This post is part 11 of a series of stories recounting all the ups and downs of my ~6 year journey around the world to all seven continents and seven seas.
After our stop in the Maldives, we visited Mauritius and Reunion, and I also turned 25.
We docked next in Madagascar overnight and even now, those two days are some of my most treasured travel memories.
Madagascar is drop-dead gorgeous, but so heartbreakingly poor.
We were warned of this.
The minute we stepped into town, chaos ensued. Children swarmed us, begging and tugging at our clothing.
No matter where we tried to move, the crowded circle of women and kids surrounding us followed.
A group of us went to the beach and spent the afternoon playing with the children.
At some point I ended up with a few kids, holding hands in a circle and running and laughing, because why not.
As we stopped by a small eatery for dinner, two unmistakably bitter and entitled middle-aged white, American men (the only other tourists around) stared at my friends and I and took a dig at us.
“You guys are the reason why prices are going up,” they snarked as they guzzled their less than one dollar equivalent of imported Coke.
The nerve.
Me, being the only American in my trio of friends, was so glad everyone in town thought I didn’t speak English.
“Whatever distances me as far as remotely possible from these sad sacks,” I told myself.
Determined on having an epic evening, my two friends and I who had decided to stay off the ship for the night headed to the one club in town by foot, despite being warned by the locals to not walk anywhere after dark.
What happened at that club for the next several hours was the stuff of dance party dreams.
I have had a handful of dance-until-you-drop nights of pure euphoric bliss in my life, and it all began in Madagascar.
All night, we danced like no one was watching, except literally everyone was watching us as we, two white guys and an Asian girl, were the only tourists.
We connected with some of the locals, trading dance moves and having dance-offs while getting down to the Village People’s “YMCA” in synchronized motion.
Then, as if the party gods had curated the greatest international party playlist ever, a remix of Tupac and Elton John’s “Ghetto Gospel” dropped.
Everyone lifted their hands in the air simultaneously, waving and bobbing along to the rhythm of one of the greatest rappers of all time.
The world might be very big and full of different cultures and languages, but there’s nothing like good music and a good time to bring us together.
When it was finally time to go, a local we’d befriended at the club helped us get back to our little bungalow in the hills safely.
Still high from our night in dance heaven, I sat outside and just stared up at all the stars, so ridiculously in love with this planet and the people in it.
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