Kalaw, like probably all the towns in Burma, has its multiple pagodas but there they were actually quite nicely lit up in the dark evening. In Kengtung (and many other places later on) they put the tackiest blinking neon bulbs or Christmas decoration style lights all around the temples, Buddha statues and buildings. It was very strange.
Kalaw also had a festival, I think the same one we attended the day before in Kengtung. Only this time it was on a completely dark football stadium with horribly drunken local teenage boys whom were shooting fireworks dangerously all around. It was not a nice place to be and so we excused ourselves pretty quickly and went home to prepare for our trek!
We must be super lucky. Our Nepali group was incredible but this time was no different: we were happy to share our trek with a great couple Heiko and Machteld from the Netherlands, Christian from Germany, Cherry from Hong Kong and Yun from Korea. And we were also positively surprised to learn that our guides were two young women from Kalaw and a nearby village. Cool! We had only our day packs with us and the rest of our stuff the trekking company delivered to our hostels in Inle.
Our
trekking day started after a short ride to the countryside amongst the
fields of rice, chili, ginger and sesame flower. We saw the harvesting,
tried some dried chillis and admired the landscape and the bamboo
forests. The sun was intense and I was a bit scared to get too much of
it but the day was quite a bit shorter than we’d expected. We stopped
after some 4 h of walking for a fantastic lunch at a small village and continued
our slow and relaxed hike for another few. I think we walked only 15 km
or so and it was very very flat. Not Nepalese flat but more like Finnish
flat.
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| Starting the journey |
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| Sesame fields |
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| Other fields |
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| Chile fields |
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| Spidey! |
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| Spiderwoman! Also I dared, as an ex-arachnophobic I was a bit proud |
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| Lunch |
We
arrived to a village which was, unfortunately, PACKED with tourists.
This was not Kengtung anymore but definitely the very beaten path. Our
group's homestay was a bit further out the village, so the location was actually pretty nice and
peaceful. We took a stroll around the place, visited a monastery and
then ate another fab meal prepared by our guides. We slept adorably all
in the same room, next to each other on small mattresses on the floor.
The night was cold (and dark and full of terrors!) and in the morning
the whole village was covered in mist.
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| Monastery |
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| READ THIS BEFORE GOING TO BURMA |
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| Little monk |
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| Saving a kite |
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| Kite runner |
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| A richer part of the village |
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| Hardworking ladies |
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| Morning mist |
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| Arachnophobia stuff |
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| More arachnophobia stuff |
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| Paying the toll fees |
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| A huge bodhi tree |
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| Which Chris of course needed to climb |
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| More of that lunch |
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| Finally at the lake |
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| Heavy load |
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| Floating gardens |
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| Fisherman |
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| Kitty at NK |
In
the evening we met up with our group at the night market and shared an
amazing meal of all the weird local dishes: stuff I would never order
myself but now got to try, great! We also planned the next day. We
wanted to hire a boat together with our group and tour around some of
the Inle lake’s sights. We heard it can be quite awful: the boatmen
take you to some shops in the hopes of commission and there are
“fishermen” aka actors who pose as fishermen for money so tourists can
take cool pics. Also the long neck tribal ladies have their own “stand”
somewhere in the lake which is hilarious because the tribe apparently
has actually nothing to do with the lake, but live three hours away somewhere else. And
then of course the endless souvenir shops and camera fees for temples
and tourists with their little beach outwear in the temples and omg. I
was a bit horrified already but we thought that since we don’t have high
expectations we can rather just have a good laugh.
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| Nyaung Shwe |
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| Evening walk |
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| And more of them temples coming |
So
the next day, after a nice morning hanging sesh, we met next to the pier where we found American-French
Jacqueline who had lost her group. Since we were already 7 people
sharing one boat, we weren’t sure if we could take her in as well. But the
boatman said nothing and so suddenly we were 8 sharing the already
reasonable cost of a longboat (~18 euros/ boat). Good!
 |
| Hang on |
Our first stop was the “Jumping cats monastery” where the monks had taught cats to jump through hoops and perform other tricks. Awesome! I was sad to learn that the cats weren’t doing any tricks anymore. Damn. The monastery itself was alright though and it had multiple felines but they looked rather sick. No wonder, I think they were fed mostly rice.
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