Burmese Days : Balloons over Bagan

We had never been in a hot-air balloon so we took the opportunity to see Bagan and its over 2000 pagodas from above. The sky was unusually cloudy that morning so the photos I obtained were not quite what I had in mind but the experience was amazing and felt completely safe.

                                                                       

                                                                                     More  here ,,,,

                                                               The Shwezigon Pagoda in Bagan

Most pagodas have images or statues of Buddha in various positions inside. People bring food as offerings and sometimes other creatures take advantage ...

                                           Pagodas of Bagan. More  Here ...

Burmese Days : Life on the Water

We took a peaceful and relaxing trip on a beautiful teak house boat down the Irrawaddy river from Mandalay to Bagan. On the way the ship stopped at villages on the shore - no harbour needed: the ship's ropes were simply cast ashore and fastened on branches and sticks dug into the sand bank. Then steps were carved out of the sand and we could get on land. Floating down the river, we saw many picturesque village scenes of strange beauty anywhere between a medieval Breughel painting and the 21st century. People use the river for bathing, washing clothes, cleaning, fetching water ...

                                   More Here...

I never encountered an unfriendly face towards my cameras and being photographed. Most people smiled back and were curious and engaging.

My daughter was asked on three different occasions by complete strangers to pose for photos together with their women. On any of our travels we had never experienced anything like that before - why would someone want to have a stranger on their family pictures? And we had seen many tourists in Myanmar, at least in the tourist spots where we went. It may have been, because it was the time of their winter vacation.Villagers from the countryside, where tourists cannot go yet, come down to visit the pagodas or for family festivities, so a western woman for some may still be quite a sight. Or maybe they mistook her for a celebrity on a UN mission?

Burmese Days : Handwerk und Kunsthandwerk

The tourist route from Yangon over Bagan to Mandalay and up to Inle Lake leads to many artisans' workshops: lotus and silk spinners, weavers, silver smiths, a blacksmith's workshop,  lacquerware producers and others. These are pictures of craftspeople on Inle Lake and Bagan where we watched not only the making of  local products but also a small cheroot-"factory". Artisans of Burma

                                                                               Producing Thanaka paste
Many women and children in Myanmar have their faces painted with a white paste, mostly patches on the cheeks, often done rather crudely. Thanaka paste is used by nearly everybody as a general cosmetic. It has antibacterial and anti-inflammatory ingredients and can also be used as sun screen. It is produced by grinding the bark from the Thanaka tree (Hesperethusa crenulata) mixed with water.

                                                  Thanaka market stalls

                                                           Boy with Thanaka paste applied to his face

Beautiful lacquerware products were used in Burma households for all purposes until plastic was introduced.
As nice as it may look, lacquer needs turpentine for dilution of the substance gained from the lacquer trees and the men apply the lacquer with their bare hands (and clean them afterwards with cooking oil and ... Diesel!).

                                Lady spinning silk imported from China

                                                          Lady drawing a delicate silk thread from lotus stems


                                                         Cheroot cigars are produced and smoked mostly by women .

 cheroot smoker 

the blacksmith's shop

More here ....

Burmese Days : The people of Inle Lake

Inle Lake in the Shan-State of Myanmar at an elevation of 900 m is a large and very shallow  freshwater lake that provides a living for about 100.000 people who live on the lake shore or in houses on stilts. They farm the lake by fishing with their characteristic long-boats that they propel using an arm and wrapping a leg around the oar and farming the many man-made swimming islands. Living on Inle Lake

                                                              Fisherman with the famous one-legged rowing technique

                                                   with a fish trap