Took breakfast and enjoyed our veranda for a while – set off at 10.oo for Tha Lay
View from our verandaWeird scenes inside the floating hotel
Driver Maung Maung. Nyaungshwe – had lunch at Hupin Hotel, restaurant – beautiful beef, curry and crispy belly pork and bitter soup – then onto Shan monastery for photo opportunity and on to Heho Airport.
Tha Lay (Shan Monastery)
The photographs from this part of this day are pictures 91 to 95 in this Flickr album – click here or below:
A placeholder piece which shows the full itinerary and has links to the albums of all our photographs for this trip can be found by clicking here or the link below:
Breakfast on the terrace – then onto Nampan market (another five day market, we hit)…
Many Pa’O people as well as Inthas. Bought one more carving (Paduang), then on to Inpaw Kon village with silk weaving…
…I tried to dive into the wash [almost doing the splits when boat-hopping], but Janie stopped me – then onto ironmongery in same village
…then on to a floating garden and visited an adorable family (pens out)…
Lunch at Shwe Inn Tha where Yinyin Htay cooked us pumpkin soup, eeel & pork (plus chicken cashews & pork balls) and splendid local papaya. After siesta (during which Kyaw fixed my case) went to floating market (which is for tourists now really)
…went to silversmiths (with floating market in hot pursuit). Janie bought mask – then on to Paung Paw Do Pagoda with the five images of Buddha (so gold-leaved they are more or less blobs now) – only four of which travel…
…then on to Jumping Cats Monastery (Nga Pe Chaung)…
…then back to hotel. Avoided bugs in room by taking on bugs on veranda. Dinner included fried gourd salad, chicken with mushrooms, pork and potato (traditionally oily cooking style) very good. Yinyin Htay came out to take a bow and a gong. We retired hurt.
A placeholder piece which shows the full itinerary and has links to the albums of all our photographs for this trip can be found by clicking here or the link below:
Three hour drive to Nyaungshwe (via Heho – school kids stop)…
Heho bullocksKiddies in HehoNyaungshweCheroot leaves
…then along canal (20 minutes), then through [Inle] lake at sunset – beautiful (40 minutes)…
Boatman Tintzaw
…to Golden Island cottages, who had dumped our booking so we cunningly found Shwe Inn Tha hotel instead (smaller quieter, “better”) – found bugs and lost in one room – seemed to be winning fight in another. Dinner very good, especially the gefilte fish (curries also good).
After dinner we seemed to have beaten the bugs but the night singers and early morning boats make sure we didn’t sleep too much.
A placeholder piece which shows the full itinerary and has links to the albums of all our photographs for this trip can be found by clicking here or the link below:
Drove through beautiful countryside – more photos and pens and saw Pa’O people on the way. [Also a] Danu village –where they grow rice, etc.
…then Pindaya – photograph bathers in the lake [see headline picture] – Danu? people. Then then Pindaya caves to see 8000 images of Buddha – explore caves.
The singing nuns of Pindaya– on our way down Daisy made a small offering to these young nuns and they spontaneously (and unexpectedly) started singing to her
…then to umbrella factory –> Pindaya for lunch at Kyainlite Restaurant for steamed duck and wind chicken and ABC Stout at last!!!!
In those days, Daisy might look at a kitchen like this, yet still eat there
The ABC Stout saga had been run for much of our visit. I had read that this brew, which I had never tried before, had been a major thing in Burma before the Second World War and was still produced locally. I was keen to try it. Kyaw struggled to find it for us, until this place. In the end, I had to admit that it beat the stouts that I knew well – Guinness and Mackeson, only by dint of tasting more like rusty nails than its better-known counterparts. Kyaw looks a little disappointed in the above picture.
A placeholder piece which shows the full itinerary and has links to the albums of all our photographs for this trip can be found by clicking here or the link below:
