“Give me endless life on water and I’ll give you vast tracts of my time.” -Old Sean
A Cargo Drop in Heho
After spending an unintentional night in the town of Tachiliek, Kat and I managed to get a flight heading toward the famous Inle Lake. Our plane, a terrifying, propeller cargo vehicle, took us noisily high into the sky.
When we finally landed an hour and a half later, we exited the airport to see the small town of Heho. There was absolutely no transportation available aside from an overly friendly taxi driver. Naturally, he gave us a “great deal” to begin visiting Inle Lake at a standard rate of 25,000 Kyat.
In reality, that’s only $15 USD or so. I imagine the accurate rate is much lower since Burma is a fairly poor country. But I’m fortunate enough in life that $15 USD or so is a hit I can take without lasting pain.
And as a balm for my extremely mild distaste, my entire experience while visiting Inle Lake was splendid.
An Intro to Lake-Lands
There is so much beautiful in and around Inle Lake. Visitors can find temples full of monks training cats to jump through hoops. There are ancient wooden monasteries and hostels in the shapes of giant speakers. Clunky bicycles trace the outside of the lake, passing long fields of lowing cattle, great, dry farms where dust devils spin and lines of locals queuing up at shops in the evenings. There are adorable kittens and an endless number of sharp-eared dogs constantly staring at us with the friendliest eyes nature ever did grant.
It’s a very cool area.
The first thing Katherine and I did on arrival was drop our gear off at our hostel, the Song of Travel. The entire building is constructed to look like a speaker system with a rooftop patio.
Meals are served on the landing, which looks out freely in three directions. Travelers visiting Lake Inle are likely often stunned when looking at sunrises and sunsets. The hostel was extremely helpful in letting us rent bikes, which we promptly used for the rest of the day.
Biking the Lake
Our first stop while peddling was the Shwe Yan Pyay Monastery. There are a lot of amazing monasteries around the world, especially in Southeast Asia, but this one wins the prize for storybook visage.
The monastery is made from a deep red teakwood, while the main temple stands on low stilts with oval windows and a low, stone staircase. Dust and sunlight filter in at perfect angles, while floorboards creak and warp below, giving everything a peacefully lonesome ambiance. The ceiling is particularly beautiful and the monks and cats are often found resting or meditating in sunbeams.
Kat and I spent long moments here, brushing from room to room. There were no other tourists nearby.
The Lowlands of the Lake
Kat and I next picked up a few bottles of water and snacks from the northern lake village (Nyaungshwe) but we didn’t linger too long. We stopped to check out a small, open-air market set up amongst a bunch of shattered concrete buildings. Kat spent some time buying a unique sarong in the Burmese style (which was a bit tricky to put on properly).
Later, we would return to spend time in the small town. But for now, we wanted to stretch our legs and see more.
We began peddling south, following the west bank of Inle Lake. This was a long bike ride, but refreshing and pleasant. The roads are wide with cars only occasionally drifting past. Flowers in the dry season are hardy and thin but numerous, caking the lower part of trees. Fields boast the occasional cows and the land slopes gently, with barely any elevation changes along the route at all.
Homes Upon Stilts
Kat and I eventually made it to the halfway point on the west side of the lake. From here, there’s a small community of stilted houses built upon the water. Travelers can make their way to this zone by walking across a series of planks laid on slightly boggy grounds.
The small docking and launching village is important for lazy people such as myself.
Instead of biking around the entire lake, we ended up renting a boat to take us across the center. Our guide laboriously put our bikes into the bottom of his boat and launched us away from the community and into the open water.
The man who drove our bikes across the northern portion of the lake allowed me to “training-wheels-drive” the boat. I managed for a few minutes without capsizing us. He initially waved me over, putting me near the motor and rudder. From there, our boatman did his best to make my sure two decades of no-boat-experience didn’t drown us all. Seeing as I’m around to write this, I’d say he did a fair job.
Snake-Foot Paddle
Along the water route, we met one of the famed snake-foot paddlers. Inle Lake has historically been a fishing village. Back when human motion predated engines, people moved by using an extremely unique technique.
Using narrow, light vessels, a person uses a single paddle from the front to weave with their foot, causing the paddle to churn and tug the boat forward.
Contemporarily, people who keep this technique alive are no longer fishermen. They instead make a fair amount by dressing up in traditional clothes, holding up captured fish and posing for photos.
East Docks
We finally landed on a narrow series of docks choked in leafy water plants and ran into a few other folks from our hostel. This was the first place where we got to see Inle Lake’s true floating houses.
Built on tall stilts and brightly colored, the entirety of houses wobble slightly when locals walk on them, the silt-driven pillars sending out the barest of ripples. Children swim freely beneath the structures, jumping in and out of liquid as easily as I would navigate my driveway.
From here, Kat and I unloaded our bikes and veered back north, huffing along the country roads into slightly hillier country.
Hill Lands
During this route, Kat and I visited several plantations, including a pair which had restaurants attatched. We enjoyed a plantation eatery called the Bamboo Hut restaurant. The open-air dining area had a wonderful view overlooking the near rows of the plantation and great service.
Afterwards, Kat and I ended the day with wine. Though it was a bit of a hike, we had heard of a local, semi-famous winery up a low mountain.
We delved into the countryside finding the Red Mountain Vineyard and Winery. The winery offered expansive sample platters of vintages while visitors could overlook the hazy and distant mountains. It was the first decent wine I’d had in Asia in a long, long time.
I like wine in general and wine in China is somewhat good. But local Chinese wine certainly isn’t the same quality as wine from Europe or the United States.
Day to Visiting Inle Lake
The next morning, Katherine and I woke at an unholy hour for a special tour we had booked. We shuffled quietly out of our hostel and towards a lakeside dock, where the tour guides were waiting for us on long, motorized vessels.
That morning, boats took us out on the lake well before the sun had even begun to lighten the sky. Only a half-moon with dappled light kept us from tripping while boarding.
Our tour guides placed all groups into the boats and eased us out of town into the quiet canals, cautious not to rev engines and disturb snoozing locals.
Out on the open water, our group of four boats was left bobbing in silence. We were given heavy, scratchy blankets to keep ourselves sane in the slight chill.
Our guides passed out tin cups and bowls filled with chai tea, sticky rice and sliced bananas. The food and drinks were passed down the group from hand to hand, narrow boat rocking slightly.
We ate in silence, unwilling to disturb the serene, dark lake. Then, light began to bloom.
When the sun began to rise, it dominated the whole sky, the orange blaze reflecting so strongly it nearly erased distant mountains. Our vessel’s prow turned into a stark silhouette. As the sun rose, lake-faring life bubbled into being. Boats started driving out of villages and life upon the lake began anew.
Onward the Tour
Once we had been treated to a proper sunrise, our guide took us to the actual floating villages. These villages were entirely built over water canals or sections of the lake.
Now, Kat and I were in Burma during the early part of the dry season, which meant the water levels of the lake had dropped somewhat, but all houses were still standing above a fair depth of lake. We were invited inside various home, clambering up wooden ladders to walk on well-worn wood.
In these houses, we were shown the usual tourism display of craft shops, (silver, tobacco etc.) which seemed like a rather bland and obvious money grab.
That being said, we weren’t forced to buy anything. Later on, we were allowed to roll our own small Cheerot cigarettes (which had a really unique, almost-licorice taste).
Local Lunch
The best part of our morning was spent cooking with the locals. We tossed spices on piles of diced veggies sitting in strange, bright sauces. Our tour group was brought along to help dice food and vegetables I had no names for.
At the end of our labors, our small group munched on novelty items, making faces at the alien flavors.
Following our cooking lesson, we boated towards the Five Day Market, Inle Lake’s famous and traditional commerce flotilla.
This market is conducted entirely on floating boats which rotate through different villages surrounding the lake: Nyaung Shwe, Heho, Taunggyi, Minethauk, Shwe Nyaung.
The birth of the market tradition is a bit of ironic history.
Long ago, taxes were collected by the local government around the lake, the Shan Sawbwa, leaders of the Sawbwa state. Instead of going from village to village and house to house (which was enormously time consuming for boats) the taxation officials had villagers gather and await their arrival. They would then collect all taxes at once.
While waiting, local goods were exchanged and tax day began to double as Floating Market Day. Soon, other lake travelers were enfolded into the tradition following the tax collectors from village to village, selling their wares. The Shan Sawbwa and their tax collectors no longer exist, but the Floating Market tradition does.
Forest of Pagodas
As our tour continued, we were given free time to walk around other villages while enjoying some shoreline trails.
However, I learned my favorite thing while visiting Inle Lake is perched on the southernmost portion of the lake. It’s known as the 100 Pagodas, or the Shwe Indein Pagodas.
These are secluded, sublime and fantastic. The Shwe Indein Pagodas are an entire plain covered in endless, diverse pagodas.
The site had everything from towering pagodas, to ancient crumbling creations, to stylized pagodas tucked into obscure corners, to brick structures rendered teeming with life by stubborn trees rooting in their very cores.
Visiting was like a stepping into an archeology-adventure film.
The ruins are quiet without many tourists, allowing people to weave between the crumbling structures in intermittent shade and sharp, sunlight reflections. Dogs roam the area in squads, trotting through the pagoda maze with triangle ears pointing at clumsy humans scrabbling about.
Onward to the Villages
While the pagodas were my absolute favorite thing to visit, a close second would be the numerous villages dotting the lake.
Though I had seen a few villages earlier, it was only by boat I got to truly appreciate the totally unique lifestyle.
Clear water surrounds numerous houses on stilts, the waterways and canals define life for the locals. Boats sputter by carrying people and the occasional canoe is a necessity to visit your neighbor. An entirely water-faring society fringes the edges of this glistening lake.
We finally returned to our hostel to rally ourselves for tomorrow. Burma is going to be a unique trip partially because we’ve packed such a ridiculous number of attractions into such a short amount of time.
Kat and I are already battered, tired, radiant, amazed and exhausted.
The rest of our night was spent recuperating and summoning the necessary dregs of energy needed to wander out the following morning.
Tomorrow, Kat and I began preparing to go to Hsipaw. Hopefully, we’ll find a guide who will take us deep into the countryside and Hsipaw Mountains, trekking through miles of stone and dust. The last lonely mountain societies of Eastern Burma.
I’m sleepy now, while also in a general state of hopeful splendidness,
Best regards and excellent trails,
Old Sean
Written February 18th 2018
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Skog Å Kust DrySåk
When visiting Inle Lake, travelers must traverse a vast, diverse and compelling land intertwined with life on the water. I highly recommend the Skog Å Kust DrySåk day-bag for this area. Totally waterproof with a roll-down top to prevent theft, this is an excellent tool for any traveler.
