Day 173: Winery

Last full day here at Inle Lake, and we were both feeling refreshed and definitely ready to move on. It didn't help that our hotel's wifi connection seemed to be down more than it was up! But we had one last stop we wanted to make - a small winery just outside of town.

Since it's located up on a hill, most people recommend going there for sunset. But we planned to ride bicycles there, and figured that after a bit of wine tasting, riding home in the dark probably wasn't the smartest idea. So we had our breakfast, relaxed for a bit, then grabbed some bikes and headed for the winery around lunchtime.

It was a nice enough ride, heading out through the less-touristy eastern side of town and then onto the "main" road south. A bit further down this road we turned off to the left and headed up a fairly steep hill to the winery. I only made it about 200 metres up the hill before I had to hop off and push. Not to make excuses, but my bike was pretty crap and only 3 of the 7 gears actually worked. Oh well.

Eventually we made it up and were rewarded with a great view back towards town and across the plain north of the lake (the town itself is actually a couple of kilometres north of the lake proper, connected by a long wide canal). We had some decent food (club sandwich for me and a chicken claypot rice dish for Shandos), then headed to the winery out back for some tasting.

They did a sauv blanc which was OK, a bit dry for my liking, and a late harvest muscat which was nice and sweet. Plus a pair of reds, a shiraz and a temperanillo which were both OK but not the greatest with the warm weather. It was a nice environment up there, so we stayed for a while but eventually headed back down around 2pm.

Rode back into town and stopped again at Chillax Bistro for a cappuccino and banana cake which we'd had yesterday and was again delicious. Then back to the hotel where we spent the rest of the day reading, relaxing and sitting around the pool.

Evening came and we headed out again for dinner, this time at One Owl Grill - a sister venue to the rooftop pub we'd been to a few nights earlier. Great food here - Shandos had some minced chicken skewers, while I had a burger with tasty mince, egg, hummus and jalapenos.

On our way back to the hotel we stumbled across a roller skating rink, maybe the only one left in the world! There were quite a few locals skating around very skilfully, and of course a few Westerners flailing around like they'd never skated before. We considered having a go, but no socks and no skills meant I just watched from the sidelines.

Back to the hotel for a semi-early night, our bus pickup tomorrow is at 8am and we need to be packed and ready well in advance!Read more