To all of you who protest by saying "but we already read an article entitled The Most Epic Journey Ever. Ever." I say pooh-pooh. This is far more epic. Despite my previous use of hyperbole.
Actually this is just epic in a different way. In involves 4 plane flights over the course of about 48 hours on 3(ish) continents, 4 countries, and 5 cities.
Ready?
Go!
Go!
While waiting for my plane to Nairobi, I had to use the
bathroom. And I found this interesting
little piece of graffiti… lol.
It says Elder Rainibe Durban South Africa Mission
18/8/10.
He was my only mini (local member companion) during my mission, and left on his mission a couple days after my family and I visited in August of 2010.
He was my only mini (local member companion) during my mission, and left on his mission a couple days after my family and I visited in August of 2010.
Anyways, plane finally arrives and around 2am or something,
I got on my Kenya Airways plane which looked like this (courtesy of my iPod):
I was able to somewhat sleep for the next 3 or 4 hours until
the plane landed in Nairobi, Kenya at 5 or 6am local time (which would have
been 6 or 7 in Mada) either way, I had about 3 hours of sleep.
I stumbled off the plane and through the airport. Just for a visual, I brought a pillow from
home with me on this trip and so everywhere I went I had a full size pillow
with me. Also, I had my backpack which
was loaded down with everything besides my clothes. And I had a hoodie on, tied around my
waist. Essentially I was lugging 30
pounds on my body.
Now Madagascar is in some ways very similar to much of
sub-Saharan Africa, but in some ways very different. Stepping off the plane in Kenya I immediately
realized I was a foreigner here and that try as I might, it would most
definitely show.
First order of business was to buy a map. I had about 7 hours until my plane took off
and I wanted to take in some of the city/country. So I went to the map/book store. Once I finally figured out how much a map
would cost (converting from Shillings to Dollars at 6am on 3 hours of sleep,
after having thought in Ariary for 35 days was a major ordeal lol), I also realized I had no Shillings, and went to
the ATMs to get some. For whatever
reason, this ATM didn’t like me. And being
paranoid of credit card scams and getting mugged in broad daylight I kind of
fidgeted around for a while until eventually, I think I figured out how to make
it give me money. Problem: This time my
computations didn’t work very well and instead of withdrawing my intended $50
or so, I believe I withdrew around $300, which I only realized hours
later.
So I took my money and bought my map and then wandered over
to the row of little kiosks with people in them to see about hiring a
driver/taxi for half of the day. I was
originally quoted something like $40 which seemed great to me, but the guy
seemed a little shifty, so I got a second opinion. These people either were really good hagglers
or actually legit or a combination of both b/c they offered $100 and I got them
down to $80 I think. If anyone has been
to Kenya, you are free to comment on whether I was ripped off, justly dealt
with, or otherwise.
I gave the car service my pillow for the day and made sure
they locked it away.
I was led out to the car by a comically obese
man (seriously looked like a cartoon character, for several reasons). I got in, and we were on our way.
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| There are taxibe's in Kenya! |
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| Kenyan Construction! |
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| Epicerie! (just like in Madgascar) |
This video has the driver teaching me some Swahili!
I do remember this though:
After a couple minutes in the car we were out on the highway (which was fairly respectable by Western standards, and downright amazing compared to Madagascar). We were talking about whatever my plans were and all of the sudden this jovial obese man goes
“no. No. NO!”
After a couple minutes in the car we were out on the highway (which was fairly respectable by Western standards, and downright amazing compared to Madagascar). We were talking about whatever my plans were and all of the sudden this jovial obese man goes
“no. No. NO!”
?
“No. Dis eez a bad idea. I must tell you where you must go. You cannot do dee [whatever my plan was]. We must go to see dee orphan eeleephants.”
“No. Dis eez a bad idea. I must tell you where you must go. You cannot do dee [whatever my plan was]. We must go to see dee orphan eeleephants.”
I was about to kind flip out and demand that we followed my
plans, for which I had agreed to pay $80, but I kept my cool a little longer to
figure out if he had sinister intentions or he was just trying to be helpful in
a way which was culturally foreign to me.
Eventually, I decided he was not trying to take me down a
dark alley, slice my throat and take all of my electronics, and we proceeded as
planned (the giraffe place was first).
In the mean time I managed to orient myself with the map and
my surroundings so that I could have a general idea if he tried to take me
across town or something like that.
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| Giraffe! |
We made it to giraffetopia and I paid my (excitingly low)
entrance fee of $5 or $10! I was excited
(and a little nervous that something was up). Luckily, nothing was. In hindsight, I feel this was a reasonable
fee being that there are only a limited number of things to do at this giraffe
place. But this place is instantly recognizable as the
Rothschild plantation (I think). If you’ve
ever seen pictures of captive giraffes in Africa, its almost certainly this
place. The home that sits on this old
farm is now a hotel that goes for some astronomical price in the hundreds or
thousands of dollars per night. (but
giraffes will poke their head through your windows for breakfast!)
I enjoyed the giraffes a lot.
And the guide (whose name I forget) was really cool and
chill and helpful. He was about my age
and had a sister that lives in Dallas or Houston so he’d been to Texas.
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| Sometimes not so graceful... lol |
Excuse the my obnoxious voice and the banter between me and the guide guy.
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| Awesome. |
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| More awesome. |
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| I think her name was Daisy. |
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| Awww so adroable! |
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| Profile. |
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| Haha. And look at the Asians in the background. |
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| "Hahaha! Dis American man soo funny!" |
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| She got bored of eating |
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| Staring contest |
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| The Famous Building! |
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| Me + Famous Building! = More Famous |
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| Facing Mecca. |
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| I thought this was funny at the time. Now its just ironic. LOL. |
After my time with the giraffes, I washed my hands and found
my driver and off we went to the orphan elephants place.
This place is almost as famous, and luckily for me is only
open for an hour each day at 11am. We
got their just in time for the daily show.
This park-ish-thing is adjacent to on the national parks in
Kenya and they take in orphaned baby elephants and try (usually successfully)
to nurse them back to health and independence.
For an hour each day, they show off the orphans to visitors
to raise money for the center. Its quite
a moving experience.
Elephants have always been my favorite animal. In fact my very first “when I grow up…” dream
was to be an elephant trainer. Too this
day they fascinate me. They are among
the most human of all the animals in their intellect and social behavior. So you can imagine that an orphan camp of
elephants has a similar dynamic to that of an orphanage for humans. Over the course of an hour we learned about
how these elephants come to be in the camp and how they progress out of
it. We met different elephants and
learned their personalities and their stories.
They’re really fun and playful, if rambunctious and full of complicated
emotions. They would charge each other
and gently charge the audience. Linger
around the lady in charge, wanting her attention. It was great.
We also learned about their keepers who basically commit to live a
solitary life with elephants for the duration of their employment. There are 2 or 3 crews of humans that cycle
in and out so that they can go home and sleep and eat, but other than that,
they’re with elephants 24/7. Amazing.
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| This was the sad new orphan elephant. He was really skinny. And sad. : ( |
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| Yay! I <3 elephants! |
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| Sad Rhino Baby! |
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| This is where the keepers live (on the bunk) with the elephants. |
So we went.
Basically it’s an all you can eat restaurant very similar in
idea to Toucanos or Rodizio. But instead
of normal meat, there’s lots of African game and such. Back in the day, they used to be able to
serve anything (lion, elephant, giraffe, etc included) they could just go hunt
down an animal and serve it up. But
(thankfully) some laws were passed in 2005 or so that prohibited this. So now they serve typical stuff like turkey,
chicken, and beef, as well as less normal stuff like sheep, and then some
really exotic stuff like camel, ox ball (yes.), and… others… oh! Ostrich!
So yeah I had all that.
Camel was tough, ostrich was kinda eh, but the rest of the meat I liked mostly.
I’m pretty sure the family at the table next to me was from
Austin. I swear I heard them say that,
and they if they were entertaining their Kenya host in Austin they’d take him
to this restaurant (that sounded familiar) that is famous for their Sunday
brunch and specializes in interior Mexican cuisine. Ring any bells?
Anywho, done with my lunch (and a little rushed) (and a
little embarrassed that my Madagascar sized stomach meant that I didn’t eat
that much, to the amusement of the servers) I got back in the taxi and off we
went to the airport.
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| They start you out with a nice soup and salad so you don't feel like a total barbarian. |
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| Meat. Yum. |
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| Selling stuff in the middle of a highway? Just like Madagascar... |
I got there with plenty of time, tipped the driver
generously (I recall that it seemed my tip was something like 5-10 times what
he was verbally expecting, while still being only $5 or so).
Luckily I was at the airport early, b/c whatever airline was now about to board couldn’t seem to process my ticket and give me a boarding pass. Finally after running back and forth between several counter agents, I got a boarding pass and went through security.
Luckily I was at the airport early, b/c whatever airline was now about to board couldn’t seem to process my ticket and give me a boarding pass. Finally after running back and forth between several counter agents, I got a boarding pass and went through security.
And then I made it to the gate and found out I had like 10
minutes to spare, just enough time to dash to the currency exchange counter and
turn all my excess shillings into Dubai… dollars? Can’t remember what theyre
called.
Dashed back to the gate, went though more security and then found myself sitting in a hot uncomfortable
seat (still in the airport terminal) as jetlag began to take its toll and I
nervously wondered what the protocol would be for boarding the plane.
Finally another 20 minutes later or so we go through another
round of security as we board the plane.
Once in the air I was somewhat thankful for the cloudy
weather which gave me an excuse to pass out and not feel guilty for not
watching the scenery below as I usually do.
Several hours later (more than 3 but less than 9 –which are
the flying times of my other flights that day), we landed in Dubai at around
9pm. A little early and just perfect for
my plans which had absolutely no room for error.
Adrenaline kicked in and I was a machine of customs
navigation.
Luckily, Dubai (at 9pm on Mondays) has one of the most
efficient and easily understood airports in the world (per my experience) and
so I was outside of the airport in a matter of some 15 minutes.
BAM. Outside in what
was still 100 F at 9pm. I staggered over
to a taxi and hopped in (again with pillow, hoodie, and backpack in town). Told the driver we were going to the Burj
Khalifa, which oddly seemed somewhat confusing.
I mean how hard can it be to drive to the tallest building in the
world?... dun dun dun *irony/foreshadowing*
After a 15-20 minute ride through the Arab world’s version
of Las Vegas Built in a Day, we arrived at a mall across a small manmade lake
from the base of the Burj Khalifa which literally shimmered in its 800m of
glory (almost half a mile tall).
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| The magnificent Burj Khalifa in all its shimmering 800m (2,723ft) tall glory |
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| This man-made lake is pretty big |
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| I walked halfway around this. |
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| From the other side of the tall blue building, to where I took this picture was about 1/4 of the total distance I walked. |
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| Proof I was there. |
After a good 10 minutes I reach the outer edges of the base
of the building and began circling around to find the entrance.
After almost 30 minutes I was happened upon by a nice well
spoken security guard as I inadvertently tried to trespass into the Armani
Executive Suites entrance (still bedecked in hoodie, pillow, and backpack… in
100F weather… what an idiot lol). He
kindly informed me that the entrance to the tower was counter-intuitively
located in the mall from whence I had trekked and showed me how to get back…
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| A very ghetto attempt at stitching these photos together in blogspot. My bad. |
I finally found myself at the entrance to the Burj Khalifa…
inside the mall… and went to retrieve my entrance ticket which I had purchased on
line. Only to discover that my purchase didn’t
go through and so there was non such ticket and by the time we figured all of
this out…. They were closing and unable to sell me a new one…. Oh the Agony! My plans were thwarted! Here I
am naïve little civil engineer who purposefully routed his flight through Dubai
just go get inside this magnificent structure thwarted by fate (and unhelpful
taxi drivers). And so, like a sad puppy,
I found the food court and got myself a deliciously thirst-quenching
fresh-squeezed lemonade juice thing (see, America!) and then trudged myself outside for some
pictures.
After all of the pictures, I swam through the humidity to
the place where I had been dropped off was delighted to see that indeed this
was where taxis kind of cycled through. Yay!
The metaphorical bridge exists!
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| America! |
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| A departing shot. |
Got in one and off we whisked towards the airport.
With little money
left, I paid the taxi and went through customs.
I realized that getting into
the airport was actually much harder than getting out and so I managed to get
my boarding pass, jog through the 5-gazillion-mile terminal, and get to the
gate just as the red “FINAL BOARDING CALL” sign was flashing.
Success.
At 1am local time (probably the same as Madagascar time) we
were off. Nearly 24 hours of adventure
with no more than a few hours sleep were behind me. 2 counties down, 1 more to go.
I sat next to a nice Chinese lady who chatted with me for a
fair amount of the ride.
I would comment on that conversation, but right now I’m
tired and need to go to bed.
The most pertinent part of this convo was that she was
impressed with the airplane and deemed it much nicer than the one she flew to Dubai in 3 years earlier for her job,
while I instantly rated this plane was the most ghetto
of all of the ones I had flown on yet.
It seemed like a barely updated ‘80s edition of the 747. The food and service seemed to be … sub
par.
I had been really excited for this flight when I booked it
b/c the flight path literally goes right over the Himalayas and I had hoped to
see Mt Everest. Sadly, more cloudy
weather and complete exhaustion (and no inflight entertainment/map system = more poor service) combined with sheer exhaustion
meant that I was out of it for most of the trip.
When we approached Guangzhuo, there were thunderstorms so we
circled for while and then finally landed about an hour late or so.
This airport experience was easily my least favorite of the
whole trip.
After getting off the plane
we had to go through customs to get to the domestic terminal where I
would board my final (FINAL! Yay!) flight to Guilin in a couple hours. But I totally forgot that I had to take my
luggage through customs. So I made it
partway through before I realized this, and then went running back and found my
luggage.
My luggage included my duffel bag from America which was
mostly full of clothes and such and weighed about 40 pounds. This I slung over my shoulder. And then there was the suitcase I bought in
Madagascar, full of Malagasy stuff for my job at BYU.
This suitcase, purchased in Madagascar for $15, and probably
made in China for $1, had almost completely fallen apart. The wheels were complete busted off, the
zippers were almost broke, and the extendable and fixed handles were nearly
gone too. So I literally drug this 50lb
dinosaur of a suitcase through the terminal to customs who cleared it and threw
it on the conveyor belt.
I got through customs (somehow) and got my boarding pass
(again, how did this happen?) and got on a little golf cart thing that drove us
to the terminal where our flight was. Yay!
I got to this tiny little terminal (basically a 75x75ft
room) where I found out my 1pm flight was now a 2pm flight was now a 3pm flight
was now a 4pm flight was now a 5pm flight was now a 6pm flight.
All this, mind you while I was in a state of utter delirium
and trying to both stay awake to hear flight information in Chinese and poor
Engrish and fall asleep to keep from having an aneurism or lapse into
coma.
By nothing other than divine grace itself, I managed to wake
up around 6pm long enough to look over towards my gate and notice that it was
flashing red Chinese characters in a very urgent manner. As I stumbled the 25 feet to the gate I
faintly picked out the intercom saying (in “Engrish”) that this was the final
boarding call for the flight to Guilin and something to the effect of “If your
trash wasn’t on that plane 5 minutes ago you’re dead.” As this dire message
registered in my comatose brain I locked eyes with the gate agent who gave me
bar-none the most evil glare I have ever seen amongst 1.2 billion people in
China. Without saying a word in a
language one of us would surely not understand he managed to communicate the
following:
“What the freak are you lazy America doing strolling up the gate 5 minutes after we’ve been screaming (in Chinese) for people to board the plane for the last time or else. Haven’t you heard our incessant announcements in Chinese? Haven’t you heard the Engrish versions?! Why have you been lying in that hard plastic chair over there for hours and just not running up to the gate?! There are 1.2 billion people in this country and YOU are the last to board this plane. You have ruined my day. I hate you. And I hope your plane crashes and you are the only one to die”
I very sheepishly handed him by boarding pass which he very
forcefully processed and let me through some glass doors to a bus which took us
to the plane.
I managed to stay awake for some of the scenery from the plane
which was quite nice.
We landed in Guilin an hour or so later. I claimed my luggage (again, major major
hassle). Strolled to the bathroom b/c I
needed to. Discovered that the airport
for this city of 5 million people had only 1 ATM which closed at 5pm (it was
now 8pm) and that I had no Chinese money, AND that no one who would acknowledge
my existence spoke English. Also, I was
hungry.
Through a mixture of my very
broken Chinese, the help of my Chinese dictionary (on my iPod!) and some
creative sign language, I managed to barter for a taxi that would take me by an
ATM on the way to my hostel.
I had a few minutes of dread when this taxi trip ended up
taking around 30 minutes which was a lot longer than I expected. Eventually, I got my money from the ATM, paid
the taxi driver, and got dropped off a good 200 ft from the hostel entrance b/c
the road was blocked off. I lugged all
of my junk into the hostel and was finally. Finally. FINALLY.
FFFFIIIIIIINNNNNAAALLLLLYYYY in a place I could call home for 2 nights.
HAL-UH-FREAKING-LU-JAH!!!!!!!!
I was given a room on the 4th floor with no
elevator. #fml
Lugged my stuff upstairs and and passed out.
The End.
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