INLE LAKE (Nyaungshwe) - 1st Jan. 2015 to 6th Jan. 2015

To get to Inle Lake, we took a night bus to Nyaungshwe (located 5 km from Inle Lake). The bus left us 6 km outside the town, as we have been seen the days we spent in this country, this is a habit in Myanmar.  You never arrive to your destination. Therefore, as a tourist, you often have no choice but to take a taxi, as they make very difficult to catch public transport. For this reason, you pay almost the same price for the bus as for the taxi ride.

Another annoying thing of night buses in Myanmar, is that you get the final destination in the middle of the night. Usually around 4 in the morning.

You have not left the bus yet and you are half asleep when taxi drivers jump on you. Certainly, it is not a very pleasant awakening. If at least they had given a distance of half a meter to take your belonings and 5 minutes to think about what you want to do quietly, it would have been much better.

Asleep as we were, this time we were decived. We knew, we had pick-up vans from where we left the bus to the village for about 50 cents. But they told us that the first one comes at 8 am, and we believed it. So in the end, we decided to take the "private" pick-up for $ 5 to bring us to our hotel. Once inside, it was filled with other people who was waiting at the van stop for 50 cents. Thanks to us, this trip was more than paid.

We also had to pay the "tourist tax" of $10 per person for the right to access the town. Extrapolating this to Europe, it is like you where required to pay 50 Euro, just to enter to Barcelona.

One of the few things that can be done here for a cheaper price, is to rent a bike and explore its surroundings.

We also take this opportunity to show you one of the many motorbike "troughs" scattered along all the roads and paths of the country.

In any case, the obligatory tour is the tour boat on the lake. The circuit is almost the same everywhere, but prices vary considerably (between 15 and 30 dollars for the same route, including the visit to Indein). In the end, we ended up paying $20, but to reduce costs, we decided to look for more people and share the boat. So, it was for $4 per person.

We were very pleasantly surprised on our tour boat. The price / quality ratio was quite good, and considering the widespread custom of this country of inflating prices for tourists, we were happy with that.

We took the boat at 8:00 am and we came back after sunset. Visits to craft workshops, which explains the processes of their products, was included. As they sell you their products, we were a little bit afraid, because we still had in mind the tailoring history in Bangkok. But it was not like in Bangkok and visits were extremely pleasant and interesting.

In the following video, you can see how thread is produced from fibers of the lotus stems flowers. For their hard work, this thread is still more expensive than silk.

In another workshop, "giraffe women" from the Padaung tribe were "exposed" as they did their fabrics manually.

Just where the river flows into Lake Inle, you can see the first fishermen, who are very characteristic of this area. They have the ability to paddle with the help of a leg and sustained by the other one. This fishermen are only here because of the pictures and not to distourb the ones who are really fishing. You see them a bit further.

In some parts of the lake, small boats come up to you to sell their products.

We made some stops in some temples, such as Hpaung Daw U Pagoda, located on an island surrounded by canals.

Inside Hpaung Daw U Pagoda, there are five Buddha images covered with gold (or that's what we were told... but we only see some golden stones). Anyone who wants to buy a gold foil and stick it to the figures can do it. Well not everyone, only men are allowed to go up with the Buddha figures, women are supposedly too impure to do this.

Also we recomend you the visit to the Indein Shwe Pagoda, which is accessed by boat up the river, and then walk uphill for about 20 minutes. Once there, you will find a lot of stupas surrounding the temple. You feel almost like beeing in the middle of a stupa forest. For some reason, everyone who offers the boat tour  have both routes, one with Indein and the other one without. The price difference is just between 2 and 5 dollars less and we think you souldn't skip it.

In our third day on Inle Lake, it was the turn to our first food poisoning. So, we had to wait a couple of days there. Luckily, we had in Nyaungshwe the best accommodation we ever had in Myanmar.