Wolfgang's photos with the keyword: Heyan Yawama

Hand-painted masks a reclining and sitting Buddha images and other wooden statues are ideal souvenirs and memories to carry home. Most of them are carved out of sandal wood which can be imported with no problems. But even you buy the Buddha image its good and important to handle it with respect to Buddha all time.

The market life is very busy early in the morning when hundreds market visitors and vendors try to find a gap to park their boats. the goods cannot be delivered by trucks or pickups like they do it at other places. The ground was the lake before and is heaped up with loam getting an island.

The Karen people, also the subgroup of the Pa'O, speak an own language and spoken from 3 Mill. Karens. Its a tonal language and has its source from the Tibeto-Burman languages. Many of them are speaking English. If not the language of finger and face mimic is well understood and common between the vendors and customers.

7 % of Burmese citizen are from the Karen ethnic group, most of them living in Shan State and on the Inle Lake. The Pa'O is a subgroup of the Karen and the second largest ethnic group in Shan State. They are classified as part of the "Shan National Race" by the government, although they are believed to be of Tibeto-Burman stock, and are ethnolinguistically related to the Karen.

This sort of potatoes are grown up on the Inle Lake and are very liked. The consistency of the potatoes is waxy.

Shan State is the home for many ethnic groups in Burma, the Intha are a minority in Shan State and are mostly quiet wealthy on the Inle Lake. The vendor girls are selling dry rohu fish and bean sprouts.

Pa'O girls and women mostly wear their Bamar clothing and dress their head with this typical red scarf. Bamar also known as Burman is an other ethnic group, the majority of Burma. Before particularly Pa'O women were forced to wear indigo-dyed clothing, to signify their status. It makes fun for us to get close to this people and to learn about their history.

The Pa'O were enslaved, and forced to wear indigo-dyed clothing, to signify their status. Women mostly are dressed in black with a red scarf on her head.

A simple restaurant offers tea, coffee and Shan State food; the place where we liked to have a lunch break and eat good (and clean) food. There is a saying in Burma: The same kind of dish that is cooked by the house down the road and a house up the road do not taste the same. Evidently, the cuisine of different cultural backgrounds would be very diversified where there are so many different kinds of ethnic groups of people, and Burma there is a very good example of that.

All kinds of potteries is offered to market visitors. Pottery is one of the common handicraft products from Intha people.

First stall on the market offers hand made souvenirs from the Intha and Pa'O people. My wife is buying opium weights (one Tika - 15,4g).

Reach the market by a diesel engine long tail boat. The noise from the cheaper poorly muffled diesel engines driving the stern drive propellers is significant, and can be a distraction to the otherwise tranquil lake.

The only transportation is the boat. Two women bring their fresh vegetable to the morning market near Heyan Yawama village.