We met someone at the airport at Heho (town above the lake) who said Inle Lake was the highlight of his trip to SE Asia.  And incidentally while we were in Inle Lake we met 3 different people who not only knew Durango but one Italian who had owned a restaurant in Aspen, a young traveller who had lived in Telluride, and English ladies who had skied at Purgatory.  Living in Trang, southern Thailand, we really don’t see many Westerners and if we do they are usually just waiting for the next train coming and going from the Andaman coast and the island resorts.  And we understand seeing the throngs of traveling tourists at the Bangkok airports, but we were still further overwhelmed by the number of tourists occupying the village Nyaungshwe at the headwaters of Inle Lake.  We asked a local how many tourists a day come to town and he estimated 100-200, but upon departure we saw no less than 8 airliners on the tarmac, with many more scheduled, so we estimate close to 1,000 or more tourists arriving daily, easily matching the local population.

The military regime of Myanmar opened the gates to tourism and commerce 3 years ago and the country is struggling to keep up with the influx of visitors (can’t imagine what is going to happen to Cuba).  It’s surprising that the country has been able to scale up airlines, hotels and tourist accommodations to this scale.  (Or maybe not surprising, since the airlines and resorts are reportedly owned by the friends of the regime.)  We appreciated the fact that they had basic broadband even though at evenings and mornings the bandwidth was untenable, for example we were never able to book a hotel at Inle Lake because in a half-day of trying the various websites never loaded.

Fortunately the airport taxi driver dropped us off in front of the boat ramp at a new small hotel (13 rooms) with one vacancy.  We soon found that Myanmar was at least two or three times as expensive as Thailand, not just because we were staying in hotels or flying, but almost across the board.  Hard to understand because the day labor wage is $6/day in Myanmar as compared to $10/day in Thailand.

Since we bypassed the Bagan temples, we planned to spend 4 days in Inle Lake.  Our 2 main highlights were an all-day boat ride on the lake and a bicycle ride along the lake.  Without a doubt the Inle Lake boat ride was worth the entire trip into Myanmar.  The narrow 45′ modified long-tail wooden boats powered by one-lung Chinese diesel motors were the primary and ubiquitous transport over the entire 13X6-km lake for tourists and locals alike.  The adventure starts dock-side negotiating a boat and fare, however thanks to Lonely Planet and consulting other tourists it is easy to know the going rate.  Our lady boat owner insisted on only 4 per boat, and $5/head, an unbelievable value, we realized, once we were half-way thru the trip.

The driver who spoke minimal English went out of his way to point out, slow down, allow for photos, and take us to the places seemed less travelled since there were probably thousands of tourists in hundreds of boats on the 44-square-mile lake.  Right off the bat there are several enterprising men dressed in fisherman costume on their 12′ wooden fishing boats, poised to demonstrate leg rowing which is a wonder I can’t wait to see McKenney or Joe or Al try once I show them the videos.

This blog is too short to cover all the sights: fisherman, floating gardens tended by farmers in boats, villages on stilts over the lake, temples, handicraft workers.  It was a full day, until sunset.  We’ll feature weaving and silversmithing in the next blog.