On the Streets in Diego Suarez Madagascar

Hey guys I'm in Diego Suarez Madagascar that actually um I was here for three weeks then I went to Zimbabwe. If you look at my other videos you'll see a couple videos about Zimbabwe. I was in Zimbabwe for five days and I returned here. I really like Diego. The reason is there's just a lot of things to do here day and night. Like for example there's a few nice cafes. You can hang out during the day for an hour or two. Great restaurants and they have some nightlife here too at Taxi D. It's happening every night. I think we've got a market down here. Maybe I'll do a separate video on the marketplace here but I can't get a market down there. This is like a real busy district. It gets really busy around 4 or 30 at night. It's really hot during the day. A lot of people don't come out about 4 or 4 30 at nighttime. So anyway I'll talk about my recent travels. I took a bus from here to Zimbabwe and I was there for about four or five days. Super nice beach. There's an area of the beach where it's great for swimming but you know I This gets boring for me anyway after a couple days because there's really almost nothing to do there especially during the day. Even at nighttime nothing to do. Maybe during on Sunday. I did a whole video on this Sunday around 4 30 at the boardwalk. It gets pretty really busy. Like a lot of people from the town go down there to drink and and congregate. They have some I think they had a live band there. But other than that the place is just dead. Maybe that's what you want. You want to go someplace with a nice beach. It's well laid-back. I can imagine like if you want to spend like a month writing a book or working on a computer program it kind of be a nice place to hang out. But there was there was no rest. There was one restaurant there. It was pretty decent. Almost every time I went to the restaurant I was the only one in there. It was just really empty. Just empty most of the time. And there's really there was no real cafes to hang out at. There's nothing to do. I mean that's the only way I can describe it. So from there I went to Ambalobi which is kind of like a great place. Like if you're taking a bus up north to Diego or Zimbabwe or to Nozi Bay. If you're taking the bus I would highly recommend you stop off either Ambalobi or Ambanda or Dade because these bus trips are brutal man. Like the bus trip from Majinga to Diego is 28 hours. Mostly time on unpaved roads full of potholes. And my back was just spent after I basically took a week for my back to recover from the trip. On hindsight I would have stopped in Ambalobi for a day or two which I did on this trip. And Ambalobi is a small town. There's again almost nothing to do there. But there is a hotel called Hotel Kazobi and it's one of the best hotels I've ever stayed at. I'll put up videos. This room I'm showing you is 35 US, less than 35 US dollars a night. Amazing balcony. The place has got a great pool. They got a restaurant there. So if you go there stay at Hotel Kazobi. Recuperate and then continue on your voyage whether it be to Diego or Zimbabwe or Nozi Bay. Because I spent a couple days in Ambalobi relaxed from the pool. And the trip from Ambalobi to Diego is only five or six hours. And I wasn't even really that tired after the voyage which is unusual. By the way I'm walking to a Boulangerie which is a really great hangout point called Boulangerie Amacal. It's like a really popular place where people hang out. Got some local expats and some local people. It's a good place to hang out. You'll see at the end of this video it's on a corner. You just hang out, drink coffee and watch people walk by this. This town is the right size for me. It's not too big but not so small. One thing you should do if you come here is take a Bajaj. Bajaj is called instead of tuk-tuk. You can take a Bajaj to the Romaina Beach. And the road is really smooth from Diego to Romaina Beach. It's really smooth so you can take a tuk-tuk and it's a smooth nice scenic ride. It took me about 40 minutes to get there. It cost $30,000 round trip which is only like nine dollars round trip. And Romaina Beach is really nice. Just go there around, I don't know, for lunchtime. Maybe come back around five o'clock or so before it gets dark. But it's just a short enough trip you can do it. It's a nice day trip. Of all the places I've been in Madagascar, I'm not an expert obviously, but I've been here three trips. And I like Tuliar. I like Tamatov. But I would put Diego Suarez above all of this because like I don't expect a lot of infrastructure but there's enough here that keep you busy during the day. And like I said tons of nice cheap restaurants. There's a couple cafes down on them like the main tourist street called Rue Colbert. There's tons of hotels down there. You get hotels ranging from cheap $14 hotels in a great location to the Grand Hotel which I believe is around 400,000 ariaria a night which is 90 US dollars or something. But they've got this amazing, I think from the pictures I've seen it they've got an amazing US flag. You see a lot of US flags here. You don't see many French flags here. They've got an amazing indoor pool. And a lot of hotels you can just go to the pool for the day. Oh yeah, another thing, they've got supermarkets here. Yeah, ladies walking around, swimming. Every morning they sell melons and mangoes and I think papayas and lemons and bananas. And they're just really good quality, you know, for a cheap price. I think I said this in another video but if you go to like touristy, there's a place called Skor which has got the touristy supermarket. They're charging $10,000 for a melon here and on the street you get it for like $3,000. And then at the market back there it's probably $2,000. We're getting close to the Blanc d'Orient. People here seem really happy. You just see a lot of people walking around smiling their face, talking to their friends. I didn't see that so much in Namibia. You know, just like people walking on the street, it's brutal hot. You don't really have these sidewalks like you have here. A lot of pollution. Same in Tannah, so you don't really see a lot of people enjoying themselves. But here, it's different, you know. It's abolished. Like I said, I really wanted to like that place. I wanted to stay there about three weeks but I just had to pour my days, man. I got on the bus. Too dull, not enough to do for me. But like I said, if that's what you want. And I write computer software. I can see spending a month there just working on like an Apple or Apple iPad application or something like that. You're not gonna have many distractions. So here it is. I actually stayed down this road at an apartment. I'll be moving into a new apartment next week. So that's it for today. Thank you.