Hill villages of Kalaw

Whilst we could see the town of Kalaw below us, we didn't stop to visit it, but instead took a walk through a couple of hill villages.

Kalaw is a popular place to start a three day trek to Inle Lake, so what we did was just a quick glimpse, but it did suggest that if you have the time on an independent trip then it might be a nice walk to take.

As we only had the morning before we had to set off again, we were up early and took a little truck taxi most of the way to Myin Kha, the first village. As we walked we could see a number of their crops growing, including ginger and garlic.

As we arrived at the village we saw construction work going on for a new temple - apparently the old one wasn't good enough, so they knocked it down and are building a new one. They were in the process of making their own bricks at this time.

Myo got us invited in to the local school, where the children had their english lesson on the board, but none of them were brave enough to attempt a few words with us. They seemed to be in playtime, as some were outside and they were all engrossed in skipping and other games.

As we left, one of the children was raising the flag in the playground and the children were gathered together, carefully lining themselves up in neat rows. When they started singing a song, Myo remembered it from his own childhood, and joined in.

One of the children was distracted by us being nearby and kept turning around to look at us, only to be told off by one of his schoolmates. We left before we got anyone into trouble.

The walk to the next village was quite pleasant, but even though it was only mid morning, it had already got quite hot, so we were pleased when we got some shade.


The second village was Pain Nae Pin, and here Myo had arranged for us to go into one of the dwellings to have a few refreshments and be introduced to the local clothing.

Helen was given particularly interesting headgear, which we then found was what would  be worn for your wedding, so of course we teased her that Myo had found her a husband from the village.

A few brave souls should decided to walk back to the monastery, while the rest of us have in to the heat and took the truck back. We did take down and clean off all the tents though, so we felt we had earned the beers that we were enjoying when they finally arrived back hot and tired.

Thanakha and jaggery en route to Kalaw

From the moment we crossed the border into Myanmar, we noticed that many of the women had painted circles or stripes of what looked like clay onto their cheeks - or sometimes even a more elaborate leaf pattern. We asked Myo about this and he explained that it is a form of sun block that women use and also put on their children.

It is called thanakha. You buy a small log of wood from the thanakha tree and grind it on a stone slab called a kyauk pyin, with a tiny bit of water, to make a thin paste that you apply to your skin. It is a very old tradition, and it supposed to be excellent as both moisturiser and sunscreen. Women are considered more beautiful for wearing it - indeed Myo is certainly that any future bride of his would wear the thanakha.

Well on our drive from Bagan to Kalaw, we stopped off at a roadside place where we got to try this for ourselves, and soon all of the women in the group had thanakha leaves painted on our cheeks.

That wasn't the only thing we could try here either. They were also tapping the palm trees for their sap, which they do by climbing up the tree, making a small cut and leaving a pot tied under it to collect the sap that drips out. From that sap, they make drinks and sweets.

The sweet is called jaggery, and is very rich tasting and crumbly, and popular across Myanmar with adults, children and we tourists too. It is made by simply boiling the sap. Here, they were making it plain, or mixed with either shredded coconut or jujube date paste.

And then there are the drinks. The first is palm wine, or toddy, which is made by fermenting the sap. It is quite low in alcohol, so when they want something stronger, they can distill the toddy.

The other drink we tried was a mix of jaggery, water and sticky rice, which is fermented for four days - they had a pot bubbling away while we were there and the smell was fairly pungent. They all tasted OK, but I won't be rushing to get any.

They were very hospitable at this stop, as we were all offered tea and green tea leaf salad too.

And we got to feed the ox that was pulling the grinding stone to extract the peanut oil from the peanuts. The ox gets the leftover dried out peanut, which it seems to rather like, so it's a win win situation.

After that it was back on the road to Kalaw, with a quick stop for lunch. As we reached our destination, which is another of these British hill stations, we were stopped by the tourist police, and we all had to get off again to have another group photo taken.

Then it was on to the Thein Taung Paya monastery where we were doing our last night of camping. There was a great view of Kalaw from the monastery, so every so often other visitors would appear and be quite surprised to find us camping there.

One particular pair of male Chinese tourists were especially fascinated by our dinner preparations, and seemed to think it perfectly acceptable to shove their huge cameras right in the faces of Nic and the others in the cook group, without even saying hello. It made me glad that I am more considerate of people when taking my own photos, even if it means I can't always get the picture that I'd like