There was a heavy mist the following morning which took a long while to burn off so the early photos are all a bit flat. I've also used photos taken at different times during the day so the lighting/colour rather inconsistent
We spent the day on and around the lake visiting the various villages which look quite amazing, mostly built on stilts some look extremely precarious whereas others are pristine. They even manage to grow crops - we saw many floating tomato plants.
The first craft we watched was lotus weaving, they extract the fibrous substance from the stalk and create beautiful silk - the fabric is very sought after and considerably more expensive that normal silk (which they also weave here)
We went to a "local market" but apart from the usual foodstuffs they were only selling hideous tourist stuff, brass/wooden statues, masks, bead jewellery etc. We enjoyed walking around for 1/2 an hour, bought some satsumas and managed a few sneaky shots especially of the tea towel head women (Ian's phrase).
This one literally was "shot from the hip", the woman heard the shutter click and looked up but I'd already gone past and Ian wasn't carrying a camera so she was rather confused.
We visited were some Padaung Long Necked Women and after I’d had assurances from Nylon that this wasn’t just a tourist spectacle I photographed a couple (having taken a firm stance in Thailand 13 years ago when I refused to walk round a Padaung village as I believed they were only given land as refugees from Burma on the agreement they "entertained" tourists)
The Intha fishermen also have this rather weird way of bringing fish/crabs to the surface - they whack the water with their oar
Our dragon boat driver was really good at slowing/stopping for me to take photos but sadly didn't know that I preferred the light behind me so a lot of what I could take ended up as silhouettes and probably unusable.
Lake Inle is incredibly beautiful in all kinds of light/weather and the photos really don't do it justice.
