From Mandalay we flew to Heho,
picked up our next guide and had a lovely tour of the surrounds of Halaw. More
temples, more amazing views and the start of our two day trek. Oh! and I nearly
forgot about the hallucinogenic soup… Most restaurants here and I use that word
very lightly, serve a type of soup or broth before your main meal. It looks
totally gross and comes out of a huge caldron type thingy…. I’m assuming you’re
getting the picture. Anyhow, back to the story, I was being slightly, extremely
cautious at this point of time and sticking to rice, rice and more rice. Thus I
didn’t eat my soup, however those of us that did had, let’s say, very vivid
dreams. Me thinks that’s why it was so popular…..
The following morning we meet our
guide bright and early in reception to start our 2 day trek to Inle Lake. We
were so eager and keen given our extreme level of fitness and knew we would be
able to endure the heat and elements of Myanmar easily. There was a huge
trekking map located on the wall so we asked our guide where he would be taking
us. He laughed and asked us to point to Inle Lake, shit was my first thought.
He then took a photo of the map on his phone ‘just in case’ he again laughed.
Hmmm we weren’t laughing that much. We headed off in our mini-van to the
starting point when our guide, we will call him guide 1, received a call
stating we needed to go back to our hotel to pick up our guide. Confused, yep
we were too. So now we had another guide, guide 2. Guide 1 spoke some English,
guide 2 spoke no English. Guide 1 assured us that it would be a flat easy walk,
roughly 10 km. 22.5km we crawled into a local village where we would be
spending the night. And no it definitely wasn’t flat, insert swear words….
The only 5 stars at our
accommodation were above us. There was no power, no running water, no toilet,
big spiders and warm beer. The last point really didn’t bother me. I was very
tired, very dirty, very smelly and the 60 odd bed bug bites were slightly itchy
from the heat and the 22.5km trek. HOWEVER, the family we stayed with were
beautiful, they couldn’t have done more for us. The village was extraordinary.
We watched kids play, men returning home on bullocks, woman weaving baskets and
preparing dinner. Guide 1 turned out to be very funny and guide 2 could cook,
although I was still on rice only. Later that evening, while hunting beer, we
ran into a group of Polish tourists. We got talking and asked them about how
they liked their trek. They smiled, laughed and informed us that they paid a
local at lunch to drive them the rest of the way – what the fuck, OMG an
epiphany was coming…. Immediately I found guide 1 and asked if we could hire a
local to drive us the next day, of course he said!!!! With this knowledge we
all slept soundly on the ground.
The following day we piled into
an open truck and drove along an immensely dusty road. It was great as the dust
was able to blend into the layers of sweat, bug repellent and sun screen. After
a few hours on the road we piled into a long boat and spent another hour
weaving through reeds on Inle Lake. Eventually we immerged triumphant and
behold not only running water, electricity, and limited Wi Fi but the most
beautiful looking western resort you have ever seen. We were slightly afraid that they may not let
us in as we all looked like chiko rolls, but here we are….
Crop fields
Sesame Fields
The trekkers.... he he he
Rive fields....
Beautiful old Monastery....
Our lodgings for the night!
Guides making our dinner
Found a friend...
Night, night
No more trekking for us.....
