Travel Day 1161 – Nyaungshwe, Inle Lake and Inthein, MYANMAR
Despite my dislike for the touristic area of Nyangshwe, today I simply had to join one of the popular boat tours to Inle Lake…
Fisherman fishing for Tips at Inle Lake
Initially I had thought that Nyaungshwe was situated right at the lake and that one could simply enjoy the views of the surrounding area without having to join a tour, but unfortunately there was still a 20 minute boat ride to even reach the lake. Not visiting Inle Lake at all, which was considered one of the four main attractions in Myanmar; Yangon, Mandalay and Bagan being the others, seemed also quite a bad solution. This was especially the case because I was so close to the lake already and at least I wanted to know what the fuss was all about…
But instead of hiring my own boat, what every single boat driver in town wanted me to do, I arranged transport through my guesthouse because it gave me the chance to share with other travellers. In the end I shared the boat with two girls and luckily we even shared the opinion of rather seeing the non-touristic sites away all the main hustle and bustle. Our guesthouse host helped with the language barrier and we explained our points of interest to the friendly boat driver who even picked us up from the breakfast table…
Long-neck woman in Souvenir Shop
Then we were finally off to the 116 square kilometer large Inle Lake in our not very stable appearing long-boat. But luckily it all went well and we steamed ahead on the shallow waters to the sound of the rhythmically banging single cylinder diesel engine in the back. Our first stop on the lake was then at a local fisherman, conveniently positioned at the mouth of the river. With his traditional lose pants, shirt and wide straw hat, he represented the iconic image of Inle Lake and he made sure to show off his conically shaped fishing net to every single tourist who was passing by…
Obviously this nicely dressed up and well positioned local actor was fishing for nothing but tips and so after we took some photos, he made sure to paddle over to our boat and claim his daily catch. This basically became the theme for the entire visit of Inle Lake and instead of local culture we were offered local tourist shows. This was obviously not quite to our liking and so after we visited a weaving factory with attached souvenir shop and some long-neck Kayan women positioned in a tourist shop, we reminded our driver to rather show us some local places…
Crumbling Zedi of Shwe Inn Thein Paya
Watching the women work on ancient, wooden handloom weaving machines had at least been interesting, but the zoo-like display of the long-neck women was a bit too much and instead of the cigar factory we rather went to the local produce market. This huge open air market was at least really interesting, not set up for tourists and gave lots of opportunities to observe local life. But for me personally watching the Pa-O women do business in their traditional black clothing and red scarves wrapped around their heads, was the definite highlight…
The second highlight of the trip was then our paid-extra-excursion away from Inle Lake and along a river to a place called Inthein. Not many tourists seemed to make it that far and it took at least another sweaty 30 minutes to walk up the hill along the many souvenir stalls, but then we finally reached Shwe Inn Thein Paya. While it was claimed that Hsipaw had a Little Bagan area, here on the hilltop of Inthein with its amazingly beautiful complex of hundreds of crumbling zedi, the title would have been much more appropriate. And so for me, seeing all these overgrown and weather-beaten stupas of Shwe Inn Thein Paya made the whole Inle Lake visit and boat tour well worth it after all…
Find all Inle Lake photos and all Inthein photos here.
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