Myanmar Travel Blog Part 4 : Inle Lake fishermen. Real or fake? (All my original photos)
If you visit Myanmar as a tourist, chances are at some point you will visit the stunning Inle Lake.
Luckily for me, my friend was getting married close to Inle Lake, so I had time to take a boat trip around the lake.
Chances are that you will get approached by "touts" trying to sell you a boat trip. This guy on a moped was young, but it is typical in Myanmar for kids to start working very young..
The boat trip:
The boat trips are reasonably priced, for a full day we were charged 18,000 qyat (10 pounds sterling / 2 SBD / 0.0009 BTC ) at the time of writing.
For this price, you get a full boat for a full day. (which can be shared by a number of people) and the driver.
The drivers will take you to a lot of touristy areas, (I guess they will make commission for this). Luckily our driver was super chilled and agreed to take us to the places we wanted without any complaint.
Each boat has it's own name which is nice.
Spoiling the unspoilt
It is now a very "Touristy" experience, with boats full of tourists travelling around the same locations (not as many as Halong Bay in Vietnam though.) There is some irony in that beautiful remote places get discovered by backpackers, then end up being full of tourists wanting a sanitised version of the experience, and in turn spoiling the destinations.
The Fishermen. Government sponsored actors or a real local tradition?
If you look on the internet,or any decent Myanmar photo blog, you will see photographs of the fishermen on Inle lake. Unfortunately I di!n't get them with a draw jopping sunrise or sunset, but they still make for a great photo opportunity. .
So how did I realise that they are "fake" and in fact largely a tourist photo opportunity.
The giveaway signs: On the day, I just thought that I got lucky with a lot of the photographs, and was enjoying the day and the beauty of the lake and it's surroundings.
When I got back and started going through my photographs, I started to notice that a large percentage of the photographs had the fishermen staring directly at the camera lens.
Well, of course this could be normal, but then consider the number of tourists that sail around the lake every day. . The novelty of cameras would soon wear off and become a mild annoyance. Plus the tourist boats have really noisy engines which would scare away the fish...
The Truman tourist show.
I'm guessing that either (a)( the fishermen are given a set amount of money every day for going out onto the lake to pose for tourists, plus can keep their share of the fish caught.
(b) Most of them are in fact not fishermen, but paid actors (given local wages, it would be relatively cheap to pay the fishermen a 2/3 dollars a day each to ensure the tourism continues. )
This may seem hard to swallow, but a similar event was taking place in the craft villages around the lake, where the women were posing for dozens of tourists whilst carrying on with their work. In this case it's more obvious as most of the tourists will then go on and buy something from the craft village.
So how do I feel about the fishermen?
Well, it's a shame that they need to make a living by posing for tourists (I'm not sure if they also catch enough fish to sustain a living). It's the same with the "fake" craft villages that populate the lake. I guess a sanitised version of reality keeps the tourists happy, brings money into the local economy and also helps boost the national tourist trade.
The reality which exists before tourist arrived, and only intrepid explorers, colonists and backpackers visited these regions would have been much harsher, with no flushing toilets, electricity or even INTERNET!!! (Anyone under the age of 30 would probably find the horror of this too much to believe. Is it progress that tourists bring, or in fact a gradual destruction and erosion of local traditions and cultures? Or maybe a bit of both?
Please add any thoughts on this in the comments section, I'd love to hear your views on the matter.
So please. Take a blue pill. Sit back and enjoy the photos. ..
As President Trump would say " Fake fishermen. Not like me, real proper fisherman I caught more fish quicker than anyone ever. Big fish. Biggest. "
All fishermen photographs taken with Nikon D800, and 70-200 Tamron G2 Lens. Motorbike taken with D800, Sigma 50mm Art.
Myanmar really is a country of contrasts, from people working so hard, to lazing around, beautiful countryside and overcrowded city streets.
Please check out
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
(If you haven't already)
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