Staring up at the World Trade Center towers. Watching monks march to morning prayer in a monastery near Mt Fuji. Scuba diving with 12 bull sharks in Thailand. Seeing a pack up Lions up close and personal in South Africa. The view of the Parisian skyline at night from the rooftops.
All these experiences, and many more, filled me with a sense of wonder. It’s something unusual, something exceptional, something at you know the moment you see it, will never leave your memories.
In August this year I was on a whilrwind tour of South East Asia, and stopped by Myanmar (or Burma as many people know it by). After experiencing the amazing temples and pagodas of Bagan, my next stop was a mysterious place in the center of the country called Lake Inle.
Flying into a no-name airport with all but a handful of staff, this really did feel like the edge of civilization. There was something appealing about being on the edge of, what to me was, the known world. Lake Inle was recommended to us by some family friends in Kuala Lumpur. I had done zero research and had no expectations of any kind going into this.
Our guide Lionel picked us up at the airport and drove us through some small town and onto the open road. The aging Toyota van, which had seen better days, only added to the rustic charm which the Burmese countryside seemed to possess. Horses and carts were still common here, and huge numbers of people worked tirelessly in the rice paddys.
It wasn’t long before the scene changed as we began to descend from a plateau along a windy road. We were soon joined by the twisting railroad, a reminder of the British colonial days. Despite being very old, the railroad itself was a spectacle to behold. The way it climbed the steep hillside was most impressive.
At the bottom of the valley we stopped at a local market to take a walk around. Oddly, nobody seemed to take note of a bunch of white people walking around. An indication, perhaps, that this was a common tourist destination. Of particular note were the vendors selling that sugary goodness known in Scotland as “tablet”.
Next, we hopped on a long boat with a powerful engine at the back and sped off down towards the lake. You couldn’t really see much from the narrow inlet, due to the bush all around us. As soon as we hit the main lake though, it really was a sight to behold.
There was something amazing in the view. I think it was partly down to how much it reminded me of my home country of Scotland. The scenery and greenery was very similar. Yet this was about as far away from the Western World as one can get.
After about an hour on the water, we arrived at our hotel to the sound of a local band playing music just for us. I think the hotel was about $30 a night, but it felt infinitely more hospitable than a faceless $400 a night international hotel in New York. There weren’t may guests staying here and we were quickly escorted to our rooms (on stilts).
We spent the afternoon on the boat taking a tour of the lake and stopping at a whole host of differing attractions. The standard setup was for our boat to stop somewhere, us to get out and look at some local business or cultural attraction. Usually there would be a tour guide to show us round, then we would be taken to the store at the end and encouraged to buy some of their wares.
I’m a regular frigid spinster when it comes to buying souvenirs, so no, I didn’t buy a 12 inch machete, ridiculously large local cigar, some rubies, a gold necklace, a silver spoon, a photo of some cats or some hula hoops from any of the local merchants. Had someone been selling red bull, I would most certainly have taken them up on this since my jetlag was continuing to affect me for the rest of the day.
It was about a 45 minute trip back up the lake to our hotel. I kept drifting in and out of sleep, almost falling out of the boat at one point, much to the amusement of my friend Katrine. I remember vividly waking up as the boat changed speed and staring out from behind my darkened sunglasses at the most amazing reflection of the sun on the water. The Scotland-esq hills in the background and the, straight out of a movie, longboats with guys wearing those pointy hats, and my extreme jetlag all combined at once in a barrage of thoughts and feelings.
Then, everything was clear and I was left feeling calm, relaxed and with an extreme sense of wonder about the place I was in. It’s hard to describe this in words, but if I was to explain it at that point, I would have said something like: “Woah, I’m in the middle of Burma”.
When I got back to Budapest, I was lucky enough to get accepted to the TEDx Danubia event where I saw Andy Evans talk about his travel experiences and solidify this concept of wonder in my mind. Check out my cameo at 16:30-16:33 
