After all the temple fun in Bagan we headed to Mandalay where we parted ways with Andrew, Germaine and Eugenie. We arrived quite late but didn't have trouble finding a place to stay. We decided to check out a food stall mentioned in our Lonely Planet called the Chapati Stand. Oh my, was I ever glad that we did. It was just a couple of cooks cooking outside in a make shift kitchen with a bunch of children's plastic chairs scattered around the side walk. Nothing too fancy that is for sure. The food itself was absolutely amazing. We got chapatis, curried chicken and bottomless dhal. We were in heaven. Along with a Myanmar beer, our meal cost us less than $5.
The next day Joey and I did not do much. Most of the sights to see in Mandalay you have to pay a fee. This fee goes straight into the government's pocket. This is something we would rather avoid. So instead, we walked around in the less touristy places of Mandalay and looked through markets scattered around the city. I could see that Mandalay was not as friendly as Yangon, and it was certainly more dirty. We sort of wished that we had gone to see the Amanpura bridge, but we were feeling cheap and didn't want to risk getting caught without a ticket issued by the government.
That night we left on a sleeper bus. All throughout Asia the word "sleeper bus" has it's own meaning. In Vietnam the buses actually had beds, Cambodia had really soft and cushy chairs with blankets and pillows, Thailand had hard chairs that recline really far and sometimes with a pillow... Myanmar, I don't think got the memo. It was pretty much an old transit bus from Korea. The seats were so tiny and they didn't even have a head rest. It's great if you're a midget, but it's a real neck breaker for tall people like us. haha.
We watched a Burmese movie for 2 hours at a very loud volume. We felt kind of left out because the whole bus was laughing quite hard. Joey and I took a couple of sleeping pills and we were out like lights. It was probably the bumpiest ride we have been on and probably the least comfortable. We were glad to have reached the outskirts of Inle Lake at 4 am which was 3 hours earlier than expected. What we didn't expect was the absolute FREEZING cold. Both wearing shorts and a t-shirt with sandals we got out of the bus to catch a songtheaw (a truck taxi with seats in the back box) where we attempted to put on every piece of warm clothing we owned in the pitch black.
The taxi driver drove us around town trying to find a place that would take us in this early in the morning. Unfortunately this involved waking up a lot of people. We finally found a place that had a room available for us. We were so so so glad to be laying our heads down on a bed.
The next morning we walked around the cute town in Inle Lake. It was quite small and not much to see. Joey was glad that they had an internet cafe with internet that wasn't entirely slow. Internet in Myanmar is still agonizingly slow, but it was almost bearable at this one place.
We found a longboat driver to take us for a tour of Inle Lake the next day. He was pretty excited because he hadn't had a customer for 7 days. We promised to meet him in the morning at 8am.
We set off with our boat driver the next morning. It was quite cold so we were bundled up with hoodies and scarves. We first went to the floating gardens which were pretty impressively. Basically they are gardens that float on water. Our driver didn't speak English very well so we never actually learned why they floated like that. It was definitely neat to see all their veggies, herbs and flowers floating beds. It would be be a cool thing to attempt at home but I think it would take practice.
After that we checked out some silver and silk shops. We watched them make silk scarves and silver jewellery. I was more interested in the silk but most of it was quite expensive. The silver jewellery was nothing special. After that we went to a cigarette making place. Joey and I had already bought a big pack of cigarettes from the market to share with all our smoking relatives (you know who you are haha). They are made out of grape leafs, tabacco, bamboo filter and glutinous rice glue to keep it together. We bought 20 or 30 of them for 20 cents. At the cigarette making place they wanted $4 and they were the exact same brand.
We finished the day with a temple and headed back home. All along the way we saw fisherman using different techniques to catch fish. Some of them were even rowing the boats with their legs, which was quite impressive.
That night we had a tasty dinner at a tea shop and went to bed early because we had a flight back to Yangon the next day.
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