The Myanmar discovery circuit - Day 8 (late afternoon and evening) - Nyaung Shwe - Royal Inlay Hotel check-in, village shopping, dinner and welcoming Shan and Pa-O dance and music performance - The 19th of November 2015

We got to the Royal Inlay hotel fairly late in the afternoon where I once more shared by twin bedroom with the guide, though there was some extra to be paid this time. We soon went out with her to a friend's shop where some of the ladies in the group had expected to buy some embroidered handbags. We ended up buying a lot more than that, though I only bought an additional traditional coat.

Night had abruptly fallen and some of the people in the group lost their way back into the hotel, though we all fianlly made in time for the evening show - a sequence of traditional dances from various districts including a special one from the Pa-O tribe.

I hadn't yet been able to "accommodate" the strident music  to my ears but was utterly fascinated by the story telling approach of many of the performances, the subtle moves of the hands and the facial expressions of the dancers.  The dance of the impersonating paradise birds was astonishingly well achieved taking into account the weight of the wooden structures they had their wings attached to. They invited many of us to join them in the final dance, which we all enjoyed very much.


Because many of the dancers were teenagers I decided to hand them out many of the presents I still had and was particularly happy to see they were overjoyed.

The dance of the fluffy yellow sheep performed by two dancers was very  funny and had us all laugh, particularly the guide whose birthday was on that day. Chocho ended up showing her dance ability by joining the dance troupe.

Eating was once more a problem. I was honestly more into the filming and taking photographs of such an event than the actual food, which despite having gone cold by the time I managed to have some, was still very good.