A Pa-O woman carries her shy child to the local market in Sankar.

THERE is something a bit eerie about sleeping in a stilted cottage in the middle of a lake, drifting in and out of sleep in the wee hours of the morning, hearing the dark water sloshing beneath you, wondering what strange, aquatic creatures might be lurking below your bed.

That’s not to say I wouldn’t recommend the experience, which can, at times, border on the sublime.

From my personal scrapbook of favourite travel moments of 2008: sipping wine at midnight with my wife on the balcony of our room at Golden Island Cottages on Inle Lake, the full moon of Tabaung illuminating the shimmering water, the silver sky humming with the voices of Intha fishermen singing in a distant, unseen village.

It was an appropriate way to end a day that had started with an equally impressive event: watching the sun come up from behind the serrated mountain skyline to the east, the spectacular orange of the sky mirrored in the water and turning Inle into a glimmering lake of fire.

A mix of old and new stupas stand at Thakaung Pagoda.

We had woken early to embark on a long boat ride south from Inle Lake to the Pa-O village of Sankar, and by the appointed time of 7am we had piled into our boat with guide Khin Maung Ngwe in front and a camouflage-bedecked helmsman manning the motor at the back.

At our own request, we skipped breakfast at Golden Island Cottages (GIC) and instead joined the steady stream of watercraft converging on nearby Nampan market to sample local Shan food. Once we had negotiated the madness of parking to boat at the edge of the market and set foot on dry land, we were able to enjoy a hearty meal of Inle mohinga, tofu salad and sticky rice.

Back in the boat, our helmsman pointed us southward and gunned the engine. Before long we had left Inle Lake behind, entering a network of narrow canals winding through a landscape of rice paddies. We passed within arms’ length of fishermen catching shrimp in nets and eels in wicker traps. In the background, farmers used water buffalo to plough the earth and plant peanuts on land that would be underwater during monsoon season.

A frangipani tree grows in front of a pagoda in Sankar.

Our canal eventually spilled into a wider waterway, flanked on either side by bamboo forests and cornfields. We passed the sprawling Sie Sone Monastery, where during World War II locals stashed guns provided by US and British forces and killed any Japanese who dared come too close.

After about an hour we stopped at a checkpoint at Hmawbi Bridge. Our paperwork deemed to be in order, we continued on, entering an idyllic valley of cornfields, white egrets and stone farmhouses with waterwheels. Overhead, an eagle soared on the wind currents sweeping through the valley.

We also passed another site of interest to war buffs: a cave high up on a cliff where Japanese troops fleeing to Thailand hid from Allied aircraft at the end of World War II. According to local lore, at the back of the cave is a pit where the Japanese dumped their weapons, then placed booby traps to keep the equipment out of enemy hands. As far as anyone knows, the stash is still there.

We arrived in Sankar at 11am and docked at Sankar Pagoda, its collection of small stupas overgrown with trees and other plants. About 500 years ago, Sankar was the site of a Shan palace, white elephant compound, plentiful pagodas and nine monasteries. Only one monastery remains, and the former palace grounds are now occupied by a grade school. Across the road is a pagoda fronted by two frangipani trees, called sankar in the Pa-O language. Legend says that a Shan prince once carved a Buddha image from one of the tree branches and enshrined it in the pagoda, thus giving the town its name.

We spent some time exploring the old monasteries, wandering among the village’s stone houses and mingling with the Pa-O residents. Most of the women were wearing attractive traditional dress – indigo blouses reaching down to mid-thigh, with matching longyis underneath, the dark fabric offset with brightly coloured, turban-style headdresses.

We eventually reached a market on the other side of town. Although it was not yet noon, the vendors were starting to pack up for the day, loading their unsold merchandise onto bullock carts, which they drove waist-deep into the river to transfer the goods into boats for the trip back home.

Our boat was also waiting for us there, and we climbed aboard to drift through an area that long ago consisted of rice fields but was now a shallow lake thanks to a dam built in the early 1960s.

We passed a stilted village and some old pagodas rising out of the water on our way to the southernmost point of our journey – an ancient wall across the artificial lake, said by some to have been built by nats (spirits) in a single night to impress their girlfriends. The more plausible explanation is that it was an irrigation canal built five centuries ago by Shan farmers. Whatever its origin, it’s now apparently a favourite place for reptiles to sun themselves, and when I stepped out of the boat to get a closer look I barely missed stepping on a snake, which fled into the water with a sharp “kerplunk”.

Wall inspection complete, we turned our boat northward and docked at Sankar Thayangone, where young monks were bathing in a spring at the base of a pagoda-topped hill. We walked up a pathway where giggling children handed us wildflowers and then ran away into the forest.

The trail led us to a small distillery, where we were given sample shots of fiery rice wine. We ate lunch while sitting under a thatched roof along the river, joined by a local man who said he had walked three hours to partake in the distillery’s fine products. We wished him luck on his attempt to walk back home, and then took our leave to check out the collection of weathered stupas at nearby Thakaung Pagoda.

As we sat eating lunch in the shadow of the pagoda, I asked Khin Maung Ngwe whether it would be possible to explore the Japanese cave on the way back to Inle. Turns out that two local men at the pagoda were also interested. They quickly found a cheap flashlight, and our party of six clambered aboard our boat and were on our way.

Reaching the cave required bushwhacking across some paddy fields, then scrambling up a steep path to the entrance. The narrow interior was just what we had expected – filled with darkness, the squeaking of bats and the odour of guano.

Due to the treacherous footing and the weakness of our hastily procured flashlight, I ventured only about 15 metres into the cave. One of our companions from the pagoda walked back another 5 metres, where the cave curved out of sight. He reported that the cave continued for at least another 10 metres or so, but slippery footing and the presence of precipitous drop-offs into various unfathomable abysses somehow dampened his enthusiasm for further exploration.

The mystery of the stash of Japanese equipment unsolved, we slid back down the trail to our boat. Our two guest passengers caught another boat heading south, back to Thakaung Pagoda where they had started, leaving our original party of four to make our way back to Inle Lake, where wine, the full moon and Intha fishing songs awaited.