Inle Lake

Inle Lake, Myanmar (28 November, 2003)


Inle Lake is a shallow body of water covering 158 square kilometers in the south of Shan State in Myanmar. It is one of the most scenic lakes in Southeast Asia. You can reach Inle Lake from Yangon (Rangoon) by taking a 40-minute flight on board a propeller aircraft. The nearest airport is at Heho. Arriving there, you may opt to stay at Nyaungshwe, the town at the northern part of Inle Lake, or Taunggyi, the highland capital, on in a few resorts on Inle Lake itself. I visited Inle Lake with a group of AsiaExplorers members, and am documenting it here to tell you about it.

What makes Inle Lake so fascinating is the way of life of the people there. The people who live around Inle Lake are called the Intha. Nyaungshwe is the oldest of 200 Intha settlement around the lake. It sits on the edge of a 5-km wide strip of silt and water hyacinth that somewhat mask the true size of the lake.

The lake weed of Inle is collected by the Intha people to create floating gardens, which are anchored to the lake bed with bamboo poles. These floating gardens, called kyunpaw, produces cauliflower, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, peas, beans, eggplants and other vegetables, at such an abundant quantity that truckloads can be taken from the kyunpaw of the Inle region and distributed throughout Myanmar.

Perhaps the biggest attraction for many to Inle Lake is to view the unique way the Intha fishermen row their canoes. Unlike the lake dwellers anywhere else, the Intha fishermen use their legs to row, thereby freeing their hands to fish. They usually work alone on their long canoes, on which they perch themselves on a tiny area at the stern. They are surprisingly agile even at that precarious position. During the AsiaExplorers trip to Inle Lake, I watch them handle their massive fishtrap with great ease.

Which leads me to mention another visible attraction of Inle Lake: the fishermen's unique method of fishing. The Intha fisherman uses a tall conical trap containing a gill net. Looking for telltale sign of fish in the lake, he thrusts the trap to the 3 meter deep lake. Any fish within the range - from the metre-long Inle carp to catfish, or perhaps a lake eel - is his immediate catch.

Sights in Inle Lake

Boat slicing through the waters of Inle Lake on a cold morning. (28 November, 2003)


Birds flying over Inle Lake. (28 November, 2003)


Farmer's shed on a reed island on Inle Lake. (28 November, 2003)


Tourist boats at Ywama Village on Inle Lake. (28 November, 2003)


Village on the banks of Inle Lake. (28 November, 2003)

List of Lakes in Asia

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About this website

Dear visitor, thank you so much for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye and my hobby is to find out about places, write about them and share the information with you on this website. I have been writing this site since 5 January 2003. Originally (from 2003 until 2009, the site was called AsiaExplorers. I changed the name to Penang Travel Tips in 2009, even though I describe more than just Penang but everywhere I go (I often need to tell people that "Penang Travel Tips" is not just information about Penang, but information written in Penang), especially places in Malaysia and Singapore, and in all the years since 2003, I have described over 20,000 places.

While I try my best to provide you information as accurate as I can get it to be, I do apologize for any errors and for outdated information which I am unaware. Nevertheless, I hope that what I have described here will be useful to you.