Inle lake

Well the next day we heard that is was a good idea to take the boat to all the sights. The spanegian pair had said that it was their best day in all on Burma. So we booked the boat to take us out at 8:30am. As we went out to breakfast however there was another couple just about to leave on a boat of their own. It would've been a little helpful if the hotel would have maybe let us know that and we could have gone with them. Oh well, at breakfast we grabbed this socks and sandals japanese guy so it was a little less expensive. The day was spent in these comfy seat visiting the many sites around the village. We first checked out the floating "market" which used to be a market. I've seen it on an old picture postcard so i know it's true but by we have come here too late and now it is really just a big souvenir boat mob. We then visited the village of Indein with it's close packed actient, yup you guessed it STUPAS. It was pretty neat though as most of them were left to whatever state that weather and time has transformed them into. We then had some lunch and visited the most sacred temple in the Shan state with their famous 4 buddha images that since being covered with so much gold leaf have now tranformed into egg images but you get the idea. From there we visited the factories for the cigars as well as for boats and and another for silver jewerly. On the way back to town we were able to catch the sunset before returning to our hotel. Another nice dinner and we were back to bed for a sleep after the long day.

The next day was our journey to Yangon which was supposed to take 18 hours. But of course that didn't go that way. We first had to take the pick up truck bus thing to the larger town of Shwenyaung. And there we had to argue with the dude as he wanted more money from epopel to leave right away but the foreigners held out and when we threatened to go and share a taxi then they said yes. Of course from there the bus was maybe 1.5 hours late and we were told that we weren't on the first bus but the second one. Fine, 2 stops later we are told that we are supposed to be on the first one not the second one. Well ok then, i can see how this is going. Of course the first bus was not as nice and we soon learned was in much better condition. Broke down once, got fixed enough to carry on and then broke down for good. Not sure what was going on as they probably told the people in Burmese. So by this time it's 3am and we are told that it will be a 5 hour wait for the next bus to come get us. Sweet. Ok so it wasn't 5 hours but a bunch of hours anyways and the next bus was so much worse than the one we had. they pretty much commendeered a local bus, kicked most of the people off it and loaded us on. Another many many hours and we finally arrive in Yangon. 18 hours? More like 26. But that's Myanmar for ya. And for those of you who think that all this complaining is because i'm grumpy and not having a good time then your totally wrong. This is part of it and it's fun telling people the stories. See Laura's comment.