Teak Wood Hotel Inle Lake

... a boathouse that shelters an ornate boat (the front is their national bird). Every October for 21 days 4 of the images are take to neighbouring Temples (such as Nga Hpe Chaung) in the area for the Phaung Daw OO festival. We then went by boat to Kyaing Kan East. This town is renowned for their silk and lotus fabric. The lotus fibre are removed by hand from the plant stalk. They can only be harvested 5 times/year. We were able to see women creating some fabric on a ...

... lucky to see a big market, held only once a week. People were much friendlier than in Yangon, in rural areas they always are. Trek from Kalaw to Inle Lake took 3 days and 2 nights, in total ~52km, suitably divided into 18, 22 and 12km segments. We visited several tribes, all belonging to Shan ethnic group, occasionally popping in a village house for a cup of tea. Lunches were also held in traditional dwellings. Each of the ...

When we were at the monastery, there was another group there as well. They were doing a 3 day, 2 night trek. When we got to our guesthouse, most of them were staying there as well. We all got cleaned up and met some of them for dinner. The food wasn't nearly as delicious as on the trek, but it was good. The next morning we decided to sleep in a little. We had breakfast at the guesthouse since it was included. Then we decided to walk around the town for a little ...

... a smoke, etc. It is a whole community of houses, schools, monasteries, gardens and stores on stilts. It really is a unique and beautiful place. I think it was a lot more rewarding to arrive to the lake via a trek instead of a bus. It was an exciting entrance to a beautiful place. Our bags had been forwarded to our guest houses. Ours hotel was last en route so we were able to see some others for comparison. At Richard's ...

... fields of patchwork farms, locals dressed in minority garb going about their daily farming lives, children on water buffaloes, bullock carts carrying immense loads of grain. It was the very picture of idyll, and at the lowest impact trek I'd experienced so far, all extremely pleasant. Our stop for the night was an atmospheric monastery inhabited by children monks, undergoing the obligatory months (I'm not exactly sure how many) training every Burmese male must go through as a rite of passage.

... manning dozens of boats for after school rush hour, then you bathe/play in the waters underneath your stilt house, paddle over to the neighbors to gossip, and then play volleyball since it's the only sport that takes up a small enough land mass. Everyone has gardens that are actually on floating islands of vegetation that are staked down to the bottom of the lake by bamboo poles. One of the major pastimes and food sources is one legged fishing, in which you use these ...

... let anyone who doesn't work for an embassy stay for very long - it's only in the last few years you could travel in the country for more than 2 weeks - but somehow, keeping his head down, he's managed to secure permission to remain here for so long. After settling in my hotel and arranging a guide for the three day trek to Inle Lake, I come back for the evening and over several beers he provides an incredibly useful perspective on a ...

... villages where the women are kept virtual prisoners on display to tourists with the profits going to Thai businessmen. Here at least the money goes direct to the families, but even so you still feel a sense of voyeurism watching them weaving and doing their traditional dancing. On the other side of the coin, to them it probably beats the back breaking work of dry rice farming in the hills, doing a bit of weaving and the occasional song and dance for the tourists. The lady ...

I tried to rent a bike in the morning: a beautiful mountain bike (the one of our guide for lake INLE) After 2 kms, I broke the gear system. It took I 2 hours to fix it with the help of 2 different garages. The good thing is that I took by the way a course of mechanic for scooters and bikes. At the end, they just split up the broken spare and hammer it to make it straight ( they were mechanics for scooter not for bike!) but they finally understood how it was ...

... high stilts. Fishing , farming, craft/cottage industries and now tourism support hundreds of families in this picturesque setting. Few things are done in the normal way. People hop in their small boats the way we'd slip on our shoes. All structures are suspended high enough to avoid all but the worst flood levels. Electricity is strung across the water on scaffold-like wooden structures. Farming involves building up massive floating ...