We had read about this place on trip advisor, or something, and figured that there wasn't much to do in the town of Nyaungshwe at night, so we should come early to guy tickets and secure our seats. Cost was about 5 dollars each, which I felt like it was a bit much as I looked around the small simple theater room, but probably worth it.
When we arrived back at 6:50 pm, ten minutes before the show start, we peeked inside and saw an empty room of about twenty chairs. At first we thought that maybe we got the time wrong, but we were asked inside and sat down with some tea and candies. We were given a book where people had written comments and then the madam disappeared behind a curtain. We thought for sure that more people would be coming, but as we paged through the visitor's book we saw that many of the entries were spaced far apart in date and some of them even said, "I was the only one here". So it was for us too, we got a private show!
The puppet master came at 6:55 and he and madam prepared the stage. They used a recording to introduce each of 20 different puppets and dances. I thought the recording was very cozy as it sounded like it was on a vinyl record and the accent of the woman speaking was kind of like an old English accent. Imagine the old recordings of the Jungle Book maybe and you can get an idea.
After we had watched the show we talked a bit with the puppet master and he told us he was from a family of puppeteers. He also tried to sell us some of the puppets they had on display. It worked! I bought one of the medium sized puppets for about 10 dollars. What a deal really! I would have gotten a larger one for about 35 dollars, but I was thinking about room in my bag so I didn't.
After the show we walked down the dark lanes of Inle, smiling a bit at the whimsical show we just witnessed.
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