Inle Lake, Burma: Walking on water

In Inle Lake, you live your entire life on water. You collect valuable lake-weed.

You even create hydroponic farms that float on water.

Riding the boats, the only way to get around to see the Inle Lake community.

Mom and child, welcoming us to use their bathroom, as part of our seeing fish farming and cigar rolling.

Fish farming net technique

3 generations of women rolling cigars, a Burmese addiction

A young student of cigar clipping

A blacksmith shop. Like most workshops you visit on Inle Lake, they are usually only in action when tourists come by.

Blacksmithed swords, fascinating my kids

Pao-O ethnic women from the surrounding mountainside, riding boats to pray at the Buddhist temple, with their colorful towels wrapped around their heads. Click HERE to see another series of Buddhist golden-topped stupas video-ed from our loud long boat.

Anyone female is not allowed to go up to the inner sanctum of the temple, where the precious, oft-donated, gold leaf is pressed upon the now-unrecognizable Buddhas

Uh oh, this monk stopped Griffin the moment he set foot in the inner sanctum since he thought Griffin was a long-haired girl. At this point, Griffin and all of us just laugh, whereas he used to nearly cry with frustration and embarrassment, since he's been blocked, chided, and chased out by monks and more all over Asia, thinking they were protecting their spiritual center from the sneaky X chromosome.

A picture on the wall of the annual Inle Lake ritual using the Buddhist gold-covered temple artifacts, carting them around from one community in Inle Lake to another, with great pomp and fanfare

Our guide showing us the part of Inle Lake the military government allows us to tourist, above the stick he is holding, and the part of Inle Lake we are prohibited from visiting due to stirrings of ethnic uprisings by ethnic minority groups below the stick. Of course, that just made me want to visit the taboo even more.

A gorgeous Burmese girl at the temple, contrasted with Boom's football garb and aggressive chasing of the pigeons. The girl's parents shared pigeon food with our kids.

I love this -- it is a school bus! Or, rather, a school-boat.

The controversial giraffe-necked women.

The controversy, as articulated by Lonely Planet, is that the girls are now being forced to be giraffe necked, by putting rings around their neck, leaving them to be unable to hold up their necks without the rings, putting them at risk of death -- all for tourist purposes.

This giraffe necked women definitely doesn't do any weaving, when we tourists aren't around. She just spends all her time trying to hold her head up. Our local guide argues vehemently against Lonely Planet - he says that giraffe necked women are very happy, no uncomfortable at all, and that they can all take their rings on and off without threat of death or injury. Click HERE for a video of this giraffe necked woman weaving.

The famous cat-jumping monastery

Gorgeous Buddha in the jumping cat monastery

A very lazy jumping cat monk getting his feet massaged. Once he saw me taking a photo of this, he shook their hands off his soft feet. It felt like such a languid, passive, fat, twisted environment in this over-touristed temple, with fame having taken the monks far off their spiritual path.

One of the celebrity jumping cats, tired like the monks. Note the ring they jump through along with the cat kibble used as reward for jumping, in the white container. Click HERE to see the monastery staff make the cats jump through the hoop.

The front of the cat monastery

The famous Inle Lake one-legged paddling maneuver - click HERE to see the one leg in action, while a fisherman also collects his fishing nets!

Scintillating, sparkling water. Our guide is part of a eco-movement trying to preserve clean Inle Lake water.

Inle Lake school on stilts, and its school bus - boat

Inle Lake School, with a soccer field they planted into the lake with care

School kids, with an actual white board, rather than the traditional Burmese chalkboard

Peeking in the window of the school, taking notes in their Burma journals

Nearby houses on stilts

A real lotus weaving factory, multiple factory buildings on site. Gorgeous yet too expensive for us to buy!

Dyed lotus, pulled from lotus root

Lotus dye

One of my favorite weaving photos. She would scuttle the shuttlecock to and fro, with this brilliant blue weave thread

More dye, I love the colors in this metallurgy-patina'ed bowl

The coveted lotus thread

Lotus woven into the silk material

A hunchback weaver, reluctant to entertain tourist kids and photographers

God, doesn't Grif look gorgeous? Our long boat.

Our favorite hotel in Burma. A must. Very well run by a Frenchman who's somehow lived and succeeded at business in Burma for over 15 years, with two boys from his marriage with a local Burmese women. They live in Yangon and he can recommend the best, most sanitary tea house near his home in Yangon too!

One house for us parents. Another for the kids!

The front of the hotel, lakeside. Most rooms have outrageous views. Since we were there during monsoon season, we got the pick and choice of the rooms, being only one of a few people staying there.

View from the balcony of our Inle Lake suite on stilts. Ahhhh...I relax just thinking of sitting there for hours one afternoon, resting after a lot, and I mean a LOT, of intense travel in Burma.