We continued darting around the lake, stopped by a cheroot factory, cheroot being enormous homegrown cigars, and bought some as souvenirs. We also bought some bronze cowbells that I really liked, but unfortunately we lost most of them on our move to Sydney. But it's fitting that on this stange and fascinating trip to Burma, we end the blog on the third and final oddity of Inle Lake. We visited an ugly, new Chinese looking temple boringly located on land, so far so bad. But the monks there have for absolutely no reason decided to train cats to jump through hoops. This has absolutely no religious significance whatsoever, and the monks appear to have done this purely out of boredom. But visiting a monastery in a remote part of Burma to watch cats jumping through hoops is a highly recommended way to end a trip.

We stopped for lunch at Ann's Restaurant, a big floating restaurant that has a monopoly on the small tourist trade. It's got a great outdoor space with killer views, very friendly service, decent food, and it floats. (Food:8, Decor: 12, Service: 12)

I guess this doesn't qualify as a third weird thing about the lake rather than a subset of the previous oddity, but they also farm on the lake. As you can see, they again put stakes in the lake, and cover the top with straw and soil, then grow all sorts of vegetables on these floating gardens. I guess here I can see an advantage, in that the crops would be easily watered, but again, it's a lot of additional work over the usual land based agriculture.

The second strange thing about the lake (the first being that people row with their feet) is that most people live on the lake rather than the lake shore. There are a half dozen villages, built entirely on stilts in the lake. The lake shore, meanwhile, is basically empty, so again I'm not entirely clear on the advantages of sticking thousands of logs into the lake floor and building on top of them rather than the nearby ground like the rest of the world does. Pictured here are a couple of villages built around liquid main streets, and some temples.

Our first stop was the local market, which was quite a sight. It's the biggest market for miles around, and since it's surrounded by hill tribes and other minorities, there's quite a variety in the people coming to market. There were dozens of tribes there, each wearing their distinctive clothing. The guide explained who was who based on their costume, but unfortunately I've forgotten the details.

Somchai's friend worked at the hotel as the bartender and masseur. He became Somchai's friend while we were there, notwithstanding the language barrier.

One way in which the lake culture is unique is the fishermen who row with their feet rather than arms. It seems impossible, but they somehow balance at the very tip of the boat, hold a big oar in one hand and push it around with the foot that's not balancing on the boat. It seems much harder, slower and more dangerous than traditional rowing. I guess they can see better up there while they're looking for fish, but overall it doesn't seem like a very good method.

We started the day with a good breakfast, including the best bread in Burma, which I assume was the influence of the French hotel manager.



Inle Lake is an enormous lake, spectacularly sited and surrounded by mountains. We spent the day darting around the lake with our enormous transvestite guide in that little boat in the picture. The lake was covered in mist in the morning, but was crystal clear by mid-morning. It was really cold and jetting around in a boat getting splashed by the ice cold water didn't help, but it was a really interesting day.



The lake is situated in a very remote, mountainous part of Burma, occupied by minorities usually at war with the Burmese. The two main groups are the Shan and the Wa, both of whom were major opium growers who used the money to wage near constant civil war. The Shan are closely related to the Thais, and the border is quite fluid. As a result of all this, this area was a no-go zone for decades, but recently the Shan made peace with the central authorities, opening up the area around the lake for tourism. The Wa are still fighting and growing opium, so the periodic flareups sometimes close the whole area, but it was completely calm while we were there. While the lake is completely surrounded by the Shan, the people living on the lake are actually a totally separate group, the Intha.






The sheer beauty of the lake was enough to make it an interesting trip, and the fact that it was very much off the tourist track an added bonus. But the lake culture is so unique as you'll see that it made for a really fascinating time.

Lake View Hotel is, as the name implies, on Inle Lake, although view is a stretch. It's a very nice hotel, run by an enterprising French expat with a distinctly Alpine feel. It's organized as a series of villas, decorated in a sort of Zen Asian style, with quite large rooms. It also seemed like most of the staff were gay, which was a bonus. The villas and main lodge were surrounded by huge gardens. The only problem was the location, which had lake views but was set back pretty far so the lake seemed a bit distant. Since it was raining pretty heavily we didn't do much for the rest of our very long day, just had a decent Shan style dinner (the part of Burma we were in is the Shan state) and went to bed. Lake View Hotel: 6 (Rooms: 6, Facilities: 6, Service: 7).

98. Inle Lake

You would think that checking out of our floating hotel, spending several hours on the river and climbing up a world record pile of bricks would be enough for one day, but you'd be wrong. We then drove to the Mandalay airport, arrived about an hour before our flight but the place was deserted, I mean lights off deserted. We managed to wake up a couple of people to process us, then waited as tourists trickled in.



We were headed to Inle Lake, in the Shan State, northeastern Burma. In our last world record, we landed at Heho airport, the world's smallest, which is hard to believe because it was quite busy. It's a completely dysfunctional airport, located high in the mountains, and usually fogged in, but it has no navigation equipment so flights are canceled more often than not. If your flight does manage to land (ours did) the airport is on an army basis, and no cars, taxis etc are allowed anywhere near the terminal. So you have to trudge about a mile down a dirt road with your bags to find transportation.



Luggage was dumped in a huge pile on the floor, but a very helpful airport person somehow organized it all, found our luggage and walked us over to meet our guide. Actually he introduced us to a big pool of goodlooking guides, who parted to make way for our guide, a gigantic (in height and weight) transvestite. It was actually hard to tell if he's a transvestite since it's pretty common for men to wear skirts, but he had very long, painted nails, lots of eye makeup and a fan that he used all the time a la Karl Lagerfeld notwithstanding that it's really cold.



His plan was to drive us three hours to Pindaya caves, then explore the caves, then another three hours to the hotel, which would have made about twenty hours of sightseeing that day. To his dismay, we opted for the one hour trip to the hotel instead. (In case you have trouble figuring out the photos, the big skirtwearer on the dock is the guide, and the house below is the hotel.)

There are a couple of smaller temples near the giant brick pile. We visited the Hsinbyume Temple, built slightly later than the Mingun temple but actually completed. Because we had exhausted the sightseeing opportunities in Mingun and had to face another two hour boat ride when we finished, we decided to clamber up this temple as well. There's a little cave at top with a shrine where you can make offerings, or do what we did and take pictures of the brick pile.

We then walked down the little dirt road around which a little village still ekes out a living on farming and selling things to the occassional tourist. Surprisingly there's also a retirement home here, so I reserved a couple of beds for mom and dad. Another surprise for little Mingun is that it has not one, but two world records. In addition to the biggest pile of bricks, it also has the world's largest bell. It was made for the temple, but since that was abandoned, it just hangs here pointlessly at the end of the village. But certainly that's a trivia question that very few people would answer correctly. (Just in case you're ever on Jeopardy and the question does get asked, I should clarify that the world's largest bell was actually in Yangon, at the Shwedagon Pagoda, but the Portuguese took it during a raid. It was so big it sank the ship, so the bell sits at the bottom of the river. So the Mingun bell is only the largest unsubmerged bell.)

We hiked up the ruins, which are still sort of wobbly, and have no guardrails of any sort. The stairs also stop after the first third of the trip, and then you're just sort of looking for places to put your hands and feet. Once you're on top, of course, the views are spectacular, the winding Irawaddy and the remaining abandoned temples of Mingun.

The city's main claim to fame is a gigantic temple that began construction in 1790. It was meant to be the world largest stupa, at 150 metres, built of solid brick then gilded over with gold. This would have been about the same size as a fifty story building. Work was stopped about thirty years later when the king died, which still makes it the largest brick structure in the world. An earthquake in 1838 atmospherically cracked the pile, and it's been slowly swallowed by the encroaching jungle ever since. That globular thing was supposed to be an elephant, one of a pair that was meant to great the royal barge when the king came to inspect his folly.

Mingun is another ancient city that has essentially disappeared, leaving just some world-record relics as a reminder of better times. It's only reachable by boat, about a two hour trip up the river. The river trip is pretty much like it was on the Road to Mandalay, but since you're only a few inches above the water, and sometimes covered in water, it's a lot more exciting. At the end of the trip, you come to a very laidbacklanding, where some kids tug your boat ashore.

97. Mingun

The trip officially ended on New Year's Day, but we decided to hang around in Burma for a few more days. We got up very early in the morning and headed to the riverfront port, which looks like a cross between Mad Max and Waterworld. We climbed aboard a barely seaworthy vessel and began our couple hour boat trip upriver to Mingun, yet another abandoned capital.

We all boarded small boats to watch the sun set over the lake, which as you can see creates a really beautiful sillhouette of the bridge and the monks walking their bikes across it. Weirdly, I was reading a fictional book about life in colonial Burma called the Glass Palace, and the cover of the book was exactly this picture, I think with the same monks in the same position.



We then returned to the boat for our New Years Eve celebration, which included an elephant dance, fireworks and lots of drinking.