Inle Lake with a Splash of Yangon - Just How I Like it

Okay so we did have one more day in Inle Lake after our awesome bike ride adventure...and what would a trip to the lake be without going onto the lake?!? It wouldn't be a trip to the lake at all now would it.

Our day started at 4:30am.  Now that is a time of day that I rarely want to see.  But this day we were excited.  The lake can be extremely misty at night, making it look totally mystical and scary.  Once the sun rises the mist does too so it looks a little different, plus, watching the sunrise on an old boat in the middle of the lake was incredible.  Too bad our boat driver was late picking us up (the one time we were acrually on time and waiting!) and we missed a lot of the mist, but we still got an awesome sunrise! 

It stated out freezing! 

The lake is incredibly beautiful.  I don't know what it is about it's properties, but the way it reflects the sky is unlike any other body of water I've seen! And instead of water the lake looks like it's filled with clear oil.  It's so shiny and smooth!  Scattered around the lake you have these old fishing boats with fishermen all over doing what they do best!! They were so cute, many would stop and wave with huge grins on their faces.  These people are not used to seeing tourists still.

Doesn't the water look like oil?! It was a pretty oil though, like a clear blue

The coolest thing about the lake besides how beautiful it is, is the fact that there's an entire community that lives on it.  In the middle there are houses on stilts,   in the water, boats parked out next to em as their vehicle of choice and they carry on like business as usual.  We even passed a post office on stilts!! They have this floating market that we went to called the "Five Day Market" where each day of the week one of the five different communities that live on the lake get to host.  We checked it out and it was so cool to see what they had - lots of crazy fish that had just been caught, fruits, veggies, and hand made everything!  These people truly lived their lives on the lake and lived off the land in every way.  So crazy to see.

A lake house

All on stilts! 

Climbing through boat after boat to get to the floating market!

Inside the market is madness 

People laid out everywhere selling their goods!

Of course fish galore...which made for some interesting (nasty) smells 

Parking lot for the market.  And you thought Costco parking was bad!

Restaurants, temples, homes, everything a normal community has - just floating!

We even saw a village with the long neck tribe...they put these gold rings on their necks to stretch them out!

We spent an entire day roaming the cities on the lake.  One of them has giant temples (or pagodas) and they have them all over the place!  These ones were so striking with gold, orange, white and brick colored structures.  And they were so old they had trees and roots growing out of some of them! 

Don't let the biceps distract you from the scenery 

Tree growing right on and above the pagoda!

To make the community on the lake complete of course there had to be floating gardens.  I don't get how it works at all, it blows my mind, but in the middle of the lake you can literally see floating gardens.  They grow tomatoes and other vegetables that way.  Can someone explain this to me?! 

Garden growing in the middle of the lake!

Back on dry steady land we took ourselves out to a nice pasta dinner (Burmese food is some of the worst we've ever had - so you gotta go with something simple) and checked out a real live puppet show!!!! For whatever reason, the people of Burma are a little obsessed with string puppets.  It's kind of funny how you begin to notice how each country has their own "thing" they love.  No real reason or history on it - they just love puppets!  You see them everywhere. So we had to see a puppet show. I don't know what I was expecting, I half expected two guys with socks on their hands talking in weird voices behind a couch or something, but this show was legit!  If you can even imagine what a legit puppet show would even entail.  It was hilarious though.

Kinda freaky yet entertaining!

That night we took another one of our beloved night buses back to the capital city of Yangon.  Here we wound spend a couple days before flying back to Thaialnd and then to our last stop on our trip, Hong Kong.

Yangon was awesome!! We had zero expectations of it.  All we knew was that it was the capital of the country and that it was way bigger than most cities there.  Well that was true.  Not only is the city bigger, but everything in it is bigger! Kinda like a Texas.  They had pagodas there as well, but one of the biggest and most amazing one we had ever seen!! We explored this place like it was Disneyland!

They wouldn't let me in in leggings so I got to borrow an authentic skirt wrap thing.  But Robby got to show off his legs!

Buddha just chillin 

The temple  looked so cool as it got darker! This thing is all gold and covered with gold leaves that people press on as gifts to Buddha.  There's also supposedly a 30 karat diamond at the very top!  Try and Top that with your next ring J-Lo! It's pretty crazy how they would have so much money invested into a temple and to see how much money the community gives as offerings to Buddha and the monks when most the people themselves are so poor.

Like I mentioned, up until now Burmese food had been some of the worst we've had! But Yangon had some amazing street food.  They were deep frying scones all over the place, Burmese pancakes (which were our favorite!!), Indian curries, fresh bread, gutted fish, you name it! We explored this to the max and tried as much random food as we could!

Loved this street curry! They just give you a metal plate and spoon and you eat it right there on the street sitting on a bucket!

Their streets were filled with trash because of all the markets and street eating

Loved their fruits! Especially these baby cuties!

Making scones! Yum!

Burmese pancakes - Robby's fav!

We also had one of the weirdest drinks ever from a small diner. Picture a slushie...now add some weird jello like strips to the bottom of it, a handful of nuts, more weird jelly been stuff, random fruits and berries, and maybe some condensed milk and you get this.  Actually pretty tastey...

Right before we left we got to try their infamous avocado shakes.  I am telling you, this is sooooo good!! Basically just their giant, ripe avocados mixed with condensed milk and probably some sugar.  This is a recipe I WILL try at home!  Probably won't be the same because somehow all fruits and veggies are bigger and better in Asia, but it's definitely worth a shot.  One of the most delicious things we've ever drank!

Skeptically trying the avocado drink 

Both were amazing! 

After eating our way through Yangon and spending hours and hours at their giant pagoda we headed back to Thailand, where we spent "One Night in Bangkok" again, and then jet settled to Hong Kong.  So sad that this would be our final stop!!

Hangin out! 

We loved Burma!!!

Myanmar - the new Burma

One of the craziest and unrtouched by tourism places we went to was Myanmar...which is also known as Burma.  I don't think I'm alone when I say before we went there I knew very little about this place.  It actually has some of the craziest history out there.  In fact, much of the turmoil in this country is still going on or at the least the people are still recovering from it.  Since their independence in 1948, the country has been in the longest Running civil wars that remains unresolved.  The country had been completely under military rule until recently (2010) and in the process has to led it to be one of the least developed countries in the world.  Because of this, when you go there you feel like you are stepping back into time! In fact up until a few years ago, most other countries had a ban on their citizens traveling to Myanmar at all.  The military Leaders in Myanmar had their country in such distress, forcing things such as child labor, random take overs, and even forcing people to leave their homes and communities to start over elsewhere.  Their country was essentially run by the military and not by the people whatsoever.   Now that they have somewhat started to get way from military rule and have experienced some tourism, the country is getting a little more up with the times, but in most cities you still can't find an ATM anywhere and many times a horse drawn carriage is considered their taxi service.  It's really interesting to see a country that seems to be decades behind the rest of the world and to be able to experience their culture firsthand.

Can't touch this 

Typical 

Robby hailing a taxi haha

Because tourism is new there, planning for Burma can be a bit of a hassle, but a worth while one!  Although they have their own currency, most hotels will accept brand new, crisp US dollars.  So plan to pack a briefcase full of brand new unmarked bills.  And most hotels don't accept reservations so you just have to show up and hope for the best! The bad part about that is that their supply of hotels in Myanmar has not been able to keep up with the demand since tourism came so fast!  So it can be tricky, but we were lucky and we never had to sleep outside. 

Two things about Burma that you'll notice right away.  1) the people have red teeth and 2) they wear paint on their faces.  The red teeth isn't because they are cannibals biting into each others flesh, rather it's a seed they chew on and then spit out on the road.  Sometimes with tobacco sometimes without.  But most Burmese people have red stained teeth and the streets have red spats all over them from the spit! Kind of disturbing if you don't know what it is before showing up.  The paint they put on their face is actually a smashed plant root mixed with water.  They put it on their face believing that it protects them from the sun.  Does it work? I don't know, although I did have a Burmese woman pull me aside and paint up my face!  It's funny how different sides of the world can have such different views on beauty. Here we all want to be so tan, but most other places they want white skin.  We even saw face and body washes all over Asia claiming to have bleaching qualities that would whiten your skin! Crazy! We definitely stayed away from that, we are trying to work on our farmers tans!!

Robby refused to have his face painted

Yay now I will stay pasty white!

Our first stop in Burma was a city called Bayon, known for its massive amounts of temples (aka pagodas) in the area.  Literally there are over 2,000 of them in the old city, which is only probably about 3 square miles!  These temples were built thousands of years ago, and many of them look very similar, but the fact that there are so many of them dotting the countryside is what truly makes this place different!  Some of the temples are made of old stone or brick while others are golden temples, but most have some sort of Buddha statue on the inside.  We had a horse drawn carriage "taxi" take us around town to see as many temples as we could and then climbed to the top of a temple to watch the sun set behind the other temples.  It was one of the coolest sunset spots, and by now we are sunset experts!!

Temples galore!

At the top of a temple 

Hangin out with these guys 

Chillin in our ride 

Awesome sunset with temple silhouettes 

Some of the temples even glowed at night!

Typical inside of the temple

The gold temples are my fav!

Cute little baby monks in front of this temple 

After a couple days in Bayon we took a night bus to our next stop in Burma, Inle Lake.  We had heard awesome things about this mystical lake and had to go!  Our bus left at 7pm and arrived to Inle at 3am!! I don't get this about night buses...why not leave later and get us in at a normal hour, I mean at least 5am?! It's funny, so a bus load of people are dumped off at 3am and everyone scrambles trying to figure out what to do and where to go!  We were lucky, the hotel we found let us in out of the cold and even put a mattress down in their lobby for us to sleep on until our room was ready. Now that is hospitality!

After a few hours sleep in the lobby we woke up and decided to get started!  We rented bikes for one dollar a day and explored around.  We heard about a cool Monestary that was supposedly 1.5 KM outside the city...so we headed for that. But after about 30 minutes of peddling and no signs of the Monestary we started to question that.  The scenery by the riverside and the jungly fields were so cool we didn't care we were lost so we just kept going!  Eventually I saw this really cool looking gold temple on a hill that looked super far away.  I told Robby "I want to go there!". We had no idea how far it actually was or if we could even get there, but we decided to just keep biking towards the golden target and see what happened.  And after probably a total of 10 miles of biking through small authentic cities, watching the beautiful sky over a cool river and getting extremely thirsty, we got to the hill! We climbed to the very top to find this temple that appeared to be abandoned and an amazing view! Victory!!! Such a cool day. We still had 10 more miles to bike home, and we actually ran into the Monestary on the way back.   but we were kind of happy we got lost and had decided to bike to the temple instead, the temple was way better than the Monestary!  Sometimes it's good to get lost. 

Just biking around in nature 

The sky in Burma is beautiful!!! And even more so it's reflection in the water is insane!

Th temple from a distance, but we started off a lot further than this!

Made it to the top!

The sky is out of control!

Finally found the Monestary!