Inle Lake

Inle lake was beautiful, and lovely and cool.

A nice meal… in a Thai restaurant… my Mum captured eating a curry… who would have thought????

We enjoyed the markets. Crunchy fried beans and pans of curry and pudding.

 

Selling vegetables, beetle leaves and bean sprouts. Beetle leaves are used to wrap the beetle nuts which taxi drivers in particular love to chew… the nuts turn their teeth red and rotten and splatter the pavements and sides of their taxis with red splotches when they spit the beetle out. Nice.

  

… and what most people don’t know is that following the success of his 2012 visit, Obama set up a little trinket shop in a market in Shan State, Myanmar. Amazing. I bought the 2 mini owls to hang on our mini Christmas tree… close by to Obama’s shop there was a fast trade in gold…

 

We went out on the lake one day and saw Inle fishermen fishing in the traditional style… the lake is very shallow, so they have developed a clever punting type maneuver, moving the oar with their legs, they then put the net down on top of fish and stab them with a spear. I suspect nowadays this is only acted out for the benefit of tourists and their cameras. 

  

Silk weaving on the lake.

  

Lunch with the very friendly Burmese cats. Reintroduced to Myanmar by a breeding pair from Harrods. Random.

 

An amazing temple in Indein village.

  

We visited both of Myanmar’s vineyards. They were in beautiful locations. Although I thought the wine tasted fine, other members of the party with more refined pallets assured me that it wasn’t really that good!

 

The parents were last spotted ringing a bell in a temple in a town called Taungyi.

Thanks so much for visiting and see you again!