Sunday 21 December 2014

Inle Lake

We had an absolutely amazing sleep. Pillows are firm here, I love it. So is the bed. Our little room on the water is amazing. It's dead silent at night. It's been a while since I've experienced such silence. Not even a bug flying or a fish jumping. Except for Cindy woke up and asked me if I had a laser for her concrete construction project. 

Breakfast was fantastic. Jams and spreads are so delicious and fresh. Our bike isn't here yet but we had nice Merida's for the warm up ride today. 16km only. Along some back roads and to a winery up a hill. Did some scooter chase sprints on the road for intervals too. 


The lake is probably the neatest microeconomy I've seen. They farm and live on stilted houses among floating islands. All the pictures of stuff growing is floating on islands in the lake. They harvest the floating weeds, stake them together, some guys dig mud up from the bottom and layer it on, and they grow hundreds of acres of tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes, eggplants, etc. 


The boats are used not how I'd think by looking at it. They're maybe 25' long and skinny, and fishermen stand on one foot on the back 4" of the boat. The other leg wraps around an oar they brace in the crook of their arm. This propulsion leg leaves two hands free to operate fishing nets.  Usually they smoke at the same time too although it doesn't seem like there's that many smokers here. It's all quite the skill set. 


Kids that look too small to do anything are waterborne on boats when at home we'd think they'd drown in a minute. Schools, monestaries, restaurants, stores  and factories are all on stilts in the water. I'm not sure you can get FedEx out here but is like to try. 

We went to a weaving factory. Girls chop up lotus stems like asparagus to them make fibre to spin to yarn then weave. They spin the thread using old bicycles that judging by chain wear have had decades or service on the road and making textiles. 

Given we were in the middle of tomato farms and a lake, we had tomato soup and fish for lunch. Restaurant over there. 










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