Inle Lake

In the morning we flew from Mandalay to Heho. Te picked us up at the airport. From the airport we went directly to a local market. It was fascinating. It was by far the biggest market we had seen. It was a traveling market (moving between towns around the lake) and served  a number of different ethnic communities that lived around the lake.

It had everything the local people needed to live - clothing, vegetables, live fish, chicken, live ducklings, and sour ants, which were crunchy to eat. Te had grown up in the area and was very knowledgeable about all items at the market. As we got to know Te we realized that he  of all our guides most reminded Kat and I of our Sunny Cove staff. He was independent,  knowledgeable, spontaneous and fun.  

From the market we headed to 81 Central to check in. We had a comfortable room with a view of the monastery and pagoda. 

After a short break we headed down to one of the Nyaungshwe docks and our boat for the day. The 30 foot long, 4 foot wide teak boats are built at one of the villages on the lake. They reminded me of the Amazon basin dug out canoes in appearance. The teak for the boats are soaked for a year then cut into narrow planks with a distinctive shape. The fisherman have a mastered an unusual paddle technique using one foot to control the oar while leaving hands free to handle the big conical nets. 

We had a tasty lunch at one of the floating villages before then visited a silk weaving factory. Each of the villages specializes in an activity, fishing, farming, silk weaving, boat building, blacksmith etc. 

Humans are adaptive. Here there were whole villages living on the water. They even farm on the water using a mat layer of water hyacinth and mud they are able to grow their vegetables. We saw boatloads of tomatoes headed to market. 

Inle Lake was fascinating and this was just our first day.