The Flight - Part 2

Tuesday morning, April 1st, we got to the airport early and checked in our luggage.

Over the Air France ticket counter was a sign that caught our attention.

It said:

Air France/KLM
pour/handling for
Vietnam Air
China Air

Walter, of course, had to take that and run with it! He said, "I don't want poor handling. I want the quality handling!" I had to remind him (jokingly) that "pour" doesn't mean the same as "poor." I really wanted to take a picture of the sign to post it here but with all the armed military guards walking around us, Walter thought they might confiscate our camera, so we opted not to take the picture (major bummer!).

The difference between American/domestic flights and international flights are quite noticeable. Typically, when you are flying domestically and you get to your destination, the flight attendant will say something like this: "Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for flying...Please be careful when opening the overhead compartments as your baggage may have shifted during the flight."

When you are flying on Air France here's what they say. "Ladies and gentlemen, Thank you...Please be careful when opening the overhead compartments as things might fall out." It just sounds different!

The flight from France to Madagascar was normal - nothing really notable. We landed safely in Antananrivo (or Tana for short).

My feet swelled up to what felt like softball size and kinda looked like it, too.

We walked off the plane and into the airport to the line to purchase our tourist visas. A young man walks up to Walter and asks him if he is American. Walter says 'yes' and he proceeds to tell us that he (his name is Kristoff) is there to pick us up on behalf of Brother Pritchard. Since we were basically the last ones off the plane, we were basically the last ones in line to get our visas (there were at least 200 people in line ahead of us). Kristoff tells us that he's going to go and see if he can get us to the front of the line. He comes back and tells us to follow him. We do right up to the very front! Then he takes our money and cuts in the front of the line and gets our visas very quickly. There was a French couple who were quite irritated that he cut in line in front of them. But he did it anyway! We found out later that it is a Malagasy custom to do that and it was just fine with the guys behind the counter.

Kristoff then takes our passports and gets them stamped with our visas and off we went to get our luggage. We met up with Bro. Pritchard and we left the airport.

We dropped Kristoff off for the night and headed to our hotel.

Upon entering our hotel, the most memorable thing (there are many) was the smell. It smelled like petroleum! And it was a very strong smell, too! Yuck!

Though the room was very clean.

We looked in the bathroom only to find the following picture -

Yep, no shower curtain! And the holder for the shower hose was broken, too! Not only that, but there was no toilet paper or towels! We ended up finding out later that most Malagasy people don't use toilet paper and they don't use towels after showering (when they do shower, that is). We had to ask for towels and toilet paper. Let me just say that it is quite difficult to take a shower with no shower curtain and no way for you to stand under the water! We took our showers in the morning and got water seemingly everywhere.

We knew before we left for Madagascar that the people are very small. We are considered very tall compared to them. My feet touched the bottom edge of the bed and Walter's hung off the bed. We tried to sleep as best we could.

More to come!