Adjacent to Nampan Village was a farming operation that totally surprised me. We are talking about a farming operation that is in the middle of Inle Lake. To look at the farming from some angles, like low in our boats, it almost appeared that we were looking at a land operation. The crop that we saw mostly was tomatoes. We saw millions of tomato plants. Our guide said that Inle Lake tomato farming supplies 80% of Myanmar’s tomatoes. The entire process of working the tomato crops is done by boat.

1. I took this photo from the Jumping Cat Monastery, from one of the windows. This is one block of tomato vines that is sitting right in the middle of the lake. The lake extends beyond in the back. I guess those are farm shacks or barns in the photo.

2. The second photo is more zoomed in and you can see the water in between the rows of tomatoes.

3. Now we are in our boat and right next to a row of tomatoes. On the bottom, you can also see a row of pepper plants.

4. We watched this woman harvesting tomatoes. She is standing in a small boat.

5. This is a closeup photo where you can clearly see the tomatoes including a couple of ripe ones.