2 words about Madagascar

Pitifully beautiful.

Well, I pity the condition the people here are living in. But with their simple and pitiful condition, the country is beautiful.

Mud houses..

view from Queen's palace, yar no king in the history. It was rule by woman

everywhere is red, red mud use to make red house

antananarivo city

this is how women wash clothes, they wash by the river and leave it by the river to dry

 

another popular mode of transport

King Julian

You don't know who is King Julian? Is this move-it move-it monkey from cartoon Madagascar

And this is King Julien in real world in the real country Madagascar...

and this little cute fella...

is also cute in real life...

other type of endangered species I saw in Lemurs Park today.,..

I love the concept of the park, basically the park is like a island surrounded by river. That way animals don't get away. And so they are not caged and in their natural habitat.

Hotel I am staying..

Hotel Iblis. Smack right in the middle of the...slump, is this hotel. Well, the hotel looks nice and modern. Really comfortable, more so when I see the condition people are living in outside the hotel.

Toilet story..

This few days have been real busy for me doing document.Or maybe because I am bit lazy or slow, thought I could finish it in hours and spend the rest of the time enjoying my trip. It has been few days here already and I am not finish yet. Aaaarggh!!. Need to move to Gear 5 already.
Anyway, just curi tulang and write a little blog. I was in customer's office. Went to the restroom or toilet or gents room or whatever people call it here. There was no sign male or female toilet. Well, I was rest assured that it was a male toilet as there were standing urinal there. So there I was in my vulnerable state, relieving myself with small whistle tune of "One Way". All of a sudden, a lady come out of the toilet cubicle and casually wash her hand, stare at her face in the mirror, turn around and smile at me. It  was that type of feeling like you are being gutted real bad. My face turn lobster red and I pull the hardest humiliating smile back as reply.
Now I realise it is actually a shared toilet. Lesson learn, I will really study the toilet first and next time, I am using the cubicle.

Madagascar..Antananarivo

Madagascar

OK. After spending a day and a night in South Africa, jump on the plane to my next destination Madagascar. Everything was cool normal until I travel from the airport to my hotel. I was speechless. I thought is going to be  kampung like Perlis or something, but man, it was worse than that.
The small houses here are made of dried mud. The narrow roads are not tarred properly and is very sandy. Kids are without shoe kicking ball in the sand. Some are playing in the longkang. Women are washing clothes in the dirty river placed them on the river bank to dry. And people are even bathing in the river.Chicken dogs are everywhere, flies are on everyone's face.

Asia is not the only place there is trishaw..

mudhouses

Interesting facts about Madagascar:

• Madagascar is the fourth largest island in the world. Its coastline is as long as 4828 km.
• Madagascar has a narrow coastal plain. It is the world's largest producer and exporter of vanilla.
• The majority of the people in the country have indigenous beliefs with regard to religion. This follows a relationship between the living and the dead.
• It would be interesting to know that as much as 52% of the total population of Madagascar follows animist beliefs, while 41% follows Christianity. The remaining popular predominantly follows Islam.
• The average life span in Madagascar is 57 year
  
• The country is also referred to as the Red Island, due to the red color of its soil
• Nearly half of the land of Madagascar is covered with forest.
• Due to soil erosion and deforestation, many of the plants and animals found in the island have been categorized as endangered species.
• The prehistoric breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent separated the Madagascar-Antarctica-India landmass from the Africa-South America landmass around 135 million years ago. Madagascar later split from India around 88 million years ago, allowing plants and animals on the island to evolve in complete isolation
• During French Colonization, 20 French soldiers died fighting, and 6,000 died of malaria and other diseases

First stop...Johannesburg

OK. Let's start.

First stop Johannesburg. Actually it was bangkok, but i was only in the airport for few hours, so no count as first stop.. Via couch surfing, I manage to find a host.  Though is pretty risky as you never met your host before, only communication through mails,  but it was great to have a local friendly host to introduce you to the local lifestyle,stay in his house free, bring you to places free etc. So it really save cost.

My host pick me up at the airport early in the morning. It was fairly easy as he was holding a sign with my name on it. And after that we went back to his apartment. It was really nice place. Beautiful. From the balcony, you can view golf course and park.

There are parrots, other colorful birds flying about. Yup, those are free wild african birds

 

It was still early in the morning and raining a little  So I rested for awhile. Afternoon went to an african restaurant, had my face painted african style.

For food, I ordered the oxtail stew. Tasted like te-ka-co (pig's leg).




After that, head to lion's safari park and saw those african animals. It  was those type of zoo where you are in your vehicle like a cage moving into the animal territory. Ya you are not allowed to leave your vehicle, well unless you want to be the lion's asian cuisine.
The animals here are whole lot healthier and bigger and active as compare to those in KL zoo, Melaka zoo skinny and malnutrish. And yes, the lions here are huge, maybe even bigger than my Myvi

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