Life on the Inle Lake

Beautiful and expensive scarves made from woven lotus fibres

A wondrous day at Inle Lake.....

“One of the best travel days I've ever had!” was the comment as we glided into the jetty at Viewpoint Lodge in the pitch black of the night.

We had spent the day touring around Inle Lake in 35-foot narrow curved long boats powered by a small engine perched on the back. We sat like queens on padded wooden chairs with the added luxuries of a bottle of water, a life jacket and an umbrella: 4 of us to a boat. They are a beautiful sleek shape and the prow lifted out of the water when our boatman increased our speed.

 

The boats appeared on the river right next to the Hotel in the early morning, so we only had to walk a few steps and climb aboard.



As we headed out of Nyaung Swe at 8.30am (how nice not to be up at the crack of dawn!) we passed lots of longboats loaded with tomatoes, other produce and people. As the canal opened up we realised the lake was immense. For the rest of that day and evening we sped along in our 5 longboats stopping to alight at wooden and wonky jetties to visit some of the businesses along the lake's edge. We became very adept at elegantly grabbing a post on a wooden jetty and dragging ourselves out of the boat – one person at a time of course, so they didn't capsize.

All of these cottage industries and businesses took place in villages on the lake with the houses perched high above the water on long poles: some of them compounds joined by wooden walkways.

These included:

• 

  Boatmen demonstrating the unique way that the Burmese propel their small boats: standing with one leg wrapped around the paddle. Looked very precarious to us! They also demonstrated some traditional ways of fishing which we saw in practice around the lake: a large conical net and wood structure placed on the bottom of the lake when they could see bubbles on the surface indicating a fish, a craypot shaped bamboo structure , and long fishing nets thrown from the back of the boat.
    
• A cheroot cottage industry with young teenage girls producing vast amounts of these local green cigarettes/cigars at a rapid rate (up to 1000 per day)

• A boat building business where some of the longboats were being constructed from teak and being waterproofed with a mixture of black lacquer, sawdust and sand. Great craftsmanship.

• A blacksmith business which produced all of the local knives and scissors, and the rakes for the farmers to extract weed from the lake.





When the weavers become too old to operate the complex looms
 they are given other simpler tasks



 

A large silk industry that specialises in weaving not only silk but lotus root which grows locally. The lotus fibres are extracted from the long roots and rolled into thread which the women working on the looms wove into all sorts of garments. At $100 for a scarf it is more expensive than silk but is considered very special and had a beautiful texture.

Rooms full of looms exist above the water and are linked by wooden walkways

 

Silk dyes ( some imported from Germany!)

Huge tomato plantations floating on beds made of reeds, weeds and river mud. After 10 years of loading the beds with kelp/weed from the lake for fertiliser, the beds almost touch the bottom of the lake and they have to be pulled apart and new ones built. Tiny narrow canals are created between each row for easy access by boat. A very impressive 70% of all of Myanmar's tomatoes are grown in the Lake!

 

 

 

 

With great anticipation we wandered around the silversmiths and watched the talented workers make fine chains from tiny links, and beat silver to make stunning figured bowls. Quite a few purchases were made including some local gemstones and rubies.

 

We lunched at a place called Burmese Cat House: not my idea of heaven as it had a huge number of Burmese cats in a large cat house. Some of the cat lovers were most impressed and Ursula was first in to give one of the cats a cuddle. They seemed to be living a more comfortable life than many of the boatmen we saw.

A boatment loading his boat with reeds to use as fertiliser on the tomato crops

• At the request of one of the aforesaid cat lovers we headed to the Jumping Cats Monastery which appears to be in every tourist book (and was not the choice of Omnahr our guide!) When we arrived we discovered that the cats no longer perform, as the current senior monk has decided that the values and precepts of Buddhism were being overlooked by the hordes of tourists descending on the Monastery to see the cats. I can't say I was too upset to miss out on seeing cats jumping through hoops!
• The great thing was that the Monastery specialises in antique Buddhas (not another Buddha I can hear you say! As some of us did initially!) But these were really lovely old Buddhas and very different to others we had seen. I was very taken with one that was green and wore a crown like a king.

• Finally we visited Inlay Shwe Inn Twain, the place of 1000 pagodas, which sounded rather daunting but was truly wonderful. The local Pa-O people had allowed the pagodas to deteriorate when they wanted to deter foreigners from visiting, and by the time they changed their minds the pagodas were derelict and lost in the jungle undergrowth. Now many of them have been restored, but the old ones look beautiful with their intricate stucco work, exposed bricks and leaning stupas. There were 400 pillars along a covered walkway leading to the pagoda at the top and it was filled with stalls selling antiquities ( or were they really?!) mother of pearl spoons, lacquer boxes, tatting, and so on... A few of us got rather engrossed in purchasing some treasures and completely lost track of the time. So by the time Omnahr ushered us onto the boat it was starting to get dark.

 

One of the best aspects of the day was being able to be in the floating villages and to see the lives that people lead and the hard work they need to do in order to survive. Experiencing the compounds and houses, their everyday kitchens, their garden pots, their washing hanging out to dry above the water, children being bathed, and most of all the friendliness of the people we met, really made the day.

As we sped back to the town in the spray of the boats the air was cool, the sun was setting over the misty mountains surrounding the lake, and the moon was rising: a very magical time of day.

By the time we set foot on terra firma, carefully lit by Lizzie holding a torch, we were all tired but exhilarated about what we had seen in one day.

Our last full day in Myanmar!

Your fascinated correspondent

Dianne