We flew from Mandalay to Heho, which was only a thirty minute flight. Heho is about 3800 feet elevation. The Heho area is an agricultural region. It looked great flying in with field crops of yellow, red, and green and varying textures due to the orchards and mountain plants. The agriculture that we saw included rice, sesame, sunflowers, mustard, wheat, corn, bee hives, avocados, Asian pears, bananas, potatoes, and papayas.

From Heho, we drove towards Kalaw which was over an hour away. Our guide said that the Pa-O tribe is the biggest minority in this area. We stopped in at the major Pa-O village on our drive. I asked our guide for the name of this village and he said that he couldn’t pronounce it or spell it. It was a weekday and most of the adults in the village were working and most children were in school, so we didn’t get to meet very many of the Pa-O people in this village.

The Pa-O people are one of the larger ethnic minorities in Burma, and the largest in this part of Burma. The Pa-O have many subgroups. The majority of the Pa-O are Buddhists. Most Pa-O are farmers and grow rice or vegetables for a living.

The Pa-O people prefer to build their houses out of cherry or pinewood, but they use bamboo if wood is scarce. They build their houses on stilts to house buffalo or oxen or cows on the ground floor of their home.

1. Wood was evidently scarce in this area since the majority of the homes that we saw were made from bamboo, as you can see in the first photo. You can also see the bamboo growing behind the house and see, from the poles, just how big this bamboo can get.

2. In the second photo, they also have a separate barn and the barn is also made from bamboo. They keep the animals on the ground floor of the barn and the hay and feed on the upper floor. I’m not sure why this woman is drying her clothes on the pile of fire kindling but we saw several of the houses where they did that. You can also see some large banana trees behind the barn.

3. The house in the third photo was the nicest house that we saw in the village. But even here, you can see that they have an attached bamboo house to the main house. Whether that is a “mother-in-law” house and she prefers a bamboo house or whether that was the original house and they have added the wood house, or some other explanation, I don’t know.

4. We only saw motorbikes for powered vehicles in this village, though they may well have some cars or trucks. But we did see some carts in the village pulled by oxen.

5. We met these kids along the main road where we parked our bus. They were going home from school for lunch. Some of the kids live close by, so they don’t bring lunch to school, they just go home for lunch. Other kids live farther away and they bring their lunch. In this case, the kids that brought their lunches were going to the homes of the kids who live close – to eat their lunch. You can see one girl with her “bento box”. The bottom had steamed rice in it while the top portion had some curry to put on the rice.