Myanmar-velous Epilogue: You call that a beach? Ngapali-ze!

OH MY GOD! This beach is so beautiful.

Sunset so nice I had to taste it.

And I did.

Myanmar-velous 3: Shan-tastic!

For some reason, all domestic flights in Myanmar seem to leave before 8AM, so we packed up and got out of Bagan before sunrise. Short, two-hop flight to Heho airport, where we met our new driver and headed out for a morning drive through the Shan state.
Very different landscape here, not so dry, with lots of different plots of farmland. We are also a little weirded out after getting so much constant information for the last three days, because our driver doesn't speak English and we have to guess at much of what we're seeing.

Ladies harvesting wheat; not a lot of dudes doing the farm-work out here...

The main stop this morning is the town of Pindaya and the Shwe Oo Min Natural Cave Pagoda, a complex of caves filled with a truly astounding number of Buddhas.

Look at this crazy-ass spider! There must have been some story behind this, because we saw it a few different places.

Seriously, like SO many Buddhas

Buddha Buddha Buddha Buddha BU-DDAH! (can you guess that tune?)

The sign does not lie.

We also visited a three-generation old paper/umbrella-making workshop to see the family making paper out of plant fibers and fashioning the various parts of umbrellas using hand tools.

Making an umbrella handle with a super-sweet foot-powered lathe. 

We skipped lunch and booked it for Nyaungshwe on the northern shores of Inle Lake for an afternoon/evening off, had drinks and dinner in a small cafe, and called it a night.

After breakfast, we set out for a day of touring Inle Lake, a large lake in a mountain valley. Highlights included floating island farming, many stops to see local crafts, and seeing all these fully functioning villages on the lake that are just like villages on the land, with shops and schools and houses, but the streets are replaced with water. I'll let the pictures tell the rest.

Our journey begins

Out of the way, fools!

These fishermen were totally bad-ass. They're casting nets with both hands and rowing with one leg (the oar is kind of hooked in his armpit), all while balancing ON A BOAT on one leg. This skill is apparently unique to these people, and they even have races with 60+ people on one boat rowing with their legs.

Little shrine to the protector spirit, out in the middle of the lake.

Floating gardens: they grow tomatoes, squash, everything on these floating islands made from composted plant material that gets washed down into the lake from the mountains. The bamboo poles are actually anchoring them to the lake bed.

Here are some men busting up the material for the floating islands.

This is more of the material that goes into the islands. He's dredging it up with a pole.

One water house, coming up.

Making thread out of LOTUS FIBERS!? I didn't even know this existed.

I've never really seen a loom in action, but it's scary complicated: lots of hand-foot-eye coordination, and lots of patience. Also some really interesting engineering.

Local blacksmith re-purposing old springs and struts from cars.

Young boy on his way to becoming a novice at a monastery. 

Two dudes hand-sawing planks of teak to make boats

Ladies rolling sweet, sweet cheroots, complete with corn-husk filters

And with that, we're pretty much done with sight-seeing. We're headed to the beach for a few days tomorrow, which should be a nice end to this trip, and may not be worth writing about. I've been really impressed by this country, its people, and its traditions; I think we did a pretty good job of using our time here wisely, but there's still more to see, and I hope to be back someday.

Myanmar-velous 2: Bilbo Bagan

Next morning, up really early to make what we thought was a 7am flight BUT ACTUALLY LEFT AT 6AM!!! Luckily, Rani checked the tickets in the morning, and we were able to rush out of there and made our flight to Nyang U (Bagan). 

Met up with our new guide Aung, drove through this amazing expanse of dusty plains sprinkled with temples everywhere you look (more than 3000 in 42 square km or something) 

Seriously, all those little bumps you see are temples. This place is the product of rampant temple one-upmanship.

straight to a big old red and gold temple with lots of Buddhas, learning about hand gestures and how to tell which century the statue is from based on its features. 

If you look at this little pool of water, you can see the reflection of the top of the stupa. It was for the king, because if he raised his head to look, his crown would fall off.

Some really intricate wood carving.

Then to a shabbier temple with a viewpoint to see it from above, 

I came down with a little case of temple-head; I'm ok now.

then to ANANDA Pagoda, with some really impressive paintings and plaster work (can you tell I’’m already getting temple’d out?). According to Aung, this is the most beautiful temple in Bagan.

Outside of this temple there was a traveling market that was still around after last week’s festival, and we convinced our guide to take us to a local restaurant instead of the tourist stop for lunch. 

Back to our hotel to check in and take a little nap, then out to another temple with some impressive paintings and twin buddhas, 

Was that you?                                                  No idea what you're talking about, man.

then to another temple that we could climb to watch the sun set (while kids popped out of the brickwork and tried to get us to buy things). 

Sun's down, let's go, people!

Exhausted, we were able to stay up long enough to have a nice indian meal in town before crashing.

Up at 5 to catch a bus to BALLOON LAUNCH SITE where we had coffee and pastries and got the low-down on safety from the pilot, then up-up-and-away for a 1-hr flight over the plains, probably the best way to see all of these crazy temples. 

Fire it up!

We're the first off the ground.

Sunrise

Really cool experience, very relaxing, cruised over the village and waved to everyone we saw, saw the sun rise over the plains. Back to hotel for breakfast, then out to Mt. Popa, where we climbed the 777 steps to a temple on top of an extinct volcano, learned about some local spirits, saw a palm-sugar operation along the way where we sampled palm wine, beer, spirits, candy, and other snacks. 

Palm beer fermenting

Making candy out of palm sugar

Grinding peanuts for oil.

Lunch, car ride back to Bagan (where we negotiated down to ONLY TWO MORE TEMPLES for the day), saw an underground monastery, a tiny temple with really detailed painting, and a triple temple that got interrupted by the Mongols half way through so its only half painted. Back to the hotel to chill, shower, out for a blah dinner, and tried to stay up until 9 so I don’t wake up too early.

In the morning, visited the village of Salay with a local monastery and school where we awkwardly watched some classes in session and tried to pretend we didn't know they were looking for a donation.  Went to a wooden monastery built by a man with four wives. The monks disapproved, so there are many morality stories from Buddhist tradition illustrated in the wood carvings around the building. 

This is a really interesting story that I don't quite remember...

Saw a big-old hollow Buddha (I checked by looking up his skirts-He's hollow). 

Second-largest hollow Buddha in Myanmar

Had a nice lunch with our guide and driver on the way back, and begged off any further sight seeing. That evening, we took a sunset cruise down the Aye Yarwaddy River. A nice end to this chapter of our trip.

Sunset with Aung.

Myanmar-velous 1: Going, going, Yangon

Flew in to Yangon on Saturday morning, met up with someone from our tour company and went over the itinerary, then got in the car and headed through the winding streets to our hotel on the other side of the city, stopping occasionally for traffic. Went out for a walk, through sweaty, run-down streets, dodging cars [which have the steering wheel on the right, but also drive on the right-weird Myanmar fact for you] and betel-nut spit, until we got into the downtown section, with big old decaying colonial buildings, vegetable sellers on the sidewalk, one street filled with book-sellers selling stacks of decaying paperbacks, tons of street-food including steamed pork-guts and other strangeness. Found a little restaurant that smelled good and got some delicious curry and a paratha, went back to the hotel for a nap [and to watch the soccer game in the street outside]. 

After dark took a taxi in to Chinatown, walking through the market selling all kinds of food and other nonsense, and had a bbq dinner at some incomprehensible alley “restaurant” where we walked half a block (through other restaurants) to look at the selection of food, picked what we wanted, and somehow got it relatively soon thereafter. Back to the hotel to pass out.

Next morning, started the guided tour with our tour guide Myo, 

Rani and Myo walkin' through Yangon

down to our first [BUT NOT LAST!!] temple, with some of the Buddha’s hair in it, 

One of the golden corridors in the Buddha hair temple, really called Botahtaung Pagoda

hearing lots of interesting history about the place and Buddhism. Then a long, sweaty walk through the colonial district, 

Old courthouse. Outside on the street were stalls where kids who couldn't get their parents' permission could sign contracts to get married.

through the Strand Hotel [very, very white], past a nice park in the center of town, and FINALLY [guide wouldn’t give us a break] to a tourist-trap restaurant for some pretty good lunch. 

Big old reclining Buddha, 

Chauk Htatt Ghyee

dodging old French tourists to get a good picture, 

This tool was the first of a herd of French seniors who rushed the platform; I'm giving him the stink-eye.

through an indoor gem market we really didn’t want to go to, to a park by the big lake, and finally to the biggest show in town, Shwe Dagon. 

This time it's serious.

Huge pagoda with tons of history, fancy “umbrella” on top made of donated jewelry, learned about our day-of –the-week corners, animals, attributes (mine’s a bird with a Groucho nose (Garuda?), Rani’s is a Guinea pig), washed our respective idols with water, 

Rani washing her Buddha, you can see Friday's Guinea pig at the bottom.

and sat down to listen to a woman sing/chant some Buddhist scripture. After a long, hot day of walking and sitting in traffic, I actually really appreciated this, got into the rhythm, and just watched all the people from everywhere flocking by, getting lost in it all for a moment.  A good end to our first full day (which felt like about 3) in Myanmar.

One additional anecdote I thought was cool:

This bell was stolen by the British during the colonial period, but they dropped it in a river! HA! Later fished out by the locals, as illustrated below.