Nyaungshwe village, Inle Lake, Myanmar.
Nyaungshwe village is a remote village on the Lake Inle. It is very quiet, peaceful place. There are not many foreigners and local people have not yet been spoiled by tourists.
The most popular tourist attraction is a tour on a motor boat across the Lake. Locals live in floating villages where wooden houses stand on stilts right in the water. Residents grow tomatoes and onions in the floating gardens. In a forge men make hand-knives and daggers. Tourists can learn how to make Burmese cigars (not easy to make a smooth cigar with necessary thickness and length and make it without falling apart having it fall apart). We had a lunch in the floating restaurant, where they brought us tea bags made in Singapore with instruction in Russian :)
Inle Lake is the only place in the world where locals move their boats in unique way. A man on a stern balance on one leg and rows with the second, both his hands free.
The local market is flooded with people in colorful clothes who come from different tribe villages located on the surrounding hills. We even met famous long-neck Burmese women there.
The Burmese are very impressive even in the cities. Apart from the fact that both women and men wear skirts here they put tanakha on the face - powdered bark of sandalwood (I suspect that not only the sandal). It protects the skin from sunburn and looks nice (probably by local standards). They also chew “betel” - betel plant leaves with pieces of areca nut and spices inside. Betel is used as a stimulant and very popular in Burma, most of people have lips and teeth stained red.
In addition to the classical excursion across the lake, a local woman took us by a boat to a village which stands on the water. We were sitting on the bottom of a small wooden boat while she took us through the narrow "streets" between little houses. We could look into the open doors, people smiled at us, kids waved their hands, our driver taught us some basic phrases in Burmese language…
In Nyaungshwe we met Barry. He has an ability to tell stories in the interesting ways. Barry comes to Nyaungshwe every year to take a break from all the benefits of civilization in a simple Burmese village.
We have just arrived in this wonderful place and planned to take bikes for rent. Barry also took a bike and offered to show us around. It should be noted that we could barely keep up with a 72 years old US-New Zealand man. Later in the evening he told us about his life, why he doesn't like Americans, and how he moved to NZ, about his women, losses and his home. My girlfriend is a master to ask of asking questions like "what is the purpose of life" or "what is love". So we talked about life in general, about the difference in mentalities, about love, about local people and rules. It was Barry who planted in me the idea to go to a Buddhist temple for the short course of meditation. He so skillfully and easily weaved words into stories that we wanted to know what he was doing in life. We discovered he was a writer.
It was Nyaungshwe where I cut my hair. In the village we could find only one barbershop. A classic Asian style barbershop :)
I asked to cut my hair extremely short with hairclipper. There was no electricity during the day and within 10 minutes two Burmese brought a huge generator specifically to cut my hair. In the next 10 minutes I become almost bald.
…I've been trying to recover as it was before for nearly a year now...
And finally in Nyaungshwe I became a fan of Burmese tea. In Myanmar’s tea shops when you order just tea they bring to your small plastic table a variety of pastries, cakes and cookies. And then At the end you pay for the tea and what you had ate you have eaten. Good marketing solution :)
A couple of weeks ago I tried the Mongolian tea which moved replaced the Burmese from in the first place in my personal top list.