Residents of Inle should rather focus on lake tours than trying to cook Italian food! :-)

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From Hsipaw we only really had one option of getting into Inle Lake and it was again an overnight bus (16h, 18,000K/22$ pp) so we took it. Somehow the time of journey quoted is always way longer than it actually takes to get to a place and you always find yourself being dropped off somewhere in a middle of a night. We got to Nyaungshwe town around 4 am and had to wait for some transport to town. Public shared taxis (500K each) officially start to work around 7 but we managed to catch one just after 5 am. It was either the waiting time or a private car for a whooping 8000K. Because we arrived so early we managed to escape paying the 5$ government fee for Inle which was an achievement in a way hahha The guesthouse of our choice – Aquarius Inn (they don’t charge in $ so it is more expensive option for 18,000K, recommended by many on the way) was full for the whole time of our stay in Inle so we settled for a really nice guesthouse just opposite of Aquarius called Nawn Kham(15$ with breakfast for a nice room in w a wooden house). We loved it there as it was simple and small with only 6 rooms and nice garden areas to have breakfast in. They also offered pretty cheap daily tours around lake (10,000kyat for both of us) when we heard other people paid between 15-20,000Kyat.

As the weather was cloudy with rain coming from time to time we decided to wait for a day with good weather to go on a tour. We almost managed to achieve that as half day of the tour was perfect and then a massive storm arrived and we had to wait it out in a monastery. It actually gets pretty cold over there when it rains and after so many months in hot weather you don’t expect that at all. The lake amazed us just as we expected. The water is amazingly smooth and silky only disturbed by fishermen or tourist boats. The calmness of this place is surprising only until you realize that the whole lake is surrounded and protected by a massive mountain range and then you understand where it comes from. On a good day you can just sit on a boat and take in stunning water reflection of mountains and people fishing.

This place is full of surprises. We learnt that there is around 150,000 people leaving around the lake, most occupying stilt houses and floating villages or residing in crumbling monasteries. Floating gardens and farms provide the country with fresh vegetables and fruit (Inle is a main producer of tomatoes in Burma) and local women produce silk and lotus flower scarves. We have never seen a lotus flower material and it was just stunning, however so expensive that we could only look at it (it takes 3 months to produce one scarf from lotus flower and it costs 300-600$ per piece). We also came across a cigar factory and we purchased 20 or so pineapple tasting cigars (2$) that we were supposed to send home but somehow we smoked them all within next few days hahah They tasted more like shisha tobacco than cigarettes and they were just delicious – we really regret we had not bought more.

When on tour people really want to see cat jumping monastery so we were very curious what that was about. Basically very bored monk trained a bunch of cats to jump through hoop for some cat food. It is very entertaining and they are just so cute but my question was why these monks are not meditating or whatever they should be doing but providing this kind of shows to tourists. There was a very generous pile of donating money on the floor so that would probably answer the question….

There is a lot to see around and there are many ways of doing it. Cycling is one option and you can get to nearby wineries to do some wine tasking ect. There are some hot springs (but we were told they are not very authentic) and many, many payas to visit. We could not do much as it was raining most of our time in Inle but we walked around town, strolled around market and tried some local food. This place is filled with ‘Italian-wanna-be-restaurants’ and I knew it would not be worth it to try it but nevertheless the boredom of eating rice and curry finally won. I ordered tagliatelle with beef bolognese and received the most expensive (4000Kiat/5$) canned food ever… the meat souse tasted like cat food from a can (I just imagined that is how it tastes of course as I never tried) and pasta was just simply not homemade as per menu. Should have known better… there is a lot of western restaurants around but we just slicked to the local food for the rest of the stay – safer and at least predictable hahha

Additiona Note:

A must try when in Inle is tomato salad. It cannot get fresher than that and it is simply amazing. We had it at the restaurant where the bus stop is when you arrive or depart from Inle so you always have some time to kill there - try it, you won’t regret it!!!

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Photos

rowing with a leg
unique technique of Inle fisherman

us on the boat
on the way to see Inle

Tomek trying betel nut
has quite a strong effect first time round