Lake Inle and the Tomato farm..

Lake Inle. Now down for a few days left in this amazing country, not sure what we expected but it keeps throwing up more “wow’s” the more we see. Today we arrived at the small town of Nyaung Shwe, just a short boat journey from Lake Inle which we hope to explore.

There has been virtually no rain here for months leaving the channels to Lake Inle very Shallow, luckily we can get to the lake from the village as the channel has been made deeper. Lake Inle is quite big, about 22miles long and 7 miles across at its widest. We see the famous leg rowers on there fishing punts ( hard to describe so just look at the pictures ) We cross to about halfway to a floating Village and the Jumping cat Monastery. What is very surprising is the man made islands which support a huge tomato growing community. Fascinating to see, quite surreal, Tomato’s growing in a lake is not what we would have expected.

From the Village we venture up lake and down some smaller channels to arrive at Indien, a small Village situated just 1km from the forest Pagodas of Pa-O.
Pa-O is another gem, loads of ruined and renovated pagodas lead up to the Pa-O temple. On the way back to Nyaung Shwe we pass more local backwater villages, in truth this is better than the Kerrala backwaters, much quieter and nowhere as touristy and far more genuine.

The Town of Nyaung Shwe is really just a jumping post to the Lake but it has a few gems of its own, a couple of impressive temples and a great little Italian restaurant called the “Star Flower” serving up awesome home made pasta and Pizza, again not what we would have expected to see in the middle of no where. Tomorrow we go to a place called He Ho, before flying back to Yangon , so you could say “he ho here we go” ! That’s’ about it for our venture into Myanmar.

Apart from a few bits we read in the local papers you would be hard pressed to see why the West has such a negative view of Myanmar, the Myanma’s are very friendly people and they really don’t seem to have much truck with politics, they are much more interested in the Premier league football, that said that’s about their only bad point, most are bloody Cheslski supporter’s .. It did make for an interesting night out in a bar watching Liverpool get humiliated on TV ( yes we were cheering on Liverpool ) the locals thought it was great fun to see us suffer !

Monastery just outside of Nyaung Shwe.

Good old blogger, its stuck my pictures to the left !! Golden Buddha .

Ancient Monastery.

Near Nyaung Shwe.

Another Buddha.

Pagoda and small temple complex Nyaung Shwe

Village, Myanmar.

Temple Pagoda, Nyaung Shwe.

Not sure what style of temple this was or even if it wasn't some administative building, pretty though !

At last back to centre alignment !!

River to Inle Lake. ( Nice Colour eh? )

Inle Back waters, look out here comes a bridge.

Kids playing.

Back water life near Indien.

Main road bridge to Indien.

Indien.

Flower.

Indien Village.

Huts in the Bamboo. Indien.

Walkway to Pa-0 temple.

Pa-O Pagodas.

Pagoda carving Pa-O

Pa-O Pagodas.

Pa-O Pagodas.

New Pagodas Pa-O

Pa-O Pagodas in hats..

Indien Boat Jetty.

More Pagodas.

Tree.

Paungdaw Oo Temple, Lake Inle.

Buddha images Paungdaw Jumping cat Monastery.

Carved melons and Buddhas at Jumping cat.

Jumping cat monastery Inle Lake.

Inle Lake.

Village life on Inle Lake, Myanmar.

Yes, these are tomato's, there are millions of plants all grown on the lake on man made mud islands.. quite bizarre.

Inle Lake Village.

Locals going about their daily life.

Locals on the Inle Lake Bus.

Inle Lake.

Water Bus.

Lake Inle Fisherman.

Lake Inle Fisherman reflections.

One Legged Rowing, The unique rowing style of the Inle Lake fishermen.

More leg rowing action.

This concludes our Myanmar Blogs, what a fascinating place.

Next Blog Chiang Mai Thailand.