Daily Archives: June 9, 2014

Inle lake to Bagan

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After taking the train to get to Inle lake I was determined to never see the inside of a Burmese train again!  That left 2 options to get to Bagan; a 12 hour bus journey, or a 1 hour flight.  Asking around at a few travel agents, the price seems to be fixed at $89 including a $2 fuel surcharge.  The choice seemed clear!

Myanmar has quite a few domestic airlines with most of them having part ownership with an international corporation.  I’m flying Air Mandaley which gets it’s aircraft and maintenance from France. None of the airlines can fly internationally because they don’t follow IATA safety regulations, but since there is so little air traffic in Myanmar, the risk seems minimal.  I think a bigger risk is taking a taxi to the airport to catch your flight!
The terminal in Heho is very basic.  There are no baggage belts.  Instead, a member of airline staff hand delivers luggage to you.  There are no seats assigned to you, just scramble seating like on European low cost airlines.  I got a paper ticket that was hand written and copied with carbon paper.
With the tourist economy growing so fast in Myanmar, we may very well see the airline sector growing very fast too in the next five to ten years.  Let’s just hope they they put safety first above profit.

The cows of Inle

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The Inle area is surrounded by many minority tribal groups.  Most of these live on the hillside in small rustic huts and survive by farming the land and raising some cattle or sheep.  Once or twice a month they may come into a major centre for supplies.  In the wet season this can be more problematic as the trails throughout the hills wash out.

Most of these trails are not very well marked, so I hired a guide.  The cost for the day was 10$ for a guide and lunch.  I was in a small group with 2 Americans.  I always wonder what kind of skills a trekking guide has, but I have always assumed that I probably know more about hiking than they do!  This time I think I was correct.
The dirt track here is the trail, so it’s pretty hard to get lost.  About one hour into the trek we had just ascended a steep section and the guide was about 30 metres in front of me, when he suddenly turns around and yells “oh f$#k” (this turned out to be his best English), and starts running toward me.  
When he realizes the trail is too narrow to pass, the fearless guide decides he would run off the trail and down the mountain!  Once he is out of the way I saw what he was running from, a cow.  Having had some experiance with cows before, I jumped up with my arms is the air and yelled at the thing.  As expected, the cow was not big on confrontations and ran in the opposite direction.
The poor guide clambered back up the hill looking very red.  After that we spent most of the afternoon making fun of the guide for being afraid of a cow!  Goodness knows what would of happened if we ran into something really dangerous!