Inle lake and Thingyan

Nyaungshwe is a small tourist town set on the banks of Inle lake, in a lush valley at 900m above sea level. This was our destination for the water festival(Thingyan).
The journey to Nyaungshwe, was as good festival training as we could wish. We left at silly o'clock in the morning, I sat with bleary eyes, watching the bus being loaded with bags, chickens, people and more people, cuddling my camera bag pretending to be awake.
As soon as we got moving, my sleeping person impression soon came to an end. This was due to the sleeping Englishman leaning on my left shoulder, the shouting conductor standing right in front of me but mainly due to the violent bumping around of the bus, and continual sounding of horn. The horn, of course, is mainly used to indicate, warn or just scare western tourists on bicycles.
The conductor was a chirpy little fella, with a mouth constantly full of 'beetle nut', which is a leaf wrapped around a small parcel of reddish nuts and is chewed, like chewing tobacco, by most of the male population in Myanmar. The end result of this constant chewing is constant spitting, and the end result of the constant spitting is thousands of red spit marks all over the street.
The other end result for the chewer is addiction, rotten teeth and a pretty scary grin when saying hello. So between chewing, spitting and climbing up and down from the bus roof, to collect money from the other bus load of people on the roof, he also started to prepare us for the festival, by throwing buckets of water at oncoming buses.
At this point I will give a brief description of the water festival...............basically, everyone throws water at everyone else!! Essentially, Thingyan is to mark the end of the dry season and the coming of the rainy season, and is the Bhuddist new year, which is celebrated all around South East Asia. The festival lasts for about three days and, if you're outside of your house, then you are fair game.
Which brings us back to throwing water out of a bus. I, of course, am slighly overzealous with my preparations, having convinced all in my party to purchase primary and auxillary water pistols, and find myself throwing giggling like a child and hurling buckets of water innocent bystanders. This is apparently accepted, as all the children start the festival a day early, and I will be counting myself as a child for the next four days.
The only exception to the water rule, are monks. (ie. Don't throw water at monks Mark!)
The water missiles reign in and are constantly dispatched everytime we pass another bus or pick up taxi. We refuel at every given opportunity, and drinking water bottles soon become the weapon of choice.
So the journey goes in a flash.........a 10 hour flash. Or should I say....... splash......?
We arrive at Nyaungshwe and jump in a remarkably well looking Ford Zephyr, which speeds us to our hotel, where we are to spend the next few days. The staff there are young, friendly and in possession of a very sarcastic sense of humour, which I welcomed fully.
The next day the festival begins and, from 8am onwards, the streets are full of roaming gangs of children, armed to the gills with water pistols, buckets and anything that can contain water and then discharge it with great efficiency.
So it becomes quite clear that I am not to go anywhere without getting drenched. We spend the first two hours having water fights with the local gang of kids, outside our hotel. This soon progesses to wandering around town, with water pistol strapped around my shoulder in a 'John Rambo' style.........not my words, those of the local people.
Boosted by this image of indestructability, I headed into town. Sometimes we were warned, but most of the time a bucket load of water would just come flying in from any direction.
Rambo quickly dissappeared and turned into the giggling child again, and the child soon got tired and went back to his hotel for a nice, hot cup of tea.

I will finish this episode at a later date, as happy hours just started and my bus leaves in an hour, hopefully a happy one.