Lake Inle

The last full day in Myanmar was spent on the beautiful Lake Inle in a noisy, smoke spewing, motorboat for 4. I have polarised emotions about the day. Loved being on the boat, observing lake life, surrounded by water and mountains. Hated the 'on shore' activities, more pagodas and too much shopping made me very grumpsville indeed.

Below are happy pictures...

Village life

Locals getting around.

Mountains shrouded in clouds...

And not shrouded.

More locals...

And more mountains.

The rest are floating village shots.

The first stop was to see some pagodas...I can't remember anything the guide said about them and when I asked him he basically told me I should have been listening, how rude! The surrounding area was filled will stalls selling tourist tat, not my cup of tea.

Cutie outside tat stall.

Adilady outside a pagoda.

The next few are arty shots...

This is our group. From left to right:

Front row: Lynda, Courtney, Ana, Vanessa, Val, Naomi, Richard, Janet and the loverly Carole.

Back row: Inga, Babsie, Freddie, Bruce, Beth, Adilady.

This is a bamboo forest.

Stop two was silver making and an overpriced shop. To be honest, I'd rather buy the cheap shit made in China or better still nothing at all.

We were promised a visit to a Kayan Lahwi or 'long neck' village but alas this was a blatant lie. We arrived at another tat selling shop that just happened to have 3 long necked women sitting there waiting to be photographed. Freddie kicked off which provided a certain level of amusement for a minute or two, apparently the main reason for his Myanmar visit was to support the local tribes. Still he did buy 3 scarves that he said he would probably bin or leave in his room. Apparently if he gave them to his mates they would say 'WTF' as they aren't designer lol. Who said the fashion business was shallow? Or is it Italians in general? Lol again.

Tat shop, I was uncomfortable photographing the long neck ladies, the set up all seemed a bit 'freak show'

Then it was off to a pagoda to see these crazies. The photo shows mentalist, Myanmar, menfolk rubbing so much gold leaf on the Buddha statues that all the detail has disappeared and they look like gilded elephant poo. Fools gold gone super mad! Obviously I wasn't allowed to partake, being birdage:(

Next stop the silk factory avec tres expensive magasin. Still I did manage to take this photo that I rather like.

Cheroot making plus, you've guessed it, shop full of the same tat that was in all of the other tourist tat shops (yawn).

Then it was homeward bound with a detour through the floating gardens. This is where the lake folk grow crops of corn, tomatoes etc that really do float.

Final mountain shot from Myanmar. Tomorrow we are back to Yangon and then back to BK Mike's for a few days to plan for Vietnam.

Lots of love to you all, I'm feeling a tad bluesome and struggling to find my happy place to share with you all. Then I remembered I haven't told you about 'mingalabar' the general greeting term across Myanmar. Just makes me think of minging  labia, enough said xxx