10-8 (Sunday) Leaving Inle Lake

I didn't sleep at all last night! I was up at 4:00, we had breakfast at 4:30 in the room and got into the boat at 5 a.m. to leave Inle Lake. It was pitch black outside as we took off across the lake without a single light on our boat. We passed a couple of early morning fishermen also without lights. As we pulled into the area where we had left our car we saw women at the river bathing. They have to bathe with their clothes on - they wear sarongs so they just reach under them and clean themselves. The water was very muddy looking plus you could see all kinds of debris floating downstream. They wash their hair, bathe and brush their teeth in that water.

We had to wait around to get our trusty car going since it hadn't been driven for more than a day. When we finally left town we thought it would be bumpy sailing all the way to Yangon, but NO U Tin Wint wanted to stop along the way at some market. I think he was looking for something for his wife but didn't find it. We drove on. We stopped along the side of the road and he bought some black tea which they drink by mixing it with wine and water. We drove on. Our last stop was to get 3 gallons of gas before we headed up over the mountain. We drove on. It wasn't long before other travelers began telling us that they heard there had been a rock slide and no one was able to pass. We drove on. We asked still other cars and trucks coming from that direction about the slide. They all said, "yes" it was true. They said there were between 80-200 cars and trucks waiting for the road to be cleared. They said we might have to wait up to two days to cross. We decided we didn't have any choice but to turn around and go back in the direction of Mandalay and then find a road back towards Yagon. It was just about this point that U Tin Wint discovered he had lost his cell phone. You could tell he was just sick about it. We went back to where we bought the 3 gallons of gas and where we bought the black tea but it wasn't at either place. We finally got through to him to call his own # and maybe someone would answer and he could find out where the phone was. He did call but no one answered. We drove on. We were going down very narrow country lanes with very few cars but lots of pot holes. My head felt like it was on a spring - it was bouncing all over the place. We got to see a lot of the Myanmar countryside.

Around 7:30 after we had been driving in the dark without lights for almost an hour we pulled into a small village and found a hotel. U Tin Wint went to look at the rooms first then had me come in and look. The hotel had a huge lobby which was shabby and run down. We climbed the stairs to the 2nd floor. It was dirty, dark and dingy. The halls were very wide. There were 2 beds up against the wall in a gigantic room. They looked clean. There was an old thread bear carpet on the floor, a mirror on the wall and even an A/C! The bathroom left a lot to be desired. It did have a western toilet, a shower pipe was coming out of the wall (it had hot and cold water) and a sink with only one faucet, that meant only cold water. I said we would take it. We went downstairs to register our passports. The staff seemed quit impressed that we would stay there. The towels they brought into the room looked like they had cleaned the floors with them. We took "showers" with our baby wipes and went to bed by 8:30.