Inle Lake is the kind of place you can just relax, and after the bone-jarring, cramped, exhausting ride from Bagan, we did exactly that. Since Michael and Wayne, the two Malaysian guys were in a hurry, we booked a boat tour of the lake with them for the next day. The lake tour consisted of the usual temples, fishermen and souvenir shops but having Michael there to keep everyone laughing, even the souvenir sales staff soon forgot to sell and had a good time chatting and joking with us. We were somewhat apprehensive about visiting the Padaung long-neck women after learning of their plight. It seems they are brought from their villages to the lake to lure customers into souvenir shops. They are treated like zoo exhibits and would not have to bear the heavy brass rings around their necks if not for the attraction to tourists. A boatload of tourists that arrived around the same time as us at the store did indeed treat them like rare, slightly dangerous animals. After listening to their guide’s explanation whilst eyeing the women out of the corners of their eyes they snapped off a flurry of photos (at a distance) before leaving in a hurry. The Padaung women certainly didn’t look too happy about their situation. We weren’t sure what to do, but then Michael came to the rescue, handing over some sweets (he got for free at the restaurant we ate lunch at) and told them they should ‘be happy’ and that since the sweets had hearts on them, they should marry him. They were soon smiling and laughing with us. Even the stern oldest lady was grinning along after a while. We didn’t buy anything but when we left they all came out waved us off, telling us to come back soon.

Inle Lake has some good value accommodation and a lot of restaurants so we rested up and ate well during our 5 days stay. Michael and Wayne left on the 3rd morning so the last two days Yoshi and I pretty much hibernated. Whilst Inle Lake is no the most special of destinations, it is relaxing and if effort is made to really interact with the people there it can be a great experience. We found the people of Inle Lake to be the friendliest we had met in Myanmar and although the boat tour was nothing special in itself, the people we met during it were really wonderful. Finally we decided to move on and caught the 20 hour bus ride back to Yangon. We were quite surprised when after 13 hours, at 3AM, we were suddenly told we had arrived in Yangon. It was nice to have a shorter bus ride than expected but rather bewildering to be woken up and have to blunder around in the dark. Since we had booked our hotel in Yangon we weren’t too worried and eventually negotiated a taxi to take us to town. Not long after checking in we were both comatose in bed.