{"id":1312,"date":"2019-02-17T05:27:50","date_gmt":"2019-02-17T05:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=1312"},"modified":"2026-08-20T08:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T08:13:10","slug":"myanmar-oz-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=1312","title":{"rendered":"MYANMAR & OZ. 16"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now I’ve really got to make stuff up!\u00a0 It’s Tuesday 19 February and we are at Wangaratta.\u00a0 Problems with photos locked inside broken phones and lack of internet – not to mention being rather busy doing all these things I’m not telling you about – all conspire…<\/p>\n

Anyway, back to Inle Lake for our next expedition by boat.\u00a0 They trip started well enough, leaving our lovely hotel…<\/p>\n

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… with storks watching us…<\/p>\n

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All very organised – but before we had gone a mile down the channel our boat started making a funny “noise”.\u00a0 Best classified as noticeably silent!\u00a0 We had broken down.\u00a0 Still there were four boats and between them they had enough tools to do a major engine overhaul.\u00a0 I counted two spanners, a pointy thing that might have started life as a screw driver and seven hammers – the last of these being the tool of choice!<\/p>\n

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Ten minutes and two false starts later we were back in business.\u00a0 Bang, bang, bang…<\/p>\n

So, we were due to go to Indein Village.\u00a0 It’s miles up a narrow channel across what became dry land.\u00a0 We had to “shoot” several “weirs” on the way.<\/p>\n

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These were bamboo obstructions put there to maintain the river level.\u00a0 Probably necessary to maintain “navigation” as the water level in the lake has fallen.\u00a0 The maximum height of the weirs was only 20 or 30 cms.\u00a0 But hitting them at speed so the driver could get his prop out of the water as we hit the bamboo sticks was quite exciting!\u00a0 The bows rose majestically before falling back with spray going everywhere.<\/p>\n

Anyway, it was Saturday and EVERYBODY was doing their weekly wash (clothes and bodies!).\u00a0 There were young lads, old lads, young ladies, grandmothers – and possibly a few diplomats (I put that bit in for Penny, should she chance to read it!!).\u00a0 Everyone was at it.\u00a0 Washing their longis in water which had just washed 20 others upstream!<\/p>\n

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But the purpose of this visit was – yep, you guessed.\u00a0 Another temple!\u00a0 But first we had to run the gauntlet of the local scarf saleswomen.\u00a0 Anyone showing the merist hint of a smidgen of the possibility of interest was immediately surrounded by a jostling crowd of young ladies.<\/p>\n

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I could get quite used to being slightly interested in starting a scarf collection!<\/p>\n

Anyway, this temple\/pagoda was going to be our last opportunity to catch verrucas – so it had better be worth it.\u00a0 And boy, was it good.\u00a0 Called\u00a0Shwe Inn Thein Pagodas (or posssibly\u00a0Taunggyi, I think).\u00a0 About 1000 Stupas are being rescued from the Myanmar jungle.\u00a0 Many have been restored…<\/span><\/p>\n

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… and many more are in various stages of recovery…<\/p>\n

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but many more are just piles of rubble awaiting – well, just awaiting, really!<\/p>\n

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The whole collection was absolutely stunning and well worth the Battle of the Scarves and the 20 minute walk through the forest to reach it.\u00a0 The actual temple itself was a good example of a relatively untouristic place.\u00a0 Everything being relative, of course!!\u00a0 It had standard “men-only near the Buddha policy”, the occasional monk and the mandatory temple cat.<\/p>\n

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The approach covered stairway to the pagoda.<\/p>\n

After this we saw people earning their $3 a day turning blocks of silver (1 kg is worth some $516 c.f. gold which would be about $41,200 for the same weight)…<\/p>\n

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into fine jewellery…<\/p>\n

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And our final visit of the trip was to a group of local tribes-women who had the inexplicable and rather gruesome custom of wearing brass rings round their necks to stretch them unnaturally.<\/p>\n

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The incredible thing we discovered, leaving aside th fact that this custom actually still existed in the country, was the weight of the rings.\u00a0 It should be noted that they are not individual rings but rather a continuous spiral (or, strictly speaking, a helix) of brass.\u00a0 The number of “rings” is increased with the wearer’s age.\u00a0 Between the age of 9 to 20 years, rings are increased from about 13 to 25.\u00a0 The weight moves up from about 4 to 10 kg!!!\u00a0 That’s more than my hand luggage weighs – usually!\u00a0 And I bet they have trouble with metal detectors at the airport.\u00a0 One story we were given is that it stops tigers biting them on the neck!\u00a0 Well, maybe, but they do have other soft bits for the animals to chew.\u00a0 There are, in fact, no wild tigers left in Myanmar nowadays – but nobody seems to have told these ladies!<\/p>\n

Tomorrow we are out of here…\u00a0 but that’s a whole new story of unbelievable proportions!<\/p>\n

But before I finish this I have a question for you.\u00a0 Which is heavier a pound of gold or a pound of feathers?<\/p>\n

a)\u00a0 a pound of gold<\/p>\n

b)\u00a0 a pound of feathers<\/p>\n

c)\u00a0 \u00a0possibly they weigh the same!<\/p>\n

Please leave your answer as a reply to this message.<\/p>\n

Answer will be provided in a later post – if necessary!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now I’ve really got to make stuff up!\u00a0 It’s Tuesday 19 February and we are at Wangaratta.\u00a0 Problems with photos locked inside broken phones and lack of internet – not to mention being rather busy doing all these things I’m… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-myanmar-2019"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1312"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8145,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312\/revisions\/8145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}