Blogs from Inle Lake, Mandalay Region, Burma, Asia - page 6

Day two at Inle lake begins at 6:30 in the morning, too early. I feel like a wreck. In the dining lounge, I demolish several cups of coffee before I remember why we are up so early, today we are taking a tour of the lake. Hiring a boat and driver for the day, and doing the usual tourist route of the lake will set you back around 15,000 kyat, depending on your negotiation skills. The typical tourist trail takes you to places around the lake littered with souvenirs, trinkets and somewhat staged scenes of tribal village life, something for which Liam and I care little. After breakfast we meet the boat driver we hired the previous day. The plan is to travel to the far south end of the lake, twice the distance of the ... read more

Inle Lake... read more

Arriving in Tnuggi at 3:30 am was a surprise after thinking we might arrive at 7am. As if we hadn’t spent enough time on the bus already, we asked the driver if we could nap until daybreak on the bus, which is remarkably better than while it was moving: the blaring music was off and the freezing air conditioning was off as well. From Tnuggi, we had to made our way to Ngau She, where Inle Lake is. After asking numerous people for directions, we found a teacher at school who called over a couple of friends on motor bikes, and they took us to a tuk tuk (pick up truck with benches in it) that was heading our way. Our fatigue showed as Phil nearly got hit by a motor bike crossing the ... read more

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 ... read more

After a long and bumpy busride we finally arrived in Kalaw, a place in higher area in Shanstate famous for treks through hilltribe areas to Inlelake. The air was fresh (!!!) and luckily there was the intesting market where all the locals from the hilltribes offer their products that takes place only every five days. Finally we booked into a tour with two nice couples and a frensh women for two days to hike to Inle Lake. The first evening we met our travelmates and had nice drinks and travel talks. The next morning we started our hike with a taxi ride and after walking through colourful ares, also almost everywhere deforested. We passed hilltribes, got into smalltalk, had some tea and continued walking to the overnight stay in a monastery. A small shop provided us ... read more