Messages from (the) Seoul: Inle Lake again

So today I want to write about the highlight of my trip to Burma. We set off with our rented bikes and packed lunch which consisted of a watermelon and a papaya. We cycled for ages and the road never got that close to the Lake so we kept going, I don't know how far we went but it felt like a very long way on the poor quality bikes. At some point we got off the main road and followed a couple of tracks to try to get to the lake shore, and have a wee swim. Just when we were going to give up we were cycling through this tiny random village when we saw some locals so we gave them the universal swimming body language and they smiled and said yeh,. We followed them for a bit and they brought us to a couple of boats which they took us out on the lake with. It was a beautiful day and the reflection on the lake was like glass. They paddled round a bit but it wasn’t that deep for swimming and there was quite a lot of weeds and stuff so I didn't bother going in. We were content with relaxing while they checked the nets they had left for fish (in one of them they caught a couple of fish). Afterwards we went back to the village and we were invited to have tea with them. We brought our watermelon and papaya and before long the whole village of 20 or so people were crammed into this tiny hut. We stayed for awhile and took some photos of all of us, then headed back on our bikes. That night we got some of the photo’s developed and the next morning we took a taxi out to the village and got the driver to translate some stuff for us, we shared some food and we gave them the prints of the photos we had taken the day before – it was really special!