21st - 24th April

We happily leave this area of Myanmar to hopefull somewhere a little cooler...We travel by public bus 20hrs leaving at 04:30 we were lucky enough to a beautiful sunrise creeping up above the mountians.. The bus is packed every seat taken people sitting in the aisle on plastic chairs we stop only twice for refreshments and to stretch those tired bones.. As Sunset is coming upon us we are still on the hot sticky bus.

We are dropped off at the junction leading towards Inle Lake the taxi boys are there waiting for us.. another 16km to go .. We stop at the first Guest House anything will do toninght..

The morning we are off to take a boat ride across the lake The lake is massive and supports over 64 floating villages.. We visited many of the villages with cottage industries Cigar making, silk weaving, jewelry making, paper making, all extremely interesting and with the heat down a few degrees makes it much more pleasant. We share our boat with a young burmese couple who are to be married the following weekend.� They are only allowed this time as holiday so they have their honeymoon first!! We had such fun with them we invited then to join us for supper... We learnt so much from them about the politics and life here... enough said!!! not allowed to make comment!!!

Day 3.. We hire a guide to visit a monestry high in the mountains on our way we take tea with a monk who lives in a cave..�We reach the monestry after 4hrs of trekking our guide cooks us lunch of rice and cold veggie curry.. We laze around and wait for food taking in some spectacular views on the mountain range and the lake... Our afternoon takes us down to the far end of the lake where we take a boat back along the lake to our guest house...

We have now walked for around 7hrs the locals are tlaking and laughing with our guide they are amazed we have been so far.. not bad for oldies eh!!!

Next Stop  Yangon