Dec 22th, Inle Lake, Olli

I decided to go anyway, and now I'm happily in Inle Lake, after trekking for three days and two nights. Distance was only about 40-50 km, so not too bad. We had a group of six people, three canadians, one american, one turkish and myself. Our guide was a 28-year old guy from Kalaw, a great guy. On tuesday we left Kalaw around 9 am, and the highlight of the day for me was a stop at a local elementary school. It was a tiny building with only two rooms and a few desks. The children seemed to really enjoy their day, or maybe it was just because we came to disturb their normal day with our cameras. The first night we spent in a small village, where we slept in a floor of a local family. Three of us also played the combination of volleyball and soccer (3-3, a badminton net, 3 touches, only with legs and head, with a ball made of bambu) against the local teenagers. Guess who won? It was dark very early and there being no lights in the village, we spent the night watching the stars and went to bed at 8 pm. Yes, you heard right. We slept (or tried to sleep) on a wooden floor side by side on a matress with a few blankets. The walls were thin as paper and the temperature dropped to almost zero degrees, so the night was freezing.





So I was very happy to get up very early next morning. During the day we stopped in a few more villages, and met for example some chili-farmers and bambu-workers. The second night we spent in a small monastery, which was very interesting. In Myanmar all men (buddhists) have to live in a monastery at least twice during their lives. Once as a novice monk and once in their adult age. In this monastery lived nine novice monks (young boys) with one chief monk teaching them. So in the morning we didn't need any alarm clocks, because the young novices started chanting at 5.30 am. I have to admit, it was a really strange feeling waking up in a Burmese monastery to a sound of nine young monks chanting. Not a bad feeling at all. In the last day we saw some really nice views and after a 4-hour trek arrived to Inle Lake. Before letting our guide go, we still had time to visit an umbrella work shop and see some members of the long-neck tribe.