People on and near the lake produce a variety of goods that are not be found elsewhere in the world. Shops spin and weave a yarn made out of Lotus fibers. The fibers are manually collected from the stems of the lotus flowers and the process is very laborious. The price of the fabric produced this way exceeds the price of silk by seven times.
Another thing which is found in whole Myanmar but has it’s origin in the Inle Lake area is the production of Cheroot cigars. The cigars contain a mixture of tobacco, herbs, honey, tamarind juice and in our case star anise which made it a delightful smoke on a sunny afternoon overlooking the lake itself.
The weaving and Cheroot workshops were fun to look at and demonstrated the power of manual labour.