Inle Lake, North Shan State, Myanmar Part 2

Blogger is not cooperating at the moment, so Inle Lake will be in two parts.

Peat cut from the shoreline to make floating garden beds.

Miles and miles of floating gardens held in place by bamboo poles.

Heading down one row of crops.

All around the perimeter of the lake are these floating gardens, first encouraged in the 60's. Now, 50 years later, environmental people have found that the lake is 1/3 the size it was in 1940. They speculate that these gardens have contributed to the shrinking of the lake.

 Sunset from the hotel. The hotel built on stilts looks fancy at first, but the room next to mine had a resident rat. Each cottage had a nice front porch with comfortable chairs.

 This could be in Burmese, if you click the right button.

 It was nice to see clouds in the blue sky, a welcome change from Asia-city gray.

 Heading upriver from the lake through a bamboo water-slow-down feature.

 Local cattle crossing. Note the low water level.

 More fees. Take off the final zero and you get USDollar conversion amount. This is fifty cents.

 Small lakeside villages cooperate to make a few products to sell at the marketplace. This woman is making rice paper "tortillas," the first step in making crispy rice snack food. She's using a thin slurry of rice and water.

Second step is to let these dry on bamboo racks.

Another woman is cooking the dried rice rounds in very hot sand over an open fire. This puffs up the rounds and cooks them within 20 seconds or so. Absolutely no sand sticks to them. Amazing!

 Beautiful coloring on these cattle.

 There are about 1,000 weather-beaten zedi at Shwe Inn Thein Paya. Some are being reconstructed.

 Dusty monk puppets at Inthein.

Ethnnic minority woman with her baby. Note the white substance on her face. It is called thanaka and is made from the ground up bark of trees. Here's a link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanaka
Many people in Myanmar use this, women, children, men and boys. Any marketplace has the bark and the stone to grind it on, whether in the city or in a rural location. It is applied daily in the morning as makeup and sunscreen.

 Woven Burmese backpacks, worn with straps over the shoulders or one longer strap on the forehead.

 Freshwater eels.

 If you like puppets, you'd love these colorful ones.

Ethnic women heading home from the marketplace.

 Ring-necked woman from ethnic tribe.

 Boat drivers hanging out.

 Time honored scales.

Phaung Daw Oo Paya floating image on a barge that is moved around the lake at festival time.

 This is a country where modest dress is worn and special rules apply at religious sites. At the larger sites, appropriate clothing is provided. Footwear is always removed.

Most of the labor in this country is still done by hand.