We were told that Inle Lake is the largest lake in Myanmar. It is not a deep lake, with much of the lake averaging about 3 feet at this time of the year (dry season). There are about 200 small communities around the lake, many of which have buildings on stilts over the water.
We spent time on the boats touring some of the craft industries that has grown up in the area.
Our boat was a little more comfortable than this one!
These industries include a surprising amount of textile weaving on hand operated looms and silversmith operations.One of the textile operations even makes thread from the Lotus plant. Because of the intensive labour inivolved, it is apparently about 3 times more expensive than sllk.
We visited the local market in one of the communities. The produce was beatuful!. And what you have to realize is that this is all being grown and harvested in what is essentially a huge hydroponics operation.
And of course, one of the principle activities on most any lake is fishing. The Shan people have a unique approach to the activity as can be seen here.
Our last stop on the lake was to visit the long neck ladies. Their metal neck wear weighs up to 6 kilograms! The picture says more than we possibly can.
Next we were off to Pinalay via the highway (??) to Thailand. The road was reminiscent of the last few miles of the road to the cabin my parents had at Glen Harbour on Last Mountain Lake! The roads around the major cities are great but this one was something from the 50s in Saskatchewan!! We even had a cattle drive that slowed down the bus! How's that for an international route!
Today we visited a cave with more than 8,000 Buddha statures of all siizes. The place was very peaceful and it was an amazing sight to see.
It all started during one of the warring periods, some of the local people hid their statues from the invading opponemt in order to protect them. Now people from all over the world have brought Buddhas to be included in this pace.
Now for a not so quick bus trip and flight back to Yangon before we head off to Sittwe!
So we thought it was a long way to the first monastery in Mon state. Our travel to the temple near Sittwe involved a 1.5 hour flight, a 3.5 hour boat ride and finallly a 1.5 hour bus ride to Mrauk-U.
This was in the Rakhine state, so we needed permission to go to that state, and they took a copy of our passport for good measure.
The surrounding community was not that large, but the temple was quite beautiful for a small community. Somewhat reminiscent for me of the church (cathedral) in Gravelbourg where my folks lived for some time.
Not surprisingly, the cermomy felt much more intimate, as though it was done just for our group, which was 90% or more of the attendance.
Afterwards we reversed our trip of course. It was an interesting journey to say the least. I said to a travel colleague that their roads were like forest trunk roads. He said, no way as the forest trunk roads are much smoother and better maintained! They are doing construction, with their roads using a 4 inch base of crush rock, 6" of concrete with rebar. Once done it will be a great road. It will take some time though, based on the manpower and construction methods! (See below!)
Now we are back in Yangon to do some building on a new pagoda and repair work on a pagoda from one of the previous Dr. Aung trips!
Bye for now,
Paul & Sonya
