On a stroll along the lake our first evening there we were approached by several boat tour guides, and ended up choosing the most expensive one ($35) with Mr. Win.

He was pretty convincing that his trip would be the one to remember, especially a trip to the market that only happened once a week at a village at the end of the lake.

Mr. Win had wanted us to start really early, 7 o’clock or so, in order to hit the village market in full swing.

But we were not that good at getting up so early, and even though our hotel was extremely helpful in getting us off as quickly as possible, preparing us a quick pre-breakfast snack, we didn’t actually arrive at the lake until after 8.

The breakfast tid-bits prepared by our hotel, all savoury, not sweet.
Once we finally arrived at the wharf, we spent some time searching for Mr. Win amongst the throngs of guides milling along the edge of the lake, all of them calling out to us. 

As it was, he found us and we almost didn’t recognize him with the balaclava he was wearing against the 65° morning chill! 
Then we were off on an adventure down Inle Lake! These fishermen used the traditional method of poling a boat with their feet as they went searching for fish in the early morning.
Newer boats on the lake have noisy motors and kick up a real rooster tail, which makes me wonder how much they disturbed the fish and fishermen. (The rooster-tailed speed boat in the background is coming straight for us.)Here are some more first impressions of the lake in the not-so-early morning light…
We cruised past many villages, and as we went past Mr. Win described each village; each one has a particular speciality. The rice wine village smelled really good!
We also passed this overloaded boat full of unhappy people, making me wonder how happy everyone was with the government’s plan to fix the economy by bringing in tons of tourists.
More on magical Myanmar.