I can't bear the loneliness, and the place I want to go is Madagascar. This country has been to many times during my work, as a seafarer to the port of Tamataf in Madagascar, where I met a local Shari brother, under his guidance, dug up gems, saw child circumcision and other unforgettable things, which impressed me.
I have been there a lot, I think Madagascar is very good, and I hope to have the opportunity to go to the country again after returning home from vacation. Traveling is like an unfinished worry that has been left in my mind, and I always think about it when I am on vacation.
Finally, I took a leave of absence at home, and after consultation with my wife, she agreed that I would travel to this country alone. My wife is also a travel enthusiast, and in Madagascar's eyes, the country is not only poor, but also very chaotic. Her ideas were completely different from what I had personally experienced, and I still really wanted to go to this country. I think the people in this country are friendly, especially in the province of Toamasina where I went before, where the people are very poor, but everyone is alive and happy.
With the help of his wife, a direct flight was booked from Guangzhou to Madagascar's Antananarivo Airport. This is the fastest flight Chinese to this country and the most convenient. There are also other connecting flights, such as the Mauritius flight, which departs from Shanghai and goes first to Mauritius and then to Antananarivo Airport.
Traveling is indeed tiring for me, and more than ten hours of sailing make me feel particularly bored sitting on the plane. I still miss my life working on the ship. As long as we follow the boat and unload the cargo in a country, we can go down to the local area at will, not only without taking long-distance flights, but also free experience. Compared with traveling by plane, it is still comfortable to run a boat.
In order to experience Madagascar more, I felt that it was not enough to go to just one port city, I also wanted to go to their first-tier city to experience a different world.
Here, I will tell you how I entered the country, when my wife booked my flight directly on her mobile phone and did not ask for a visa. On the same day, I checked in for my boarding pass at the airport, passed the security check, went directly to the lounge, and then boarded the plane.
The whole process was very convenient, smooth, and did not check the relevant documents, I thought whether the seafarers had relevant documents, and could have better treatment, but in fact they did not.
On the plane, the flight attendant on the plane was quite enthusiastic, but I felt that after taking the plane for more than 13 hours, I was indeed tired of sitting on my butt, and the air on the plane always felt not fresh to me, and the perfume smelled very strong.
It was already five o'clock the next morning, and I thought Madagascar would be very hot, and according to my experience in the country, the dry season from June to September is the equivalent of summer.
At that time, I only wore a short sleeve to get off the plane, and just got off the plane, I still felt that it was cold here, which made me feel a big contrast. This may be the geographical difference, the province of Tuamasina is located on the northeastern coast of Madagascar, while the province of Antananarivo is in the middle of the entire island, surrounded by the provinces of Tuamasina, Mahajanga, Toliara and Fianarantsoa.
Topographically, Antananarivo province is relatively higher and the local temperature is lower.
After getting off the plane that day, you can directly apply for a visa on arrival, which is very convenient here, five minutes to get it, just show your passport and give 35 euros or 40 US dollars. I gave $40 at the time, poked a chapter and let it go.
After finding my luggage at the airport, I immediately looked for a window near the airport to exchange the local currency, but the exchange rate here was too disappointing, the exchange rate was pitifully low, and it was very different from what I had learned about before coming to this country.
So I decided not to change the money first, I planned to go directly to the door to take a taxi, communicate with the driver first, let him drive me to the city to exchange money, and then give it to him.
At that time, I asked many drivers, and the drivers here learned that I had no money, and no one wanted to drive me, and some drivers even cursed. They saw that I was a stranger, and they wanted to get in the car without giving money, and they kept muttering Malagasy in their mouths, and they were very reluctant from their expressions.
I asked a total of ten people, and I was about to give up, thinking that I still had to enter the airport to exchange the Malagasy Ariary currency before a local would want to take me.
I was lucky, and just as I gave up asking the driver, a young man in his 20s, seeing me looking for a car, came up and talked to me.
He said he would take me to town and take me to exchange money. I saw the expressions of the drivers around me laughing, and I always felt that this young man made me feel insecure.
Looking at the young man doesn't look like a bad person, thinking maybe people are kind enough to help?
With this mentality, I chose to believe him and got into his car.
At first, when I was in the car, I was still quite vigilant, and I kept looking at the road signs outside the car window, afraid that the young man would take me away. I didn't speak, just sat quietly, watching the cars and the surrounding buildings.
The architecture here is very European, like in the old European town. Many of the shops on the side of the road have not yet opened, presumably because I arrived too early.
After walking for about half an hour, the young man finally caught my attention, speaking in English. I always thought that the young man could only speak Malagasy or French, until he started to speak English, and I was like a talker, completely forgetting that I was talking to a stranger.
The young man asked me if I was here for business or tourism, and I told him he was here for a tour, and he thought I was so bold.
The young man told me that he used to carry many Chinese passengers, and many tourists either had familiar friends pick them up when they arrived at the airport, or they hired local guides and bodyguards early. And I came to the airport, there was nothing, just asking for directions, and the young man thought I was bold.
In my opinion, Madagascar is not what the lads say. When I went to Toamasina province before, the local people were very warm, although they were poor, they treated me very kindly, gave me food and welcomed me to his home.
The young man said this, feeling that the security of Antananarivo province is not as good as that of Tuamasina province.
The friendly young man walked with me for about an hour, and we finally saw some Chinese-owned restaurants and hotels on a street. In my consciousness, hotels and restaurants opened by Chinese people are often Chinese bosses in the store, I tried to let the young man put me down, went to a hotel and asked if I could exchange coins, but in reality, the people inside were locals, the boss was not present, they couldn't understand what I said, which made my first exchange fail.
I walked along the road for a while and came across a restaurant whose owner is from Fujian, who runs a snack business here. The first time I asked him about currency exchange, he seemed to look down on people, and his tone was not small. I told my boss that I was also from Fujian and came here to travel and want to exchange some local cash.
The boss may have pulled down his serious expression after hearing me say that I was from Fujian, but it did not make me feel very enthusiastic, but only expressed his willingness to exchange cash with me. The owner did not give me a very good impression and the exchange rate I exchanged was similar to the airport, which made me a bit disappointed. There is a big gap with the image of Chinese people abroad that I imagined.
Although I have experienced that Chinese people are treated abroad Chinese very unfriendly in many countries before, those people are all in developed countries, and as for Chinese in developing countries and poor countries, most of them still have a good impression on me.
This time, I met an unfriendly Chinese, and it didn't make me feel like a fellow villager seeing a fellow villager, and my eyes were full of tears. Even if the eyes of the two do not burst into tears, they are both people from the same country, and they can be friendly.
But in reality, it didn't make me feel warm when I first came to the capital city, and the driver told me that the security here was not as good as I thought, which made me need to re-understand this country and this city with new eyes.
After changing the cash and returning to the car, the driver immediately asked me to give the money first, and told me that the next journey would take another hour, and this hour could be taken in his car or changed the car myself. If you continue to ride in his car, you will need to pay the fare again.
I sounded very sad, obviously it was the money for a trip, and I said it before getting on the bus, but it changed when I changed the money and came back. It seems that the people here are not as friendly as I thought.
Since I first came here, I was tired of flying, so I agreed to the driver and let him continue to drive me to the hotel I had booked in advance.
Along the way, the driver didn't talk as much as before, as if I had offended him, he didn't bother to take care of me, and finally drove me to the door of the hotel I wanted, so he threw my things out of the car and left.
It was already noon when I arrived at the hotel, packed up my things and slept a lot. I woke up at about four o'clock in the afternoon, and I felt uncomfortable all over my body, and I was worried about whether I had a cold when I came in the morning and was going to catch a cold.
I quickly went to take a hot shower, the whole person was much more comfortable, maybe too tired from the plane.
After settling himself, he simply packed up his backpack for going out, took a little cash and a mobile phone, hid a mobile phone in the room, and went out.
When I went out, it was still light, and the hotel was not too far away, but the location of the hotel was a bit like being on a high mountain, and you needed to walk down to get to the bustling area.
A person, holding a camera and looking at the beautiful scenery, the beautiful building will take a picture, and share it with his wife in the distance at any time. My wife was relieved to learn that I had checked into the hotel smoothly and had already gone shopping.
In order not to get lost, I opened Google Maps, briefly looked at the nearby route, and found that the place where I wanted to go to the Chinese Hotel to exchange cash earlier was only a few hundred meters away from my location.
I suddenly realized that the driver had pitted me, obviously it was a few minutes away, and he drove me around the city for a long time, and fooled me a lot of fares.
The Malagasy people disappointed me so much, at this time I missed my little brother so much that I thought it would be him. It's a pity that my province is too far away from his location, just like when I was in Xiamen, Fujian, and he was in the west of Jiangxi, far away and too inconvenient to travel.
A person came to the street, and looking at the people passing by on the street looked at me as if it was strange. The locals allow you to take pictures, but they think that these people are not like Indians, who will cooperate with you to take pictures or greet you. People here feel very cold to you, and their eyes are always full of bad looks.
Walking down the street, I probably looked around the things sold, and I found that there were so many things sold here, and the things on the street seemed to be similar to Chinese vegetable markets.
There are also potatoes, cauliflower, cabbage, cabbage, here there are also turnips, there are also strawberries, apples, pineapples, oranges, lychees. I felt like I was not walking in Madagascar, but rather in a Chinese farmers' market.
The scene here is so much like our country, I tried to ask about prices, and the prices here surprised me, which once again refreshed my understanding of Madagascar.
Potatoes 2000 Madagascar Ariary a catty, about 3 yuan, onion 1200 Madagascar Ariary a catty, about 1.9 yuan, oranges 200 Madagascar Ariary a catty, 3 cents RMB, strawberries 600 Madagascar Ariary a catty, about 1 yuan.
In my opinion, the price of Madagascar should not be so cheap, although the country is an agricultural country, but the agriculture here is not developed, and the quality of self-produced and self-sold things is not very good. The things sold in the market are all fresh, and they should be imported from China. For imported things, taxes and fees are often expensive, but in fact, the prices on the market are very cheap.
I know that the income of Malagasy people is very low, and the average monthly income of ordinary people is basically 500 yuan. In their eyes, such prices should be normal, and in my eyes, such prices are really too cheap and suitable for Chinese to live here.
The fruits and vegetables here are very good, the seafood here is an eye-opener for me, there is a lot of sea fish, but it is not as fresh as the people who live by the sea. Just like China's coastal and inland cities, marine fish are basically not alive in their interior.
Shrimp are common, lobsters are also a lot, the shrimp on the street are basically dried, or frozen, a kilogram is 6000 Madagascar ariari, about 10 yuan a kilogram, five yuan a catty.
This price is more expensive than my in Tuamasina province, where live shrimp are 2 yuan a catty. Lobster is also much more expensive, lobster here is 8 yuan a catty, Tuamasina province only needs 1 yuan.
This is the difference between coastal cities and inland provinces.
If you want to eat live seafood in this inland area, you can only eat black crabs and green crabs. These crabs have a long lifespan and are easy to transport, and there are people on the street who sell buckets one bucket after another.
At that time, I asked a boss how to sell black crabs? The boss told me 4000 Madagascar Ariary a catty, about 6.5 yuan a catty.
Madagascar's crab is a specialty, and the crab in autumn is delicious and cheap. In the port of Tamatave, we do not spend money on seafood, and directly use the broken clothes, broken shoes, or light oil on the boat to exchange with the locals for a variety of seafood.
Sometimes 10 liters of light oil can be exchanged for a basket of seafood, casually twenty or thirty pounds, it can be said that when you are still a seafarer, you can eat a refreshing seafood meal.
I usually take vacations at home, eat less seafood, and once I get on board as a seafarer, I eat all kinds of seafood. One thing bad is that if you eat too much seafood and beer, the gout problem will come.
This is a very bad phenomenon to eat seafood, if you don't exercise on the boat, it is equivalent to lying flat, and the body will soon be eaten.
In my foreign travel experience, generally in foreign countries, customers who buy food outside can ask the waiter to help make it in the hotel, and then give a tip, of course, you can also make it yourself.
That's what I thought that day, I wanted to buy some fresh crabs and take them back to the hotel to make them, and if the waiters at the hotel also wanted to eat it, I could also ask them to taste the Chinese food.
Out of my love for crabs, I bought 7 pounds of crabs at one time, all of them live, a total of 6, an average of more than one catty, which is a very good seafood.
Shopping here is fun, you just stop and buy something and someone will follow you. At first I thought I was going to rob, but when I finished shopping, he pulled out the bag to me and offered me to fill it. I thought I didn't want money, so I put the crab directly into the bag he gave, and then the other party asked me for money.
Only then did I react, people here also provide the service of selling bags, although a bag is not expensive, a dime a dime, but as long as you buy something, someone will chase you and ask, ask if you need to buy a bag, which makes me feel particularly insecure.
Watching the sun slowly go down, thinking that there is nothing to eat in the hotel, I haven't eaten rice for a day. After visiting the market, I walked along the street shops to see if there was a suitable local food to try.
I found that there are relatively few restaurants here, and each restaurant has more things, more types, and more choices.
I ate a little rice in a restaurant, the rice here is similar to our domestic one, where vegetables are given less, and meat and seafood are more.
I found an interesting thing, I ordered several kinds of food, I didn't know what it was, and I couldn't communicate with each other at all. Ate several foods, found that the food seems to be liver, among which I ate beef liver, the rest do not know what animal liver, the taste is still good, it is estimated that there are a lot of spices.
A pot of rice, three liver foods, a beef, a meat sausage, a bowl of mung bean cake, a cup of coffee, a total of 6300 Madagascar ariari, about 10 yuan.
Such a price is really cheap, which makes me feel that in the next few days, eating should not worry about the pressure of money.
After eating, I saw that it was already getting dark. Thinking about the first day, I didn't want to leave, so I probably walked back after strolling around.
As the sun went down and there were fewer and fewer people on the street, I noticed that as soon as it got dark and the street lights came on, the pedestrians began to decrease rapidly, and shops began to close one after another.
This is something I didn't expect at all, because in Tuamasina province, because there was no electricity in the local countryside, everyone did not go out at night and went to bed early. I thought it was caused by the inconvenience of people's lack of electricity at night, but when I came to such a capital city, the night market life at night was still very quiet.
The shop was basically closed, and there were fewer people, so I had to go in the direction of the hotel.
Walking in the laneway, I didn't feel anything abnormal at first, walking on the road normally, taking out my phone from time to time to look at Google Maps, worried that I was going the wrong way.
Later, I noticed a man behind me, this man was very dark and sneaky, and it was only then that I realized that there might be danger.
Before I could pull my legs and run, the black man behind followed, a small knife directly on my neck, at that moment, the cold taste penetrated my entire heart, the heart seemed to suddenly stop, the whole person did not dare to move at all, and there was no consciousness.
I didn't dare to move, I didn't dare to turn back, and I didn't dare to resist.
The black man took the mobile phone he had just taken out from me, put it in his trouser pocket, and then asked me to take out the contents of my backpack, and I had to obediently take out the rest of the cash, at that time, the passport was not brought out, if the passport was brought out, then I estimated that it would be troublesome to return to China.
The black man not only saw my money, but also my backpack, asked me to untie it, and then pointed to the bag with crabs on the ground and asked me to put the crabs in the backpack.
I didn't dare to move at all, but he asked me to load things, and I was afraid that he would accidentally scratch me.
He snatched everything I was carrying, carried it on his back, put one hand around my neck, and the other hand was busy taking off my coat.
I had to let him take it off, and fortunately I didn't strip me of all my clothes, otherwise I would have to go back to the hotel naked.
After the robber took all my belongings, he immediately ran away and soon disappeared into the night.
At that moment, my heart was completely cold, and I really realized how terrible the security here is.
For safety, I immediately ran in the direction of the hotel, I was afraid that someone would come out again and just snatch all our remaining clothes, which would be bad.
I ran vigorously, ran vigorously, did not dare to look back at all, at that moment there was only one thought in my heart, hurry back to the hotel, hurry back to the hotel.
To be honest, at that moment I was really scared, as my wife told me before, the Malagasy people here are vicious, and the people here are not enthusiastic at all. Before I came to Antananarivo, I thought the people in this country were very friendly and welcoming. Until I came to this country, experienced this knife robbery, especially experienced the feeling of the cold blade on my neck, my whole person was out of state.
I finally ran back to the hotel, I told the front desk staff what happened to me, and the staff said that I was really bold. The staff told me not to say it was me, even herself, at night, did not dare to go out, did not dare to take a step out of the hotel door.
Here, there are a lot of people who rob at night, they don't distinguish whether you are a foreigner or a local at all, they have either knives or "biubiu...", those who rob like to come out at night to commit crimes and like to hide in alleys. Even robbers and robbers will rob each other.
The robber finally robbed others, and before he got home, he met other robbers, and the phenomenon of robbery between robbers and robbers would occur again, and even lose his life.
Listening to the front desk staff like this, I had no affection for Madagascar at all.
The staff reminded me that if you want to visit the local area, you can only go out during the day, and at night before dark, you must return to your accommodation, otherwise it will be dangerous. Even if you go out during the day, you must not bring too much money on your body, let alone dress very richly, otherwise it is easy to be cut, not only cut the backpack, but also possibly cut people.
When I ask, are there no police here? The staff told the police that they themselves were afraid of the robbers, let alone protect others.
In this way, when it comes to traveling in Madagascar, law and order has become my top priority, and hiring bodyguards has become my top priority.
Just as I was worried about what to do next, the front desk clerk suddenly stood up and said that she had an acquaintance who could help me. (To be continued)