The second part of our trip to Myanmar was centered around Inlay Lake and the Thaunggyi Hot Air Balloon Festival.
After arriving in Heho, we had about a 1 hour ride to get to the lake. On the way we stopped at a delightful little umbrella shop, which makes not only the umbrellas from bamboo and paper, but also makes the paper from the bark of Mulberry trees. 
Inlay Lake itself is the second largest lake in Myanmar, with many villages on it's edge, and even on the lake itself. It is also a large agricultural region as there are floating gardens on the lake. Many acres of tomatoes are grown there and the tomato salad is delicious. We took longtail boats to reach our resort, after a delicious lunch, somewhere on the lake.
The resort itself was back between the floating gardens, and isolated from the main part of the lake. This was especially nice because the last several hundred meters they didn't allow any motors on the boats, only legrowing. 
We saw fishermen several times, using regular nets, plus these net traps, which they put big end down on the bottom of the lake vertically and then poked inside with a sharp stick to scare the fish into the net.
We also saw them collecting lake grass from the bottom of the lake, which they use as fertilizer for the floating gardens.
They would wind the plants around the poles like spaghetti, and pull it from the bottom into the boat.
One morning we visited a local market, and our guide Ti showed the ladies how to apply Tanaka ( a mixture of sandalwood paste ) to their faces.
From there we walked up to a temple, and saw the local sights along the way.
I bought some really good peanut brittle here: 
We also visited some weavers on the lake, there was a whole village of them. Some were spinning, others dyeing, and others weaving.
Away from the peaceful, relaxing lake, we visited Thaunggy, a local town on the hillside, for their balloon festival. I can only describe it as one of the most insane, chatotic, and thrilling events I've been to. The event has two parts, daytime when they launch large paper hot air balloons in a competition, and nighttime when the balloons are more traditional round, but have fireworks attached to them. We didn't stay for the nighttime as we heard it is a bit of a drunken revelry, and rather unsafe compared to the daytime. During the daytime, in a field about the size of 2-3 football fields, surrounded by food, gambling and other booths, plus a carnival with rides, they launch balloons and are judged on them. The balloons have to look realistic, fly well, and the teams have to work well together. Sometimes they fly really well, like this canary (btw if you click on the picture to enlarge it you will see the 1/2 meter long wick and flames to keep the balloon flying).
There were all sorts of shapes, leopards, cows, tapirs, elephants...
They would dance and sing while the team was sending up the balloon, and even more so if it went up successfully. There were thousands of people on and around the field, and sometimes there were several balloons going up at the same time. Once in a while they weren't so successful.
This tapir didn't make it that far...
Some others went up fairly far before catching on fire, and one came flaming down on some of the food booths. We had to constantly be looking over our shoulders to make sure that nothing dangerous would land on us while we were watching the one in front of us being prepared for flight. These guys were getting ready to put a flaming torch under their balloon to fill it up prior to lighting the wick and sending it off.
If you can imagine how crazy this all was, just imagine adding dark, drunkenness, and fireworks (ie rockets etc) being launched from unmanned balloons and you will understand why we didn't stay for the night.
Only too soon we had to leave again after 3 delightful days on the lake.
Here's the final sunset from our hotel veranda.
Inlay Lake itself is the second largest lake in Myanmar, with many villages on it's edge, and even on the lake itself. It is also a large agricultural region as there are floating gardens on the lake. Many acres of tomatoes are grown there and the tomato salad is delicious. We took longtail boats to reach our resort, after a delicious lunch, somewhere on the lake.
The resort itself was back between the floating gardens, and isolated from the main part of the lake. This was especially nice because the last several hundred meters they didn't allow any motors on the boats, only legrowing.
We saw fishermen several times, using regular nets, plus these net traps, which they put big end down on the bottom of the lake vertically and then poked inside with a sharp stick to scare the fish into the net.
We also saw them collecting lake grass from the bottom of the lake, which they use as fertilizer for the floating gardens.
They would wind the plants around the poles like spaghetti, and pull it from the bottom into the boat.
One morning we visited a local market, and our guide Ti showed the ladies how to apply Tanaka ( a mixture of sandalwood paste ) to their faces.From there we walked up to a temple, and saw the local sights along the way.
I bought some really good peanut brittle here: We also visited some weavers on the lake, there was a whole village of them. Some were spinning, others dyeing, and others weaving.
Away from the peaceful, relaxing lake, we visited Thaunggy, a local town on the hillside, for their balloon festival. I can only describe it as one of the most insane, chatotic, and thrilling events I've been to. The event has two parts, daytime when they launch large paper hot air balloons in a competition, and nighttime when the balloons are more traditional round, but have fireworks attached to them. We didn't stay for the nighttime as we heard it is a bit of a drunken revelry, and rather unsafe compared to the daytime. During the daytime, in a field about the size of 2-3 football fields, surrounded by food, gambling and other booths, plus a carnival with rides, they launch balloons and are judged on them. The balloons have to look realistic, fly well, and the teams have to work well together. Sometimes they fly really well, like this canary (btw if you click on the picture to enlarge it you will see the 1/2 meter long wick and flames to keep the balloon flying).
There were all sorts of shapes, leopards, cows, tapirs, elephants...
They would dance and sing while the team was sending up the balloon, and even more so if it went up successfully. There were thousands of people on and around the field, and sometimes there were several balloons going up at the same time. Once in a while they weren't so successful.
This tapir didn't make it that far...
Some others went up fairly far before catching on fire, and one came flaming down on some of the food booths. We had to constantly be looking over our shoulders to make sure that nothing dangerous would land on us while we were watching the one in front of us being prepared for flight. These guys were getting ready to put a flaming torch under their balloon to fill it up prior to lighting the wick and sending it off.
If you can imagine how crazy this all was, just imagine adding dark, drunkenness, and fireworks (ie rockets etc) being launched from unmanned balloons and you will understand why we didn't stay for the night.
Only too soon we had to leave again after 3 delightful days on the lake.
Here's the final sunset from our hotel veranda.
1 comment:
Just a great view of Myanmar - so different than what we get in the news, which is only the big, bad, political stuff...
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