Folk On The Water

A Cruise on Myanmar's Inle Lake Will Make You Encounter Floating Markets, Primary Schools and Even Traffic Jams

- Charukesi Ramadurai

It is my first experience with a traffic jam in the middle of a lake. It is late afternoon and life on Inle Lake in eastern Myanmar’s Shan State is almost at a standstill. My husband and I are nodding off on the boat, drowsy after a heavy lunch of crunchy, fermented tea leaf salad and rice with green tamarind leaf curry.

All of a sudden, a buzz breaks out over the calm waters of the floating Pauk Par village, as dozens of boats appear out of nowhere, and the air is filled with the excited chatter of children. A primary school—tethered to the water by strong bamboo poles, like the other buildings here—has just closed for the day, and mothers have arrived to fetch their children. Except, instead of school buses or rickshaws, they are all in narrow boats and canoes.

A dozen boats crisscross a tight stretch of lake. Like typical kids anywhere, the students cannot wait to rush home to start playing with their friends. Harried mothers identify their own children from the boisterous crowd and then several others, in a complex system of “boat pooling,” before herding them all into their own craft. For a few minutes, it is a scene of utter chaos on the makeshift school pier, a scene unlike anything I have ever seen.