Since the school calendar had a particularly long Christmas break this year we decided to take a trip to Africa as two friends of ours summitted Kilimanjaro this year and convinced us that this was not really mountain climbing but just walking up a hill (sarcastic foreshadow). The plan was to go on safari in Tanzania for a couple days, then spend 7 days climbing the Machame route of Kilimanjaro, then relax on the beaches of Zanzibar for a few days.
Firstly, no, we have never climbed a real mountain before. No, we don't like camping. But we do like skiing, and, well, climbing a mountain is almost like the same thing, right? So we were off to climb a mountain, planning a summit attempt starting on New Years Eve. Getting from Taipei to Kilimanjaro is easy, you only have to go from Taipei > Hong Kong > Bangkok > Nairobi > Kilimanjaro, which is not nearly as difficult as getting from Zanzibar to Taipei (more sarcastic foreshadow). As we boarded the flight from Hong Kong > Nairobi (with a pit stop in Bangkok), we had our first exposure to Kenyan culture. We were seated in the same row but there were 3 seats in between us and we didn't realize this when we got our boarding passes. As people were still trying to board the plane there were people running all over the place, 90% men, and somehow they seemed to all know each other. The guy sitting next to Shirley was shaking his head at the rudeness and said something like, "Welcome to Africa". It was like a big party, but I wasn't in the mood for a big party and I was assuming that even though it was Kenya Airways, there still must be a rule that you can't be running up and down the aisles yelling "Jambo" (Swahili for "Hello") as the plane is taking off. After about 30 minutes of this the plane was finally ready to go and everyone got in their seats. Before everyone had sat down there was still a seat open next to me and I got Shirley to move into that seat. I think someone was assigned to that seat but I took advantage of the fact that there seemed to be no urge for the 300 passengers to actually take their seats so I figured whomever was assigned to that seat really didn't care where they sat.
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| Shirley checking out a Taiwan history display in HK airport |
Or it could also have been the fact that while we were waiting in Hong Kong Airport to get our boarding passes, a family of five was having a big fight with the counter agent because they were being denied access due to visa concerns. The behavior would easily have gotten them tasered in the US but but I would soon come to realize this over emotional arguing would be commonplace in Kenya. I also noticed that throughout the flight people were wandering around messing with stuff in the overhead bins, far from the seats they were sitting in. I think they just randomly scatter their baggage to have an excuse to wander the plane and socialize.
We had a total of 22 hours from door to door which isn't actually that bad and is less painful when the "back" button works on the in flight entertainment system. I, however, wasn't so lucky and I somehow got stuck into the Adele music selection with no "Back" button to save me from this horror. I would rather freeze to death on the Hillary steps of Mt. Everest than listen to Adele for 12 hours so I just shut the thing off and tried to get some sleep.
(to be continued)
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