Inle Lake

 I wasn’t expecting to fly domestically in Burma, but soon enough I found myself soaring in an Air Yangon puddle-jumper from Mandalay to Heho Airport just a short drive from Inle Lake. Inle (sometimes Anglicized as Innlay) is a large freshwater lake in the Shan State south of Mandalay, and one of the most popular destinations in the country. Tourists come to enjoy the brilliant scenery and observe the local customs, such as fisherman rowing skinny canoe-like boats holding the oar with only their leg.

It’s really a feat how they do it. The bottom part of the handle closest to the paddle is pinned against the inside of the heel, while the upper handle is leveraged with the outside thigh. A hand on the head of the oar is used when available and not working the net. I didn’t notice if this technique was ever reversed depending on the direction one is rowing so I couldn’t say. As for the scenery, well I’ve seen quite a lot of that on this trip- from the tops of mountains to the depths of valleys and caves, and everywhere in between- but I may have to award Inle the distinction of being the prettiest. After we got settled in at the resort, hopped in a boat, and took to the lake, seeing the mountains from out in the middle of that water just had a certain mystique to it that was to me without equal.

The first day on the lake we spent just kind of meandering about to various places. We first went for lunch at a stilted restaurant that bred a special type of Burmese cat. They took their cats very seriously, allotting them a large playroom and their own private island out back, connected by a bridge that the cats could use at their leisure. We went to a weaving shop and a silversmith, and eventually saw some of the floating vegetable gardens that are apparently accounting for much of the lost surface area of the lake, and by this time it was pouring down rain so we turned to make the hour-long boat trip back to the resort in the deluge. Just before that, however, I got the chance to see several Badaung women that stay at the lake for tourism purposes. The Badaung, of course, are best known for their custom of wearing gold rings around their necks, 24 in total when they reach maturity. This was kind of a watershed travel moment for me as I can remember being a very young and seeing these women on tv, and thinking to myself how strange and exotic that was. I’ve always kind of held that image in my mind, and so to see the real thing with my own eyes was a thrill.

Inle was also interesting for me because of the houses and business located right in the middle of the lake. At times, you feel like you’re in a sort of primitive Venice- there are chunks of land here and there but most of the buildings are on stilts regardless, and you just pull your boat up to the small dock at the side of each place and disembark. There are a surprising number of restaurants and shops, and I even saw an entire stilted hotel smack dab in the middle of the lake.

Back at the resort, I learned once and for all the important lesson that Burmese chefs have absolutely no concept of the terms rare, medium, and well done as we do in America. Well done is wholly pink but crispy on the outside,  medium is dripping with blood, and I won’t venture to guess what the steak would even look like if you dared to order it rare. I refined my strategy to ordering medium-well, then automatically telling them to send it back for more cooking, thus ending up with the perfect steak. Everything else about the resort though was absolutely perfect; our room even came equipped with binoculars and a local bird watching guide. The views, though, were the best, stretching out across the lake and to the mountains on the other side- by far the most beautiful view I’ve ever woken up to.

The next day we got an early start and headed three hours to Pindaya Cave, which can only be described as a giant cavern high up in a mountain that is stuffed to the gills with golden Buddha statues. Half tourist destination, half Buddhist pilgrimage site, the cave is definitely something to see, and offers spooky legends about tunnels to Bagan and giant spiders. The cave goes fairly deep into the mountain with several cavernous chambers linked together, and the statues, which are all donated by various people and entities, are placed haphazardly everywhere imaginable. Once the novelty of the statues wears off it ceases to amaze, but I was still glad I went.

For the final day in Inle we had a guide take us to a Shan historical site on the lake with Pagodas up to 600 years old (if I remember correctly). The site was flanked by an impossibly long sheltered walkway and a newer main pagoda, and apparently access to outsiders was only recently granted by the Shan people. The pagodas were relatively small, with brickwork similar to that in Bagan, but the design was definitely unique to anything else I had seen. Some had been restored, while others remained in their crumbling, weathered state, which I rather liked. There wasn’t much time to do anything else that day as our flight left in the afternoon. After a lunch of pizza at an improbably located Italian restaurant (complete with a founding story tracing its roots back to a Roman chef’s visit ten years ago), we boated back to the resort and then drove to the airport. On the plane I could tell we were approaching Yangon due to the increasingly gray, overcast clouds, and sure enough we touched down to a typically wet and gloomy Yangon evening.