Inle Lake

Inle Lake was also Morgan's favorite spot as she really enjoyed the motorized canoe trip throughout the lake the stop at handicraft demonstrations/stores.  Inle Lake is famous for it's foot-style paddling and carrying of the nets.  We were able to get a few neat photos and in the floating village.  Our hostel was next door to a nunnery and monastery - each that house 20+ stray dogs.  The dogs were mellow during the day but howled at night.  Also noisy we had pigeons we could hear that would fight on the roof and then get extra noisy when the cat jumped in to play.

We weren't sure what these at things were until the girls asked how to wear them.  Mickey mouse looking ears - huh?!

We did see a few people with the long-necklaces on in this store.  

Mandalay

walking the plank to the boat

At 4:30 AM Christmas morning we took a taxi to the pier and headed on a 12-hour float down the Irrawaddy River to Mandalay.  This boat ride was one of Morgan's favorites, as she liked seeing the stars, sunrise, and then playing with the two German boys whose only English seemed to be 'I love you Morgan' and 'I love you Isabella'.

We had two full days in Mandalay and hired our own tuk tuk (which are bigger and more sturdy than the Thailand version) to take us around the sites.  The first day was spent outside Mandalay and day two inside.  Evenings were back at the pool.

Bella is in Jeff's lap and Morgan is next to me.  It was a cold and early start to the day!

It was Christmas Day and they passed out Santa hats to everyone.  

famous U-Bein teak bridge is in the background which we walked over with a lot of other tourists.  

Lunch time

Snake pagoda.  Apparently the Burmese pythons that are donated to the temple (caught wild and brought in) that head straight for Buddha can stay, the others are not accepted.  They pulled out 3 large pythons.  Bathed them in the pool in the back of this picture, fed them and then let us touch them.  

Jade market; Bella bought a souvenir necklace here. 

A teenage looking boy (Jeff could give you the full description as he was paying close attention!) came over and asked Morgan to accept his rose.  We made her pose with it.  :-)  

A 5:30 AM departure from Mandalay to Inle Lake with a stop at a temple famous for the daily morning ceremony when the huge Buddha statue is bathed.  

A photo with the live loud 5:30 AM band accompanying the washing ceremony.

Bagan

From Yangon we headed to see the ancient temples, monasteries and pagodas of Bagan. I'm sure the kids were happy that out of the 10,000 that used to be there in this 40 square mile area, only ~2000 remain as in our 3 days there we hit what seemed to be a high percentage.  Bagan and the e-bike were Jeff and Bella's favorite part of the adventure, and likely mine too as the temples were fabulous - on par with Angkor Watt and much less explored.  Off the 1000+ pics I took, I think most were in Bagan!  Fortunately my family is well trained to 'smile' quick so photo taking doesn't last that long.

Back of the bus on the VIP 2+ 1 - what you can't tell from this photo is that these headrests were not washed between the summer season and winter and smell like sweat!

Paparazzi - they even took my picture with fabulous filters that I looked like I was 20 so didn't mind at all!  

the first day, we hired a taxi to take us around so we could figure out where everything was 

not many adventure points won at lunch....  

typical kitchen - outdoor

We bought two treasures in the Bagan market - a wedding food basket and temple basket  - Jeff did the bargaining

We walked through a village with 160 homes and 600 people living there.  These houses just got electricity within the past 5 years.  

This lady is putting thanaka paste on Bella.  It's made from ground bark and is all over the ladies faces to prevent acne and promote smooth skin.

Trying to capture the perfect sunrise with the timer on our camera.  We met a French lady who offered to take our photo and used the more manual settings proving I still have a lot to learn on my DSLR.  

Festival for little boys prior to their first hair cut, or so we gathered through broken translation.  These boys had makeup and dresses, I hadn't realized they weren't girls until our girls pointed it out.  

Bella posing with the band following the procession.  There was a drummer and about 10 huge speakers on the back of a truck.  

Morgan got a henna tattoo.  A  lot of the little boys were getting them too.  It didn't last past the afternoon swim.  

Jeff checking in at a wifi spot that we won our Fantasy Football final game. 

An evening festival, this time with dressed up boys and girls.  

In 2018 the government prohibited climbing on temples, except for a few locations and this is one. I guess in retrospect I'm glad we couldn't climb as that would have added an extra dimension of sore and tired legs to the trip!