Lake Inle, Myanmar

After an ambiguous flight David Noton enjoys a trip around Inle Lake in Burma in search of silk weaving women

- David Noton

Inle Lake, Myanmar, Burma. 08:26 am. 12 June 2012.

I think we’re on the right plane, although I’m not entirely sure: boarding at Mandalay was chaos with indecipherable shouted announcements of imminent departures. Some random official we assumed was a baggage handler disappeared with our luggage. Now the only indication we have that we are on the right flight to Heho is that everyone else has the same coloured stickers on their chest; it’s the follow-the-herd mentality, applied to air travel. If we’ve got it wrong and are actually bound for Yangon or Bangkok then so too are all of them. Ah well, what will be will be. We’re in laid-back travel mode. At least we seem to be flying south.

After a short 30-minute hop, we touch down somewhere I assume is Heho and disgorge to stand in the queue for immigration. Am I missing something here? This is an internal flight, isn’t it? I know being English means we’ll meekly form an orderly queue, even if we don’t know what it’s for, but this journey is getting increasingly surreal.