Talking about travels, I often hear the question that in my trips was the most exciting and extraordinary, which corner of the planet surprised most?
Having been in dozens of countries, I do not hesitate to answer that Myanmar left the strongest impression, which for a huge number of gold-headed churches, called the "golden country" or "the country of golden pagodas". I especially want to tell about the inhabitants of the alpine lake Inle!
The appearance of Myanches has a number of features that cannot be not paid attention to! First, men wear long skirts - Paso, placed in a cunning way, which I, no matter, could not worry.
Photo: Personal archive
Secondly, women are watching the cheeks, forehead and chin with white paint "Tanaka", which is made from the trunk of the same tree. It is believed that this means protects women's skin from fierce ultraviolet, not giving her to grow rapidly.
And, thirdly, it is impossible not to notice the excessive preferences of the Burmeok to the golden ribbons - inflation in the country is so high that the superfluous "pennies" immediately convert into gold and fill the chains links from it ...
Photo: Personal archive
The most popular belonging to God Burmese considers tin gold - rolled into the thinnest foil, it "by pocket" even the most poorly poor man of Myanmar. In such a consistency, the metal is easy to bring to the gift, it literally "smeared" according to Buddha's figures.
One of these figures was the legend - the Golden Buddha is in Mandalay, in Podgoda Mahamuni, the statue weighs about five tons, and the thickness of its gold cover is 17 cm and continues to increase!
Photo: Personal archive
Passed to heho, I knew only that in the XII century of the past millennium, a kind of tribe, coming to Lake Inle, decided to coach and settle down. The shores of the lake were tightly populated by the aborigines, and the nomads had to be placed on the water, building houses on stilts.
The houses that have almost changed since ancient times are surrounded by unusual plantations: on green algae bloom with purulent candles of hyacinths and small tomatoes.
In Myanmar, men wear long skirts - Paso
Photo: Personal archive
From the story of a guide, I learned that the uniqueness of local Agrarian was not so much that tomatoes are growing on the water - in our time we will not surprise anyone, - and in the fact that in this way on plantations are grown cabbage, salad, peas, beans and soy From the XIV century!
Photo: Personal archive
For the harvest, they care for the whole of the village and constantly monitor from the observation tower so that some curious beds do not float on the journey (usually sticks it to the secrets).
In the hut on the piles, the trade in goods produced right here by local residents is widely developed.
Photo: Personal archive
In the first fabric fabric!
A prehistoric machines were stood in the steadmate, on which the silk cloths of luxurious, festive colors were born from under the hands of women's discoluled tanac.
The products of the next hut are easily determined by the smell - it was a tobacco factory. The girl facing near the tray with chopped tobacco girl seemed a completely child, but it turned out that she was already twenty-five years old and that she was a mother of two children!
Golden Buddha in Mandalay
Photo: Personal archive
Looking at how deftly in her hands the banana leaf turns into a cigarette, I decided to try my hand, but the result turned out, to put it mildly, ineptore!
In the third hut, the main product was not an assortment or its special qualities, but the long-haired female female Padong tribe. Burma is the historical Motherland of Padong, but with the departure of English colonialists, the long tribe left the country, moving into the "Golden Triangle" - to the North of Thailand and Laos. The only family remained on Inle, the female part of which consists of two adult women and two girls who attract buyers an exotic look. From the five-year-old age, padong annually put on the neck of the girl one ring, which eventually she leans so much that she can no longer hold her head without a rings.
Padong put on the neck of the girl one ring annually
Photo: Personal archive
It is said that in the punishment of the wrong wives, husbands remove the rings from the neck of the sheltered spouse and the same dies from the fracture of their main attractions. The reason for this awkward custom, as well as is associated with tribes, utilitarian - as if at the time when the main occupation of male pudongs was hunting, going for the prey, they were protected by metal rings of the neck of women, protecting them from fangs in the neighboring tigers.
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