We had a really nice day today. Our lady guide Hti met us at the hotel and we boated off onto the lake. Upon seeing the first leg-rowing fisherman we suspected that he might have been a hotel employee in costume but as the day developed and we saw more and more we were convinced it was authentic. The lake is very shallow (about 1.5m) by the look of it, although you cannot see the bottom for weed. The water is mostly clear and clean except near the villages and shore. All day we didn't see one fisherman bring up a fish in his conical trap or net so I don't know where all the fish come from in the market, tiddlers or not. We specifically instructed our guide that there were to be no temples, monasteries or pagodas on the itinerary (a request she felt compelled to double check with her head office). She put together an interesting almost pagoda-less day which entailed: floating gardens and stilt village, silversmiths, Indein village market and old 400 pagoda ruins from 17th century (for which thankfully we didn't have to remove our shoes), boat builders and cheroot makers, nice lunch at a place that rears Burmese cats (not for eating, just happens to be an odd side-line), silk and lotus fibre weaving, then more floating gardens and fishermen on the return to the hotel. The most prolific crop grown in the gardens is tomatoes. Almost hydroponic I suppose. Strange when you consider that we all left the tomato garnish on our lunch plates uneaten. The lotus fibre extraction is interesting but excruciatingly tedious. We watched an old guy work for 10 minutes to make a piece of thread about 150mm long and that was only the first part of a multi-stage process. The lotus fabric is 3 times the cost of silk! We did buy some rather nice silk and lotus scarves though. The Inle Lake View h