The Myanmar (Burma) trip started in Yangon. We stayed in the Sule Shangri-La hotel. The sightseeing day started at the fruit market, then pagodas, stupas, temples…

    

    

We visited Kyauk Htat Gyi Pagoda with a huge reclining Buddha image of over 230 feet long.

In the afternoon, we enjoyed the sunset at the world-famous Shwedagon Pagoda, the heart of Buddhist Myanmar. It is around 2,500 years old.   You can see the local worshippers praying and making offerings.

After Yangon, the capital city, we arrived to Bagan. What a charming old town!

Stupas, pagodas, a horse ride to see the sunset… amazing!

A half hour horse-cart ride brought us to Pyathada Pagoda, featuring Bagan’s largest terrace, from which people enjoying the magnificent views over Bagan’s vast temple area and the Ayeyarwaddy River, and the sunset.

Next stop is Mandalay, where we visited many craft shops:

• the laborious process of gold leaf beating, where gold is painstakingly hammered into tissue-thin squares.

• a craft workshop specializing in one of the arts for which the city is famous: marble carving

(even a dog is covered with the marble dust)

• bronze casting

• lacquer & woodcarving, and puppetry.

Shwenandaw Kyaung, the Golden Teak Monastery.

Continue to Kyauktawgyi Paya, famous for its gigantic seated Buddha, carved from a

single block of marble. Stop at Kuthodaw Paya, known also as “the world’s biggest

book”. Around the central stupa are miniature pavilions, each housing a slab of

marble numbering altogether 729, these slabs are inscribed with the entire Tripitkata

or Buddhist scriptures.

And who could imagine that the monks love to photograph each other…

Late this afternoon we visited  Mandalay Hill to watch another spectacular sunset

Here, in Mahagandayon Monastery, the residence to approximately 1,000 monks, we watched the monks’ procession and their last meal of the day (they fast until the next morning).

 

Then stopped and enjoy sunset at U-Bein Bridge spanning Taungthaman Lake. The bridge is over half a mile long and made almost entirely of teak.

Next stop is Kalaw, a former British hill station, also home to a variety of ethnic minorities including Shan, Pa-O, Danu, Padaung and others.

  

Visited a local school and the village. Amazing non-touristy place to take the pictures!

We also visited some local workshops where families produce Shan paper and parasols.

Then in afternoon we arrived to Nyaung Shwe, a small town at the entrance of Inle Lake, from where we have been transferred by long-tail boat to our hotel.

Next day we explored Inle Lake. The lake is more than 12 miles long and 6 miles wide, at an elevation of 2,280 feet above sea level.

Economically, Inle Lake has over the years become the vegetable and fruit garden for most of the country.

Here you can see the lake’s unique “leg rowers” – the Intha people row standing up with one leg wrapped around an oar, thus they are able to free their hands for fishing and tending to their gardens.

Well, it was a great trip with the wonderful group of people. We miss them already… hope we’ll have an opportunity to travel again together.