Myanmar Heart Land Travels & Tours
A short drive from the town of Nyaung Shwe at the head of Inle Lake is the provincial town of Taunggyi.
The town won't feature on most itineraries to Burma, but for two nights a year it hosts the most famous version of the annual Balloon Festival, a nationwide celebration that falls one week before the full moon of Tazaungmone, the eighth month in the Myanmar calendar.
Myanmar is celebrating Thingyan, a Buddhist water festival, which sees thousands of people filing the streets to call in the new year. Beginning on 13 April (in the Western calendar), the four-day festival sees people douse each other in water, which symbolises spiritual cleansing in order to begin the new year free from impurities.
The water also symbolises fortune and purity that will clear all diseases, sins and bad luck, so it is thought that the wetter you get, the more good luck you will receive in the new year.
The Padauk is referred to as the national flower of Burma and is associated with the Thingyan period (Burmese New Year, usually mid-April). Unfortunately, it is often mistaken with the Cassia Cassia fistula(Ngu-wah), which is the national flower of Thailand.
Thanaka cream is then made by grinding the bark, wood or roots of a Thanaka tree with a little water on a circular stone slab called kyauk pyin. Depending on your own personality, the process can be either tiresome or excitingly rewarding, but either way, it’s definitely a rarity in today’s world that you can see exactly what has been put into your face cream.