I've arrived at the guest house, everyone's asleep,
I'm gonna be quiet, and all rooms are full,
so I can't check in for another couple of hours,
so they gave me a nice blanket, I've put on some warm clothes,
I'm gonna try and get some sleep in the corner here.
It's a good job I had all that training in Nepal about keeping warm,
did you not see our trip to Nepal?
Well, I did a whole trip climbing the mountains in Nepal, you should go and have a look at that, it was great fun.
In the meantime,
good night.
After a cold,
wait,
I'm having breakfast, pancakes, omelette, toast, fruit,
coffee, juice,
and the sun is shining beautifully.
And,
here,
here's my room,
I hope anyway.
Cupboard and a bathroom,
there we go,
it looks lovely,
put the lights off for now.
Hey, how are we doing my little one?
hey.
Hey everybody, how're we doing?
We continue our exploration of Myanmar at,
oops, sorry about that,
having great fun, strawberry lassies,
that's great.
So, what are we up to today?
First, we're gonna have a wander around, and go and see, a Buddha,
at a temple.
Check out some boats, and organise myself a boat,
to go on the lake.
Nyuangshwe,
I think that's how you say it, and this is one of the towns, one of the towns that's closest, to Inle Lake,
so it's a quite a nice place to stay,
there is, not a great deal to do in the town, there's a few restaurants and eateries, a couple of spas,
places, where you could hire a bike.
There's a lot to do in the area, but of course the main reason to come here, is
Inle lake, it's I think, if I'm correct the lake is about twenty two kilometres long, and eleven kilometres wide,
at its widest point,
and has been the source of life in this area for many, many years,
you've got the hills surrounding it, which a lot of the local hill tribes live in,
now they come down, and trade with the people, who live on the lake for goods,
one of the big features of the lake well there's two, I'd say, three, three big features of the lake,
apart from it being very beautiful,
one is the floating villages, there's three floating villages, on the lake.
Then there's the floating gardens, where they grow,
they grow a lot of tomatoes here would you believe, on the lake? they're floating gardens on the lake.
Thirdly, is the fishermen, who have this really strange way of, paddling
so they can have both hands free, while they stand on the boat, and
paddle and fish all at the same time, so there are three very unique things. Now hiring a boat here,
it's,
later on I'll show you some of the boats, but you generally, as you walk around the town, and you look
like a tourist, like I, like I do really.
You get lots of people, "oh you want to go on the lake, you want to go on the boat", a lot of them are,
either, fishermen or boat handlers or they know a boat handler, now ideally you
want to speak directly to the boat people, because a lot of people try and do it on a commission here,
they'll try and negotiate a price with you, and they know how
much they can pay the boatman, so they get a little bit of money out of you, so the best thing is to walk,
down the town centre, to the port authority.
That's where all the boats leave from, and it's a very small town, I'm staying on the edge of town,
and a whole walk through took me, fifteen minutes from end to end, it's a small, small place.
And I just walked down, and I actually found the boatman in the boats, and they all were like,
"oh you want to go to the lake, you want to go to the lake", pick one you like the look of,
pick a friendly one, pick one that isn't too pushy, and then negotiate a price.
Now to give you an idea,
there's, I'd say three types of trip you can do on the lake, the one I'm going to do later this afternoon,
which is nice, the easiest one, it's basically a sunset trip, where you basically, from Nyuangshwe,
Nyuangshwe is not actually on the lake itself, there's very few villages actually on the lake, because of its,
geography and things, so we're actually down the canal, so from Nyuangshwe, you go down
the canal and then into the lake, it's about fifteen minutes down the canal,
before you actually get to the lake.
And all I'm going to do today, is go down into the top hand of the lake,
and see some of the fishermen, who do their fishing,
and watch the sunset before coming back,
so that's a short trip and that should be between eight and twelve thousand kyats, that's Myanmar kyats,
and
it takes about two hours in total, so you got, guy's picking me up at 4:30, we'll go down there,
spend about an hour watching the sunset, then come back, nice and simple.
The second trip is what I'm arranging for tomorrow,
which is to go around the various sites, because obviously the lake, and the mountain's life
revolves around it, water is life and of course all this, abundant food and fish on the lake, also helps.
So, the second type of trip is obviously doing, I wouldn't call it a day trip, I'd call it a 3/4 (three quarter) day trip,
were you start nice and early, and you try and find one of the markets, that is situated around the lake,
now, there's five markets, that rotate round the different villages for each day of the week so,
there's a market here on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday different days the week.
So depending on which day of the week you go, you can go to one of the local markets,
now I'm lucky, I've picked to not go today, but to go tomorrow,
because the market is in one of the, lesser known, not so touristy villages,
it's a much smaller market, but I've picked it because it's, it's not a big touristy market.
And that's quite high up the lake,
so tomorrow I'm going to go to the market, go to the floating village, go to the floating gardens,
go to the monastery,
and then go to,
probably get taken to a silversmith and a weaver,
because they try and sell you things and they get commission.
But,
and that, he's picking me up at 7:30 for that, but we'll probably come back about 3:30 in the afternoon,
so as I said, not a full day.
One, excuse me one minute,
here comes my pizza,
mushroom pizza, yes please,
"tobasco", tobasco,
thank you very much, "thank you".
So, so that's the,
so it's like a 3/4 (three quarter) day shall we say, and it's nice getting up early, because the market only,
really operate from about,
dawn till about eight o'clock, so you need to get there early to see the market,
the rest of the things,
are nice but obviously in the sunny weather as well, the nice light is those first two or three hours in the morning,
more food arriving,
thank you very much.
So,
and that should cost anything between fifteen, and twenty thousand kyats,
depending on your, negotiating skills.
Now if you want to do more, because there's a lot more of the lake, a lot more villages to see there's also,
the place of a thousand pagodas,
and some other, markets that are held almost daily,
that are a lot further down the lake, so again you would start at 7:30 but you probably wouldn't get back till,
about sunset.
Now they, I usually, you pay about twenty thousand to twenty two, thousand for a trip like that,
hey,
hey sweetheart,
oh back to you in a minute, nice little black cat.
Sorry, just had to stop to pet a cat,
so yes, so that's the day trips of boats from the lake, there's those three kinds,
so as I was saying, the the longer one should take you, should cost about,
twenty to twenty-two thousand, kyats,
now,
this is not per person, this is per boat,
now a boat,
seats two very comfortably, three okay, four you can probably squeeze in but quite narrow boat with seats in.
So, you do, now if you've got more than four, then you might need more boats, also because,
you've got to think these are quite, small boats, these are not big, big boats, these are small, narrow boats,
they're quite tippy, the more people you get in especially with
your cameras and taking pictures, the more tippy it gets, so I would say up to four in a boat is probably,
the most you want, now of course for me, it's fine I have the boat to myself,
apart from the driver.
Driver, captain what do you call the person who drives a little boat? I'll, ask him later,
anyway, so there are the three trips you can do,
now,
I can eat my pizza, then we're gonna go out, on to Inle lake.