Dorothy & George (despite him having to work all day at a Conference) dropped us at the airport for our 9.35 flight. Correction. 10.35. And lucky to be on it at all, given the inefficiency of Intertis, who didn’t have us on their manifest. But we arrived, picking up a Japanese guy on the way whose job is almost exactly what Adrian does, but for Toyota. We changed dollars with the touts (after deep calculations – at 6,500 Malagasy francs to the dollar and 1.5 dollars to the pound, and not recognising the notes, and then having so many zeros….digitally challenged, I was!) and agreed a good price with a taxi tout. However, despite being promised a Big Car, the three of us and kit were shoe-horned into a Deux Chevaux. Only to be winkled out again and plonked in a Taxi Agréé as the Gendarmes arrested our man for plying illegally. Euh? We’re poor foreigners and understand nothing.

The road from the airport is smoothly tarmaced, but we’d better not get used to it. Bright green paddy fields the size of handkerchiefs line the road and even in the middle of the capital, the low flat land is more valued for food than building. How long will it last? The town spills over the many hillsides in a chaotic jumble of styles and colours, all of them decayed and fading. This is a very poor country, and since the colonial era, little of use has been built or repaired. Despite a colourful and often violent monarchy holding sway, much given to pomp and international junketing, little appears to have been done for the thousands of beggars.

We checked into the poshest hotel in town and went strolling. The station, grand and Parisian, is closed, along with 95% of the lines. Cars are very battered (But then, Renaults & Peugeots always look that way…). The quality of work on the many carvings is good, despite the skill being squandered in toy cars. We saw two weddings, one by car and one on foot in the country, and a long snake of a crowd with palm branches and instruments, fêteing a 6 year old boy on the event of his circumcision. After a beer in an OK bar, we ate at the hotel – the possibilities of cleanliness are low. But the prostitutes are plentiful.