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!
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.
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.
Inside the market is madness
Of course fish galore...which made for some interesting (nasty) smells
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!
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!
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!
Their streets were filled with trash because of all the markets and street eating
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
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!!
We loved Burma!!!
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