, we grabbed a couple of Chinese built bicycles, (the kind where your knees hit the handle bars and if you are lucky the brakes work, but more on that in a later post) and ventured around the lake to visit some neighbouring villages. The rutted dirt trail took us past villages of simple straw huts, ancient
decaying temples and scores of children who love to come up and say hello or wave as we cycle by.

Most of what we needed to see is achieved by boat so we arranged with someone to pick us up in his motorized canoe for a day around the lake. Our first stop was the weekend market where hundreds of boats were tied up in what looked like a shopping mall parking lot at Christmas. Wandering through the open stalls of local veggies, animals and items was interesting enough, but then I found what I had been searching for. A haircut! There, out in the open were five men cutting hair for the outrageous price of fifty cents a cut, (probably half that for locals)! Judging by the crowd of onlookers I suspect I was the first and only white guy getting a cut that day, or perhaps any day. Five minutes later it was over and I had shed my hippie look for a few more weeks.

We also visited the “floating” village where families make their existance from growing vegetables on their “floating” gardens or by fishing. The children in these villages are so cute as the bounce from hut to canoe with amazing balance. The fishermen also display amazing balance as they stand on one foot at the back of their tiny canoe, row with the other foot and one hand while working a fishing net with their other hand.

Inle was so picturesque and peaceful as we wandered amongst fields where families plough with water buffalo, and where we talked to locals who love to practice their English, but in order to arrive before the water festival we needed to move on to Mandalay. So after a few short days we climbed aboard the 60’s vintage Mazda taxi, home to a colony of mosquitoes, door panels replaced with pictures of cool lakes and waterfalls but with no handles or window winders, and barely enough power to carry us for the hour long drive to the airport.