Inle Lake Rower

Inle Lake

 

 

 I was glad I visited the Golden Rock temple and happily I set off for my ride back to Bago (K2500) the next morning. This was the start of a backbreaking 16 hours bus journey to Inle Lake via Bago. I paid and another 500 Kyats to upgrade my seat to sit next to the bus captain. Was it worth the ‘upgrade’? Well my 1.78cm body frame could use whatever extra space I could pay for. Again, this was not a tourist bus but a local bus. Ninety percent of the passengers were local. At times, you might have goats as company too.

Did I mention that the driver like to sound the horns ery often? Finally after about 18 hours of bus journey (multiple unscheduled tea/pee breaks, dinner break in between), I reached Shwenyaung at 4 am. With four
other fellow independent travellers, we shared a minivan to take the five of us to Nyaung Shwe.

I spent the next day exploring Inle Lake on a motorized canoe. Here is the place where you will see the famous leg rowers. It is a distinctive rowing style which involves standing at the stern on one leg and wrapping the other leg around the oar. The calm waters of Inle Lake coupled with the blue sky and green vegetation, made it a beautiful sight just to sit down and admire. We visited pagodas, an umbrella making factory, a silverware factory,weaving factory and other industries that the villages depended on for a livelihood. Of course, no visit was complete without going to the Jumping Cat Monastery where the monks trained cats to jump through
loops. Not really useful skills to have but the monks and the cats were quite entertaining.

Pick Me Ups at Kalaw
The staff at the guesthouse arranged for a taxi driver to bring me to Shwenyaung where I would then take a pickup to Kalaw. I was enjoying talking to this young taxi driver who was taking a correspondence degree course when I noticed that both the odometer and speedometer of his taxi were not working. I decided later to let him focus on his driving instead. When we reached Shwenyaung, he quickly found me a Mektila-bound pickup that would pass by Kalaw.

Monk at Kalaw

Kalaw is 1,320 metres high and reminded me of the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. Even the British colonial houses looked similar. The weather was cooling as I walked into Myoma Kyuang, which is a monastery. A 10 year old monk led me into the halls where he was staying. These kids were fun to be with. They were curious about the digital SLR camera that I had and would crowd around me looking at the photographs I took of them. No package tours could give you experiences like this. If you interested to rough it out, you could sign
up for a day trek or simply relax in Kalaw. When I was there, there was a fun fair where many “gambling”
stalls were doing business. It was basically a dice game played by releasing three giant dices onto a board and
one could bet on the sum of the three dices. The stalls were well-patronised including monks! Guess gambling is enjoyed by all people.

Related posts:

1. Myanmar Monk
2. Experience of a Lifetime – Myanmar – Part 1
3. Experience of a Lifetime – Myanmar – Part 3
4. Remembering the people of Myanmar