Inle lake to Yangon

Day two of the festival is spent on the lake itself. We start early to make the most of the morning light, something I'm doing on a regular basis for those sceptics out there. The lake is huge, 22km long and then feeds into an even bigger lake beyond that. There are roughly 200 villages on Inle lake, most of which are on stilts or float.
We blast past wading water buffalo and local fisherman hunting for catfish, past the occassional government building and head towards the main body of the villages. The people here have an unatural ability to make standing, precariously, on the edge of a boat look like second nature, epecially the children who hop from vessel to vessel......namely ours when they are trying to sell us their local wares.
On the subject of local wares, we spend the following three hours floating from shop on stilts to shop on stilts.
Several more Wayne Rooney conversations and we're having lunch.
The highlight of lunch was my first Asian monsoon and a grub in the Swedish girls salad. The Swedish were good at complaining about pretty much everything, so they had a field day with the grub incident. Fortunately, the sound of monsoon on corrugated iron roof, I have discovered, drowns out the sound of whinging swede quite harmoniously, and nodded throught the whole thing and then drank another cup of tea.
Only a couple of times that day were we ambushed, mainly by kids on overhead bridges, and my improvised water resistant camera housing stood up to the test.
The following day was the last of the water festival, and it would appear that every effort was concentrated on getting everybody wetter and, if at all possible, drunker than the previous two.
There was nothing subtle about the last day, with water trucks driving around spraying gallons over passers by, every building armed with a hose pipe and those who felt that they hadn't quite had enough to drink the previous two days drinking themselves into the nearest ditch.
Finally the festival was over, and we could leave the guesthouse without having to dart for cover every five steps. A few resiliant children put up a brave struggle, but, as we know all too well with christmas, they will have to wait until next year.
I seemed to have found myself stuck in Nyaungshwe with two grumpy swedes, who I will no longer mention apart from I will be staging a one year boycott with Ikea on the basis of their miserable behaviour, and needed something to do.
I booked a two day trek with a local guide. With much vigour, I set out the next morning to ascend the local hills, 1500m, which was only 600m higher than the lake. What, at first, appeared to be a series of shapes on the horizon, soon materialised into a gruelling mountain climb.
So maybe gruelling is a touch dramatic, but I certainly found it hard going, with my guide bouncing from rock to rock ahead of me pointing out trees and butterflies, while I was trying to count the floaty white bubbles that were appearing before my eyes. I of course put this comparable difference of pace down to the large camera bag on my back and the lack of recent training that I haven't done (aside from the one small jog in Bagan, which almost resulted in a heart complaint).
Despite our, very apparent fitness levels, he was very patient and we reached the monastry at the summit just as the first rain of the day came in.
After some lunch, we sat down with some locals and, suprise suprise, the conversation of football and Manchester came up. Through the interpretation of my guide, one of the men likened me to a Manchester United player, which was received as a compliment, only to be quickly followed by the all too familiar words, "Wayne Rooney". I'm fairly sure he wasn't making a direct comparison, although I didn't need much encouragement to pack my bag and ready myself for the next leg of the trek. I mean, Wayne Rooney......thanks a lot.
If that wasn't enough, he then pinched my arm and said something, which was translated(and I'm sure incorrectly translated) as 'you're fat'.
I needed no more prompting, and was ready to go in five minutes.

Still reeling from the ludicrous comparison between young Rooney and myself, we pressed on through various hilltribe villages, where I played football with wide eyed children, in awe of the large white man displaying his uncanny resemblence to Wayne Rooney, through the medium of football............hardly. I think it's fair to say that my grace and poise on the rugby field does not carry across to football. Either way, I think they got the message, so I gave them all some sweets instead.
I spent the night in a village, overlooking the lake and valley below, with my guide and a very friendly family, who were more than eager to tell give me a brief introduction to Buddhism over dinner.
The next day was for more pleasant. It was downhill. I actually remember walking back to the town. Unfortunately, most of my buddhism lesson appears to have been erased overnight, but I got the general idea.

We left for Yangon the next day, and due to the lack of public transport, acquired the title of longest hotel residents in the history of the 'Bright Hotel'. Wonderful, some sort of record achieved then. Holding back the tears, I waved goodbye to our hosts and made for the taxi rank.
The term taxi would not apply to the same vehicle in the UK. In fact, I'm fairly sure that the term 'vehicle' would not apply to this....'vehicle', in the UK. At best, it was some sort of pick up. No bigger than an average hatchback car, but with Tardis like qualities that enabled it to carry eighteen people and their luggage. I passed the time by trying to introduce a small chorus of 'swing low sweet chariot'. This fell on deaf ears, so I engaged in conversation with a local man, while, uncomfortably, trying to avert my eyes from his breast feeding wife, sat between us.
This one hour bone shaking ride was nothing compared to the twenty hour 'busathon' we were about to endure.
The journey to Yangon, was spent trying to keep the old lady, sat next to me , from passing out, trying not to stand on the child lying underneath my feet and locating fresh plastic bags for another breast feeding mother, sat nearby, who was travel sick the entire way. The journey was overnight, hot, dusty, cramped and, to cap it all, we were blessed with Thai karaoke all the way to Yangon.
Finally in Yangon, I located a hotel and set about hibernating for 24hrs.
Due to my unintended length of stay in Inle, I only had a day in Yangon and flew out to Chang Mai the next day.