Weaving

Today we took a boat trip across the lovely Inle Lake (home of the famous leg-rowing fishermen) to see, among other things, a factory at Innpawkhon making beautiful fabrics from cotton, silk and thread extracted from the stem of the lotus flower.  The thread is spun by hand and then woven on a traditional wooden hand loom.  The building is full of looms operated by skilled ladies, and the appearance and noise of the rattling looms seems like something out of mid 18th Century Industrial Revolution Britain.

Other skilled crafts we saw today were hand rolling of cheroots, and traditional teak boat building, with all work carried out by hand - including sawing the large tree trunks into planks (that looked very hard work!).  We also cruised through the floating gardens in the middle of the lake, on which vegetables and fruit are grown (although this is not the season for growing and the gardens were looking a little untidy).

Another very interesting and enjoyable day.

(Backblipped after my return home because of the slow internet access in this part of Myanmar.)

The image looks good large on a black background.