Leg-rowers fascinate bystanders even when they pass by with a boatload of travellers or cargo. For the lake region, this is a common part of the pretty sylvan setting. Skill always wins the day, because a racing boat could carry, on either side, a row of some 20 boatmen, so closely positioned to each other that without discipline, oars could not be worked in unision or could even get entangled, throwing rowers overboard. On each boat the racing team leader keeps rowing time by beating a drum or a gong. Encouraging the contestants are spectators in ordinary hand-rowed boats, cheering their favourites on and playing music.
Religious festivals find leg-rowers taking hundreds of pilgrims to the region s Buddhist shrines.
With Inle Lake folk learning to row from the time they begin to know how to run and swim, not surprisingly leg-rowers include many girls and woman. While the racing boats are extraordinarily long and light, for the most part all Inle Lake country craft boast of sleek lines. Their ends lift high above water level to facilitate speed and manoeuvrability. Cargo boats are about 90 or 100 feet long, about six feet wide at the broadest part abeam and about three feet high from the water line. They can carry up to five tons and are moved in shallow water with bamboo poles.