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Published: December 29th 2008
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(Day 265 on the road)I arrived in Inle Lake, famous for its people living on and close to the water, on a gruesome 16 hour overnight journey from Bago. The roads were awful, as was the state of the bus and the temperature inside (close to freezing, especially since they left the main door open at all times for some strange reason). We arrived here at the ungodly hour of four in the morning, but luckily we quickly found a nice bungalow by the canal in the town of Nyaungshwe (of where we moved out later however due to the incredible noise by the motorboats plying the waterway).
Electricity in the town (like everywhere in Myanmar so far, including Yangon) is patchy to say the least and more often than not not available except for a few hours in the evening, and even then it frequently cuts off for an hour or so. Everybody has their own generators, but even so walking the streets at night makes for an interesting experience, as the whole town is generally pitch black save for a few houses that have light from their generators. Internet (again as everywhere in the country) is frustratingly slow
with many sites not accessible at all, and especially uploading pictures takes forever.
After a day walking the streets of Nyaungshwe, the next day we were off on a boat tour of the lake, the main reason for coming here. We had teamed up with an elderly Belgium lady, a funny dutch guy and two young Australians, and had a great day on the water. Apart from the Buddhist temples, the most astonishing thing is to see the people living on or very close to the lake's edge, apparently as they have been for decades. They live on stilt houses built on the water, everything is connected by small canals, and boats are the only possible method of transport to go anywhere if you want to leave your house. The richer residents have motorboats, but the vast majority of the people are rowing their way around. Walking around one of the temples we had stopped at, I got stung by a bee on the head, which was far from being a pleasant experience.
The next day, it was time to celebrate Christmas. Christmas is not a big thing in a Buddhist stronghold country like Myanmar, and despite trying,
we didn't really get the spirit going. However, Silke and I went out for a very nice dinner with the two Australians we had done the boat trip with, and had a nice enough evening. And then, in the middle of our dinner some Burmese from the Christian mission in town walked into the restaurants and sang a mixture of international and Burmese Christmas songs, accompanied by a guitar, which was great. They even wore scarfs, hats and some even gloves, despite the tropic temperatures here in Myanmar at this time of the year - funny!
Apart from that, Christmas was pretty much like any other day for me (breakfast, doing some laundry, relaxing a bit, walking around, looking at a temple, tasting local food, and so on). Particularly memorable about this day was my visit to the local doctor. Well, not really a doctor, but the local pharmacist who seemed to double as the town's doctor. I had had a persistent headache for the past three days and Myanmar is a high-risk Malaria country. The "doctor" had no medical means at all to test for Malaria, but ensured me that there was no Malaria mosquitoes around Inle Lake, which was only partially reassuring. However, the headache went away the next day and I had not developed a fever, so I am guessing it was just the aftermath of the countless night buses and trains I have been taking over the last few weeks. I feel like I really need to slow down a bit more.
Next stop: Mandalay (Central Myanmar).
To view my photos, have a look at
pictures.beiske.com. And to read the full account of my journey, have a look at the complete
book about my trip at Amazon (and most other online book shops).
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