Gone Fishin'
I have a lot of posts ahead of me here after returning from India and Myanmar. Two extraordinary countries, and two extraordinarily different countries. I was only in Myanmar for short time, with a couple of days each in a few places that interested me. Actually other places interested me more, but even though things have opened up there in the last few years, the government still decides where it's permissible to go. In other words, they don't want you to go where they're still doing horrible things. It made for some interesting discussions with my guides. One of the spots I made it to was Inle Lake - a beautiful lake located roughly in the middle of the country. I went there primarily to check out the fishermen who have some interesting methods of getting their work done. It's really interesting to see what happens when relatively isolated people pass down their idiosyncratic ways of working. These fishermen use very small hand made canoes, and need both hands free to work their nets, so they've learned to row with one of their legs wrapped around an oar. They row with one of their legs while unfurling their nets. Once the nets are down, they slap the water with bamboo poles to scare the fish into the nets, then row again to pick up the nets and grab their fish. They repeat this until the sun goes down or they have enough fish. These guys worked really hard for a very small return. There weren't a lot of fish, nor were they very big. They get a few cents per fish back in their villages. Here's a few photos of these fellas at work:
