Adventure to Blantyre

Blantyre is the other major city in Malawi, also known as the economic capital. My friend Vanessa is from there so we went on a fun weekend trip to stay with her family and check out the place. She and her best friend Tadala gave me the Blantyre grand tour. Her family is really nice. Her mom is actually freshly retired chief justice of the supreme court in Malawi, so it was an extra honor to meet her. I've taken many photo to document our adventure as shown below.

We left Lilongwe at 6 AM and by 7:30 we were passing through a very hectic markeplace!

more of the saturday market

ah Mozambique, so close yet so far...

a very nice rest stop with pretty garden and good bathroom and the cube hanging out

we stop at another market and Vanessa picks up some baobab frutis which we later make into juice 

and so we arrive in Blantyre, this is a land rover turned into rental wedding truck (akin to U.S. wedding limo)

the famous carlsberg brewery! only one outside of Copenhagen apparently!

Finally arrive at Vanessa's parents house and get a great Malawian lunch

so the tour begins...the famous private hospital..

one of the many churches, this one is famous original missionary

the independence monument

puppies i almost adopted, they were Tadala's

the famous public hospital

and the one and only college of medicine

Vanessa's church

went out to dinner to interesting food court type place, but you actually sit and order from a waiter. This looks like "menu" but its actually written in Russian!!!!

we had quite a feast that was delicious, the first was prawn spring rolls. they were excellent but didn't have peanut sauce sadly

crab and shrimp sushi! actually really good!!!

the rest of the feast!! thai food, had really amazing shrimp pad thai

then we went out for drinks, first place was a cool lounge

tried my first rock shandy which was really good..will order more now

next drink place was called basement, which was funny, bit dodgy, but gets to be a cool dance spot, we were bit early for that

so we actually stayed in a different house than where her parents currently live, as chief justice her mom had a beautiful house given as a perk of job, but she's too attached ot their current house as she built it herself with her hard earned money and not just had it as a perk. it's used for when guests stay over because it so spacious. it's very lovely. the whole place is carpeted--something i haven't seen in a house abroad! This is Vanessa getting her hair braided with extensions by Tadala.

beautiful view from the house

anyone know what this critter is?? its sparkly blue!

I wanted to see what it was like to get braid extensions

so Tadala put one in my hair

added some braids to the front

and cool bun to the back

portrait of Vanessa's mom in the house

remember the baobab we bought...now its cracked

then pieces are peeled out, added to water and let it soak for couple of hours, then add sugar and drink

so we actually ended up being delayed in Blantyre and had to spend sunday night there. While driving around Blantyre on saturday, we got pulled over by the cops (no real reason, random check) and then discovered Vanessa left her driver license in Lilongwe. So her brother put in on a deliver coach bus to Blantyre. When we went to collect it, they said it wasn't there and began searching for it. Hours later, we convinced them to go to another branch of this company in Blantyre and low and behold it was sitting there. By the time all got sorted, it was going to be getting dark soon so we'd be driving a lot in the dark which isn't safe, especially in the evening with lots of traffic. So we spent the night and got up at 4 am to drive back. This is a picture of sunrise. Oh and most exciting thing is I got to use my credit card to pay for gas!!! whoohoo

morning fog over clouds