There was an American biologist there, who graduated from UC Davis, representing the Audubon Society to survey the endangered Spoonbilled Sandpiper.
The foods in the Village markets are fascinating, strange unidentifiable fruits, vegetables and prepared foods in amongst chili peppers, rice and fish.
The most popular Myanmar dishes are "curries" which are meat stews- chicken, pork, beef or fish seasoned with turmeric, garlic, tomato and chili peppers. This is served with 8-10 side dishes containing strange mostly inedible condiments, pickled herbs, garlic and pepper sauces and the worst- a puce colored paste made from dried fish and chili powder. They also favor a spicy soup with a base of dried fish that we found challenging to eat. Rice is served with every meal, and green tea or Myanmar beer.
Cigarettes are not too common, but they do smoke cheroots which are the size of a small cigar, and made from a mixture of tobacco and other fruity flavors, spices or star anise. Very popular is betel nut, a seed from a palm, which is chewed and may have a minor stimulant effect.
To chew it, the nut is coarsely chopped, mixed with lime (calcium carbonate?) tobacco, and spices and wrapped in a leaf to make bundle the size of a walnut, which stored in the cheek, chewed and the red juice is periodically spit out. The nut is bright red and stains teeth so that chewers have a rather gruesome bloody smile.
The next stop was the mountain town of Kalaw. A very nice destination up a very bad road. Heavy, overloaded trucks and buses take their toll, and road repair is a slow and painstaking job when everything is done by hand. The women carry the rocks to the road in baskets on their heads.
The men pour the tar over the rocks out of tin cans full of holes. Since the government does not repair roads, private companies do the repairs, hiring locals (often women) to do the labor. The going wage is three to four dollars a day. To pay for this all vehicles pay 25 or 50 cents to pass through.
From Kalaw we did a four day trek through mountains to Inle lake, then a few days at the lake. The first few days of the hike was through some beautiful original forest with good birdwatching, tea plantations (a kind of camellia) and many small villages inhabited by different ethnic tribes, each with their own language and style of dress.
We spent the first few nights with villagers in their homes, plus our own guide, a cook and porter for our bags.
We had great food, all of which was carried or purchased from locals and cooked over the kitchen fire by our cook. Our guide Koko, age 24, was very nice and had passable english.
We were schooled in some of the teachings and history of buddhism. This was needed to survive four days with only wood or bamboo "port a potty" - like bathrooms, without electricity or running water. Oh yeh, no toilet either, just a hole and piece of wood to stand on.The last night we spent in a monastery, which was quite interesting, especially when the Monks started chanting at 5 AM.
The villagers have been amused by our birdwatching obsession, I showed one village host my bird book, and he paged through and pointed out the birds he liked to eat! No wonder birding is so hard here. We have also seen barbecued songbirds for sale in the markets.
Inle lake is very interesting and scenic, but not the bird life you would expect, I think because of so many people/ fishing and heavy pollution. There were great kingfishers, herons and a roost of glossy ibis. There are many small villages on bamboo pools surrounding the edge of lake, houses are bamboo on stilts, pit toilets go straight into the lake. The people are washing themselves and clothes a few feet away. No running water or evidence of filtration systems and limited electricity. The main diet is fish from the lake, rice, soy, tomatoes and legumes. Inle lake is famous for it's fisherman, who row teak canoes with one foot while standing on the other.
This frees up their hands to pull manipulate their fishing net. It is very scenic and impressive, especially to see how nonchalantly the young children and women do it to get around the village. Another cool and unique feature are the miles of floating gardens around the edge of the lake, formed of rows of composting water plants, and planted with vegetables. This system of aquaculture supplies much of the tomato crop for the country.
We stayed at a beautiful hotel on the lake, the shower was quite welcome after our trek during which we relied exclusively on handiwipes for hygiene.
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Location:Inle Lake
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