Asia Adventure: Trip to Inlay Lake

      After our time in the village, we took another taxi ride over to Inlay Lake - one of the most popular tourists destinations in Myanmar.  It is gorgeous and easy to see the draw.  We rode a little boat all around the lake, which is surrounded by villages.  It is a massive lake.  Each village is known for a different craft or skill that they demonstrate for you.

My view as we cruised around the lake.

Watching all the fishermen at work was fascinating - especially the ones who row with their leg.

We witnessed them making paper out of bamboo and flower petals.

The weaving woman, who had crazy amazing neck rings.  They were so kind and let Bella carry around their excess yarn balls.

We ate lunch at a nice restaurant called "Nice Restaurant."  Some of its niceness could be doubted when John bit into a nail in his lake fish, though that was certainly not their fault.  He's holding up the fish eyeball that he ate for this picture.

The guys enjoyed getting in on the action at the blacksmith's shop.

This man sold us a tiny little nativity set, and then asked if he could dance for us while I took pictures.  Of course, sir.  His dancing skills were legendary, so I can see why he wanted to show them off.

We witnessed the ingenuity of the people that live around the lake and farm all sorts of things right there in the water.  These are the tomato gardens.

The lake was gorgeous, and while we were a bit waterlogged at the end of our day, it was not a day to be missed.  We took in the sunset from the deck of our room that overlooked it all.

(that is where we were staying!)

Here's a fun family shot from the day.

And, one of our whole group, though we are a bit shadowy in the light of the setting sun.

Everyone again as we were leaving our hotel.

Trying to keep Bella from getting burned.  She's trying to attend to her belly button some more.

I must say that for traveling as two families together for two weeks, the Lord really blessed our time together.  It was encouraging and enjoyable, and I was sad to leave, and they said they were sad to see us go.  I consider that a tremendous success when considering we were constantly towing around four children five and under.  This is my last official trip post - I plan on spilling some of the nitty gritty in the next post and wrapping it all up with our trip to the glass factory, one of the strangest experiences ever.