The early morning sky above our hotel was colourful with thirty or so hot air balloons moving slowly above our breakfast area. Some balloons were very high but others were sufficiently low that we were able to call out to the passengers and hear their excited comments.
We then had a thirty minute flight from Bagan to Heho Airport in an Air KBZ plane type ATR 72-600. On arrival at Heho we gathered bags and boarded a bus and headed for Inle Lake with a thirty minute stop at the local Heho market.
This was a wonderful opportunity to see the locals and their incredible range of produce. The market covered an area of at least one hectare and the range of fruit, vegetables and meat was certainly greater than we’d seen in the Bagan market yesterday. There was clothing for sale together with farm equipment such as hand tools, sickles, hammers and machetes. One particular merchant had three boxes filled with dozens of fluffy ducklings. There was an interesting array of souvenirs and we bought a decorative silver smoking pipe. The market gave us the chance to get several impromptu portrait photos of some locals wearing their distinctive hats especially the orange wrap around turbans. Tobacco is popular amongst the local and many smoke cigars with cheroots being favoured by older women.
We stopped for a relatively brief perusal of the teak monastery at Shwe Yan Pyay and its adjacent temple. There was a great deal of glass ceramic work decorating the monastery walls and in the temple there were numerous small Buddhas set into recesses in the walls with each Buddha having a donor’s name indicated beneath.
Shwe Yan Pyay Temple
A short bus trip from the pagoda had us arriving at Nyaung Shwe where we together with our luggage were loaded into three long boats for transport out onto Inle Lake.
The boats are wooden and about ten metres long and less than a metre wide. They are powered by a diesel inboard motor with a whipper-snipper rear extension having the propeller and rudder combined. They travel at around 20 knots and are remarkably stable even when crossing the wake of another vessel.
Our first sight on the lake was of many traditional stilt houses built out into the shallow water. The glassy waters of the lake support a population of between seventy and eighty thousand most of whom are members of an ethnic minority group called the Intha. These stilt houses are designed to cope with the significant fluctuations in the lake’s level and are adapted to cope with the climate and ecosystem of the lake.
We encountered several of the Inle Lake fishermen who stand on a long-tailed boat in the distinctive leg-rowing position used by the Intha people. These fishermen use tall conical nets to trap fish in the lake’s shallow waters.
At this point we had a torrential downpour, the first rain we’d had since being in Myanmar. This sudden change in the weather meant activities were curtailed so we stopped for lunch in a local stilt café and by the time we’d finished the sun was out again and the atmosphere warm and steamy.
The remainder of the day was spent travelling in our longboats to various tourist destinations. These included lotus thread and silk weaving, cheroot making and a short visit to a traditional blacksmith’s shop where knives and other cutting tools were manufactured. The ten female cheroot makers used large, dried leaves from a local tree to wrap up a chopped mixture of tobacco and other aromatic substances such as herbs like anise. According to the experts the final product was of a poor standard but cheap!
The silk and lotus thread weaving occurred on ancient looms with their operation being simply to show tourists how it may have been performed in traditional times. The output of these few elderly workers would have been minimal and yet their adjacent shop was chop-a-block with scarves and similar items. We surmised that most of these retail silk and lotus products were probably manufactured on industrial looms in China.
Lotus thread spinning
As the daylight was fading we headed for our hotel, the Inle Lake View Resort which is very comfortable and right on the lake’s edge. We had a nice meal of tapas and some drinks before heading for bed. This has been a day of much activity with some very interesting people and sights to take in.
Tomorrow, weather permitting we are to do a 05:00 start hot-air balloon ride.