Travelling in... Madagascar - Antananarivo

Antananarivo (Tana) serves as a gentle introduction to Madagascar: firstly that Malagasy place names are composed on average five syllables so that you end up sticking to French abbreviations, and that the whole country has its own island speed (a polite way of saying slow). We were there at the beginning of the rainy season (low tourist season) so that there was also the impression that the city wasn’t even trying: both museums were closed though nobody knew why. Indeed, we were shadowed by guides who would request a petite quelque-chose for informing us that the closed door meant the museum was closed (but with no idea as to why?).

Hauteville - Tana

Stuck in a valley covered in rice paddy and similarly long-named towns, it sits advantageously across a couple of hills. All the cars are old Citroen 2CVs and Renault 5s which battle uphill through the streets of the city in a constant test of clutch-control, and all parking spaces come with a stone included to act as an extra braking method. Inevitably, “Haute-ville” is the nice part which hosts the historical buildings including the colonial presidential palace and Rova (palace) which was burnt down in 1995, but after 16 years they still haven’t got round to re-building (sorry Tanna, you are really slow).

Heading out of town to Ambijobna (only four syllables so it doesn’t get abbreviated) we visited another Rova which was a very modest, wooden house and Madagascar’s first UNESCO Heritage sight.  The Rova at the next town of Ilafy didn’t even have any walls (or fake guides) and when we arrived it was closed for a three hour lunch break though equally we weren’t clear whether it had opened in the first place. On the way back to the hotel we stopped at the largest tourist market in the whole country, which was disappointingly the same shop repeated about 60 times: we ended up buying a mini-watering can painted with the Laughing Cow, and a baobab tree just so that we could indicate to the other shops that we had already bought something and didn’t want to look at their similar wares without causing offence.

Rova at Ambijobna

Finally Lemur Park. Cheating in the sense that you can get so close to the lemurs as to be in the same photo, but then if you’re going to fly around the world to the only place in which they are indigenous then you may as well get your value for money. Actually, we went to a place where diabetic lemurs climbed on to our shoulders to eat a banana, but we weren’t to know that at the time and equally we had an afternoon to burn.

No article or blog about Madagascar is compete without a lemur photo

Yangon Days: Settling In

Moving to a new country is overwhelming, and last year's shift to Myanmar which included visas issues and a limit on how much currency you can access was a particularly tough one. But away from the (im)practical side of it, there is also a huge amount to try and take in, and the relative comfort zone and routine that you previously had takes time to build back, regardless of whether you’re coming from a country next door (Bangladesh) like we did. The feeling of being out of place manifests itself in many different ways, felt primarily when I had things stolen from me, like a pair of (expensive) European sandals from a sacred Buddhist site, or cash whilst getting it illegally changed in downtown Yangon, attempting to get regular access to outside information (internet and tv) and in trying to set up a new network of friends (still working on it, but my wife has done a great job so far for me).

Equally, the moments of wonder which are many at the outset, diminish as the newness wears off and you get the new comfort zone and routine in place. There becomes a moment when it is possible to see the Shwedagon Pagoda and not notice it, or drive past the Lady’s house and not think subversive thoughts, or get frustrated because the new City Mart doesn't have Marmite in stock. Added to that are the changes in-country which is being so closely followed around the world. So far in Yangon, I've only noticed it through new road surfaces and a bigger wall built round the offices of the NLD and more traffic on the roads in general. So already that first experience I had riding down Univerity Road and stealing a glance past the portrait of General Aung San hanging from a bamboo gate post is no longer possible. As opposed to the whole new experience, there are now individual events that stick out and which will remain memorable forever.

I don't even notice that 99m tall gold plated pagoda any more...

Every (almost, and increasingly less) Sunday I join a group of cyclists at 6:00, and we take a truck out of Yangon and go mountain biking. It is huge fun, and everything that I was not able to do living in Dhaka, and so I am quite insistent about getting out of bed as regularly as possible. And one Sunday last November, whilst riding to meet the group I was overtaken by a scooter (rare in a city that still bans motorbikes). The rider stopped a short distance ahead of me, opened a box on a street lamp, and suddenly all the street lamps turned off for that section.

Riding a motorbike in a white bikini top is banned

I overtook him as he did his job, only for him to speed past me again and stop at the next section of lamps, and repeat his task. And again, all the street lamps that I was riding under turned off. The process continued itself to the end of the road. It was a wonderful moment, to be able to directly observe the idiosyncrasy with which the city manages to keep itself running.

I told the story later to my wife, who pointed out that it at least proves that Yangon is modern city. After all, the Victorian lamplighters in 19^th Century Britain worked with gas, whereas this guy had a scooter and electric lamps. In another year's time, there will probably be a whole lighting grid in place.

Pause & Rewind: Drinking more beer

My friends beer review continues to grow in popularity, being picked up by the River Cottage for the dubious genius of having created a banana bread mixed with beer pancakes. So on a recent trip to Philippines where I had to drink a lot of beer I was able to turn one evening's experience in to another post that I'm hoping the New Yorker will notice.

In 5: Wet, Icy, Cold, Damp, Fizzy

But my beer-reviewing career is going to be limited, as the options in Asia are either "good" beer or "bad" beer. They all taste pretty much the same.

Planning a Wedding: The Honeymoon

The honeymoon seemed such an integral part of the wedding that we didn’t actually question what it was for until our second night away. Wikipedia wasn’t much help beyond the semantics (and I got in to trouble for checking Wikipedia in bed), so the question stuck with me for much of the trip.  We’d even gone so far as to request it as our gift and asked guests to vote on a destination, which we then had to rig as they selected Southern Argentina in the middle of winter (and we’d already bought the guidebooks for Madagascar).

In the meantime, we’d read the horror-stories of newly-wed couples sitting together on a paradise beach panicked not only by the luxurious holiday that they were not used to taking, but also how they were supposed to live up to it. Being of the generation who grew up watching the Little Mermaid, we’d already had the foresight to spend half of our trip scuba diving (underthe sea), which meant passing a lot of time together though unable to communicate except for hand signals (out of air, look at that big wrasse etc. so even they aren’t romantic).

Paradise Empty Beach #1

One senior (female) colleague at work made it clear, by identifying to me over lunch the birthdate of our first child, that I should have to deliver on a certain something (though she never actually said what) though thankfully she left the organization before I was able to return to her office and deliver a performance report.

Essentially a honeymoon is a holiday taken at a time when you would normally not be on vacation which in itself feels strange. And as with the wedding, nothing is free: the only benefit I observed was the allocation of exit-row seats once on an overnight flight, whereas we were served a special desert on our first dinner with “congratulations” written in more chocolate which we didn’t order, didn’t particularly want to eat, but still got charged for. It got so bad that when we asked the flight attendant on our Lufthansa flight if they had champagne he was so upset that he genuinely refused to serve us food or water for the remainder of the flight.

Paradise Empty Beach # 2 (with raked sand)

After two weeks of dwelling on the question, you realise that a honeymoon is an expensive holiday. We stayed at one beach resort where they raked the sand on the beach every morning which struck me as a little futile. And that there are people who take expensive holidays. So be like them (for us, it is probably the last chance for another 30 years) and divest it of any wedding baggage. 

Paradise Empty Beach # 3