We were headed towards the weekly market at a village at the end of Inle Lake and arrived to a boat traffic jam, filled with mostly locals and not tourists, just as Mr. Win had promised.

Where the boats landed there was mud with garbage and cow shit everywhere. But looming over the village was a temple with hundreds of gold and white stupas.

A woman beside me gasped, “It’s a photographer’s paradise!”

But not for me. The lighting was tricky and every time I managed to get a shot set up, the big tourist in the bright orange T-shirt (aka my husband) blundered into the scene. I finally managed to ditch Big Orange Al only to have Big Red Tourist wander into every shot. It was so frustrating.
I think this was the most amazing sight I’ve seen on all my journeys and in a previous post I wrote: The town at the end of the lake, suspended somewhere in time between the past and the future. I don’t know its name, so I’ll call it Shangri-La…
Here is the same oxen cart driver and is that another bloody tourist I see in the background?
Aaah, finally rid of the other tourists…
Most of the women have switched their traditional woven head wraps for brightly-coloured towels, and a lot of them smoke cheroots.
Mr. Win hurried us along – we still had to see the market before it disbanded for the week…

More on our 2013 trip to Myanmar.