Bamboo in Myanmar

There are many varieties of bamboo and hundreds of uses. On our treks we often passed by large clumps, walked through bamboo forests or saw it towering in the distance.


All of the bamboo was of the clumping variety and consistently the older shoots in the center of the clump had been cut out, harvested for some use, so the stand forms a ring. Apparently the bamboo has to be just the right age, mature but not too dry, for it to be workable and to last. On inle lake some of the houses were entirely bamboo with huge timber types pounded deep not the mud as supports.



The walls are made of thin layers of bamboo woven like wicker.


To make the walls, twenty foot long bamboo stocks, which have dried for two years after cutting, are sectioned into three pieces, hammered flat and then split into two or three layers to make the thin strips for weaving.
In another area they make bamboo into beautiful umbrellas. Everything is done by hand. The parasol paper is made of wood, soaked beaten and pounded into pulp, reconstructed into paper and decorated by inserting flowers.


The ornate top and bottom pieces are formed on a foot powered lathe made with bent bamboo and a string.


The latch which looks and works just like a metal one, but is more dependable and easier to use, is made in about thirty seconds by carving a bamboo piece, cutting a matching hole in another and inserting the first one inside the second. We bought a beautiful medium sized one for three dollars. Here is four generations of the family that makes them.


Massive quantities of smaller bamboo is used to stake plants and form latices for them to grow on. The floating gardens at inle lake are anchored io the bottom mud every ten yards or so with tall, two or three inch wide, bamboo allowing the entire farm to float up and down the poles with the seasonal changes of the level of the lake.


Pagodas and many story high buildings are encased in bamboo scaffolding to facilitate repairs or construction.





There also is bamboo furniture,


baskets,


flooring,


corrals,


hearts for dinner, bridges, docks, roofs, electrical conduit, paper backing for gold leaf, tool handles, toys, etc..

When they use wood it is usually teak. The local trees are primarily topped for firewood and then allowed to grow out again so they appeared pollarded.



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Location:Ban Luang,Thailand