INLE LAKE

We were changing hotels that day – we’d booked the next couple of nights in a hotel built on stilts in the middle of the lake – so we took our bags with us and after some pidgin English and gesturing managed to get the boat people to understand that we wanted to pass by the next hotel at some point and drop our bags off. That was a good move because it turned out that it was an hour by boat from Nyaung Shwe. The first 10 minutes or so was down the canal which then opened out into the wide shallow lake. It was still early morning so there was some misty haze about which made the whole area quite atmospheric. The locals use the long narrow boats for fishing and have a unique technique – they stand at the front and, in order to keep both hands free for handling their nets etc., they manipulate the oar with their foot. They seem to stabilise the handle upright under their arm and then wrap a leg around the lower part and with a sort of circular movement of the leg they manage to propel the boat.

The lake is an extraordinary environment – it’s home to many people who live in villages built on stilts in the middle of the lake. Every house needs a boat to go anywhere. There are shops and markets and temples and restaurants , all on the water. 

This is a "high-street" of shops..........

Apart from fishing there is farming/market gardening. There is a type of floating weed which grows in abundance and as it dies back and re-shoots it forms a firmish layer which acts as a growing medium. So the farmers have formed it into strips , which they anchor with poles at intervals, with channels either side for boats to pass along – and they grow all sorts of crops on the strips. They are known as the floating gardens – and it’s really quite odd to see a row of beans undulate as a wave passes underneath it.

During the course of the day we made a number of stops – inevitable temples, a restaurant situated at a major junction of two routes which gave us plenty to watch while we ate 

– but the highlight of the day was a weaving workshop where we saw people making cloth from lotus stems. They made an incision around the stem and then snapped and pulled apart so that the sticky sap was extruded. This was laid and rolled on a table and multiple repetitions yielded a coarse fibre which could then be spun.

They used this to make scarves or for pattern details in items made of silk.

There were about 70 people employed making fabric using hand-operated looms, weaving lotus thread, silk and cotton.  The complexity of some of the patterns – and hence the skill of the weavers – was astonishing.

Later in the afternoon the boat dropped us off at our new hotel – the only way to reach it. Rooms were individual cottages on stilts linked by a network of walkways.

This is Reception........

and this is the view from our balcony just before dawn......

Pam’s Seventh Day Adventist preacher on the bus to Yangon asked where our trip would take us and when we mentioned Inle Lake he explained to us how entire villages there are entirely offshore and so there is no land for burial. So people are buried as at sea – simply consigned to the water. He told us - with a grin – that they have a saying there, that “the people eat the fish from the lake and, eventually, the fish eat the people………”

We were not sure whether he was winding us up, but in any event we didn’t eat any lake fish while we were there……………………………

The next day we decided to do absolutely nothing – we just pottered about the hotel, enjoying being in the lake, watching the boat traffic go by from various points and had a long leisurely lunch at the open air restaurant.