From Yangon, we took a short internal flight north to Heho and headed to Inle Lake! First of all, I’d like to do a quick shoutout to the internal flights in Myanmar, which were surprisingly nice. National airlines in less touristy places can be hit or miss (and they’re often a miss), but I was impressed with these ones.
Inle Lake was by far our nicest hotel of the trip. We had these beautiful villas, and we watched the sun set from the pool. Across this whole trip, we spent a lot of time in the pools to escape the heat.
We spent the whole day near Inle Lake exploring it by boat, which is the only way to get around. I’m fascinated by these communities that live on the water like this – I would love to know more about what their day-to-day life looks like. We had a stop here at Inle that focused on the floating gardens, where they grow vegetables, which was an interesting thing to consider. The logistics of getting food and other materials into these communities, the supply of clean water, transporting every single thing by boat… it is a completely different way to build a life. I’ve seen similar communities in a number of places, from a more built-up version like Venice to places like Ganvie in Benin and Brunei, and each time I’m left wondering what it would be like to live like that.
We visited a lot of artisans in and around Inle Lake. It was cool to see the different types of crafts, and there were some incredible handicrafts, although after a while I was tired of being sold things. This was a common theme across Myanmar, and I feel for them, given that there are so few tourists at the moment, but I don’t typically buy a lot of souvenirs. Things that involve plants or natural materials can also be challenging to get through customs in various countries as well.
This guy is a silversmith. You can see the fish he’s working on if you look closely at the bottom of the picture – these were probably the most impressive thing we saw, as they are highly articulated and move beautifully. Of course, they’re very expensive because of the price of silver. I mostly took this photo, though, because I was absolutely baffled to see a photo of Herbert Hoover on the wall. I guess before he became president, he was involved in silver mining in Myanmar with a company called Burma Corporation? I can’t imagine any other reason for this, as nothing in his foreign policy section on Wikipedia really deals with Myanmar or Southeast Asia in any way.
We also visited a temple while we were in Inle Lake. We went to a lot of temples while on this trip; this one was fine. It was a smaller one and worth a quick stop since we had lunch right across from it, but I think it looked more impressive from a distance over the water.
In the late afternoon, the clouds came out and gave us some reprieve from the sun, which was amazing. We went through some of the more dense areas of the communities around Inle Lake and saw the temples and homes and shops where the local people live.
All in all, I loved Inle Lake! The boat ride was so pleasant, and it’s always interesting to see how different communities live across the world. It should absolutely be included on a Myanmar itinerary. And with that, we were off to our next destination: Bagan!