Inle Lake

Our second of four stops in Burma was Inle Lake, which can be found in the Shan District, Eastern Burma. We arrived around 4 am on a night bus in Nyaungshwe the main town just above the lake and found ourselves wandering the quiet streets for our guesthouse. We found our way to their locked front gate after about half an hour and had to wake the poor guys up! Unluckily the room wasn't ready until about 10 o'clock, which meant we slept outside in the chairs before eating an absolute triumph of a breakfast. Fresh coffee, fruit plates, an amaretto biscuit to rival any other, eggs on toast and pancakes which helped make up the wait for the room!

After the room was finally ours, we left Aquarius Guesthouse, hired a push bike each and hit the road. We ended up at a monastery just outside town, where we grabbed some street food of samosas, a chapati and a couple of local style doughnuts. The doughnuts are made with sweetened sticky rice, deep fried until crispy and golden brown on the outside and then to top it off, covered in sugar. Not the healthiest of snacks, but not half tasty! We enjoyed our feast leaning up against a tree, where we could gaze out across the rice-paddy fields with the surrounding mountains as a backdrop.

We met up with our friends around lunchtime and decided to go on an adventure, attempting to cycle as far around the lake as possible. When we say it was hot, at one point we must have started to melt! The start of the ride was fairly easy going, nice and flat, but the views were still phenomenal. Our plan was to reach the hot springs and use that as our first goal, unluckily we got completely lost! We cycled past a group of about ten monks, asked for directions and then misinterpreted what they said. This ended up with us cycling up a dirt track into a small village, where we had our first casualty of the day. Kerry was attempting to cycle up a small hill with a small ledge on a bike that was stuck on its highest gear. When her legs could no longer propel her up the slope, she fell sideways over the ledge, it was impossible for her to put her legs down. Luckily she wasn't hurt and could laugh it off as it looked like something from a sitcom.

After hours and hours and kilometre after kilometre of cycling in the gruelling heat we finally had to say no more. We rode into a local village on the lake that was beautiful. The houses were on stilts and where intertwined with small canals. The only mode of transport there was by boat and we quickly snapped up the services of a local and his long tail boat. With five people and four bikes, we set off, through the maze of man-made canals, flying past huge floating vegetable plots and shops. In this moment we knew that the trip to Myanmar was worth every penny and would be remembered for the rest of our lives.

The next day we arranged a tour of the lake on another long tail boat, we were told this was a must do and it didn't disappoint. We left fairly early and had an hour or so zipping along the water towards the morning market. This was a real Burmese local market and was packed to brim with everything you could imagine... Souvenirs, jewellery, clothes, suspicious looking medicine and food. We tried samosas and banana doughnuts which were delicious.

After a walk around the maze of stalls we jumped back into our boat and headed to a floating weaving factory. Here they made traditional longyis, scarves and various other garments. The employees here were mainly ageing women who had clearly been working the looms for decades and could work intricate patterns into the cloth without blinking. By this point, four days into our adventure through Myanmar, Lots was itching to get herself a longyi. With the help of the lady in the shop, she chose a green silk, floor length longyi with ties to hold it secure. Locals don't wear longyis with ties, instead they knot the fabric at the front, something which Lots couldn't quite get hold of, so to spare her the embarrassment of a longyi disaster we opted for the easy option.

Happy with our purchase we jumped back into the boat and made our way to the opposite side of the lake to the floating monastery. The monastery looks quite worn from the outside but inside the carvings, buddha statues and paintings depicting the origin of Buddhism made for a beautiful site. The monastery was also home to several newborn kittens owned by the monks which of course occupied all the girls attention. By this time, it was late afternoon and we decided to head back to the town. It had been a fabulous day exploring every nook and cranny of the lake and we are glad we got to share this experience with our friends Kerry and Ronan.

That evening we met our friend Louise who had arrived from Yangon that day. We found a BBQ restaurant where all the raw meat was displayed in a giant refrigerated cabinet. We were each given a small plastic basket and asked to go and pick the meat we wanted cooked. Once we had chosen we put our selection into the basket and handed it to the man behind the BBQ who returned the basket full of cooked meat a little later... A genius idea we think!

Tomorrow we make the 7 hour journey to Bagan by ourselves whilst our friends enjoy a couple of extra days at Inle Lale, slightly jealous but time in Myanmar is not on our side and we need to move swiftly. Bye!