At Ngyshwe a village on the banks of Inle lake we said goodbye to our Jomaine, Pou Pou and one member of the group. However after sleeping side by side for the last few nights the rest of us had bonded and so decided to stick together a bit longer. Matt (AUS) Matilde (FR) and me in one room and the German girls in another.

Inle lake is beautiful but huge at over 13 miles long and 7 miles wide, so we did the necessary hiring a boat for the day and went off exploring. We saw the famous leg rowing fisherman (pictures explain much better than I can) the floating gardens, the stilt houses and the factories that all exist on the lake. We checked out some silver smiths, longi weaving factories, and cigarette workshops and even a monastery where the monks apparently have taught the cats to jump ( I thought they always knew how) but they weren't up for performing when we visited. We did however manage to catch the sunset on the lake which was spectacular!

That night we went to a real hole in the wall restaurant for dinner, which was essentially eating on some plastic chairs in a family's living room. They old couple that ran it spoke no English but were so welcoming and showed us the contents of all the pots - who needs a menu! I missed our cook Pou Pou already as it was clear that we were back to Burmese fare (oil overload) But my dining experience couldn't have been better, as the owners grand-daughter took a shine to me. She was such a girly girl in her pink princess dress and she decided I was her new doll, so started to dress me up. I got a furry blanket as a cape, held together by a Canadian flag pin some tourist had clearly lost in there, then she did my pretend make up and finished me off with two toy keyrings for earrings- I was a picture! But she was so sweet and proud of her handiwork. Her grand father was horrified when he saw wha she was up to, full of apolgies to me and scolding her- she wasn't in the least bit bothered- highly entertaining!

Previously in Bagan I'd tried some Burmese wine and surprisingly it wasn't too bad. The vineyard it comes from was in this area, so Matt, Matilde and I hired some bikes and went in search of it. We went through some really nice villages en route and managed to find the vineyard. I was under the impression you could do wine tasting and visit the vineyard etc as you do in other countries but - no. Its essentially just a nice setting to drink the wines but hey I was not complaining after a day bike riding I was up for wine in any form!

Whilst in Inle an important date was coming up... St Patrick's day. I managed to convince Matt & Matilde to stick around an extra day and help me celebrate and we even hunted out 3 restaurants that served alcohol so the pub crawl was on! Unfortunately I managed to get sick the night before and only managed to raise half a glass to old St Pat about 8 that evening, but it had been nice to spend an extra day chilling in Inle.

Mat & Matilde were being much too hardcore for me and were heading for another trek in Hispaw so we went our seperate ways and I headed to the Golden Rock!