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