{"id":20359,"date":"2015-11-27T00:00:36","date_gmt":"2015-11-27T07:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/?p=20359"},"modified":"2022-05-23T13:40:10","modified_gmt":"2022-05-23T17:40:10","slug":"vikings-myanmar-explorer-day-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rivercruiseadvisor.com\/2015\/11\/vikings-myanmar-explorer-day-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Viking’s Myanmar Explorer – Day 6"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tuesday, November 24, 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If I were a better writer, I\u2019d have a decent shot at describing the adventures we\u2019ve had today. As it is, this sixth day of our Myanmar Explorer <\/em><\/strong>river cruise tour with Viking River Cruises<\/strong> <\/a>was absolutely packed with experiences. That alone makes description difficult. But more than that, it\u2019s putting into context the places, people, sights and sounds that we\u2019ve experienced today that is giving me pause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As an example: Today, we had lunch at an Italian restaurant, set on stilts, in a floating village on Inle Lake<\/strong>, in Myanmar. Have you had oven-fired pizza in Myanmar in a restaurant situated on stilts? I didn\u2019t think so. It\u2019s the kind of thing that, if you saw it in a movie, you\u2019d say, well, I don\u2019t believe that happened!<\/em> Yet here we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We also walked through a traditional \u201cpop-up\u201d market that only appears in a small village near the Areum Inle Lake Resort<\/strong> on every fifth day. Here today, gone tomorrow. What\u2019s more, we once again passed through the market as if we were invisible: Not a soul hassled us to buy anything, and at no time did I ever feel as if someone might rob or otherwise interfere with us. It was as if we were locals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet, I am surprised at how developed<\/em> Inle Lake is. It\u2019s a far cry from some of the floating villages I saw in Cambodia two years ago; resorts almost outnumber villages here. Even Novotel has set up shop, with a new-ish looking property not far down the road from our own Areum resort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than go on and on with facts and dates and figures, I figure I\u2019ll summarize today with this: I am, once again, impressed with how Viking handles its land operations. Today was a huge day excursion that saw us depart at 8:30 a.m. and return just before sunset. Yet everything was timed perfectly and our transportation \u2013 which ranged from mini-bus to walking to four-person wooden boats operated by local Burmese citizens \u2013 was faultless. A day like today has a lot of moving parts in it, and those have to be carefully timed in order to have a successful journey. They were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myanmar is just now on the verge of becoming a democracy. Tourism is opening to the West. Change is afoot. But I have to wonder: Will Inle Lake still look the same ten years from now? Or will this new openness to travellers from around the world alter its very essence in the same way it has in places like the Caribbean and Hawaii?<\/p>\n\n\n\n For me, that raises the biggest question: How do you encourage tourism while still protecting what is already there?<\/p>\n\n\n\nViking Mandalay - Myanmar Explorer<\/h2>\n\n