I had left work at 15:30 on Wednesday & headed straight to the airport. The first flight to Amsterdam was delayed by 15minutes due to a lady with an assisted breathing box traveling. This didn't bode well as I only had 50minutes in Schipol to make my flight. I therefore ran across the airport as they had advertised they were boarding when I landed.
In the end I needn't have run as this flight was delayed. Many other transit passengers were in a similar situation to myself & boarded the plane hot & tired from their runs. The flight itself was very pleasant. I was sat next to a lad from London called Pete. We chatted over some drinks for a couple of hours. Pete had left England years ago to set up a farm out in Uganda. A couple of movies later & we arrived in Nairobi at 5:55. With my next flight not until 11:30 I had plenty of time to kill. I had booked in the Aspire lounge between 7 & 10. Much like my last visit wine & Netflix was the way forward. The wine & lack of sleep had me in my usual state of discombobulation. Upon leaving the lounge I met up with Amir who had flown in from Entebe. I had grabbed a couple of cans from the lounge for us to share before heading to the gate. Unfortunately our flight was delayed for around two hours due to technical difficulties. In the gate we linked up with one of Alex's friends Lotta who neither of us had met before. Rather than sitting around waiting we popped for a drink down the corridor from the gate. Just over halfway through an attendant came running to get us as they had started to bus people to another plane. Frustratingly we then had to wait on the plane before we could get going. First stop was Nampula, two hours flying time & forty five minutes on the ground. Before finally we set off for Lilongwe. Alex was there to collect us all from the airport, in the car we discussed a plan of attack for the evenings stag. The delay had meant we would not have a chance to grab a much needed afternoon nap. So after being awake for 35 hours & some drinks, it was home shower out!
Alex had no idea where we were off to so after some quick shots in the house we took him to Mama Mias for food. We had around 20 people in attendance in all. A lot of them though arrived later, standard (malawi time keeping). The food was great & we had arranged to get our money exchanged into Kwacha in advance.
We had hired a bus for the evening, which took us to our next stop of Breeze. Alex's main local bar that I have been to many a time. It was here that I had my surprise for Alex. I ushered him away from the group & got him into his costume for the evening. A giant white inflatable penis. As he was getting into the costume however the fan became dislodged & we could not get it to inflate. Once we were back with the group though we took turns holding the fan in place & everyone got to see Alex in his fully inflated glory. By the end of the evening we had even managed to jury rig some elastic bands to hold the fan in place! The costume caused much merriment & more photos. As it was a Thursday night we had the bar pretty much to ourselves which was probably a good thing.
Our next stop on the tour was Harry's bar. Randomly Harry's father was from Hexham.
He certainly welcomed us in as we were the party that night. Free shots & champagne helped the night along.
Our final stop was back near Breeze. A place called Chez that never closes apparently. We were there into the wee hours, to round off a great night.