Day 109 - Malta 🇲🇹

I visited Malta in 2019. It was the perfect starting point for our trip crossing the Southern Mediterranean, across Southern Italy to Albania. All the best holidays involve a decent journey.

Malta was hot, welcoming, a little chaotic and genuinely lovely. We swam in the surprisingly choppy blue waters, accidentally stumbled upon Malta Pride, and found a truly exceptional cocktail bar. There’s no better start to a holiday.

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

We were in Malta at the same time as our friend Andrea

Malta is also unexpectedly (for me at least) a little bit British. There’s an M&S, Costa Coffee, red postboxes and cars drive on the left. Curiously Malta almost ended up becoming part of the UK. In 1956 Malta was a British colony. That same year Malta held a referendum and voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to become a full part of the UK. The proposals would have seen Malta having three parliamentary seats in Westminster. Negotiations between the Maltese government and the UK government proved problematic, and Malta eventually ended becoming independent in 1964.

Anyone from the UK will recognise this…

And also this.

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Day 108 - Mali 🇲🇱

Today we head to Mali, another country I known almost nothing about, other than it’s the home of Timbuktu. Mali is an ancient landlocked country in North West Africa, and is the 8th largest county in Africa. This makes Mali slightly larger than South Africa.

Mali was recently in the news as just last week a 25 year old Malian woman somehow gave birth to nine live babies. This is a world record.

Mali has a turbulent past. After gaining independence from France in 1960s its endured droughts, civil unrest, coups, 23 years of military dictatorship and more recently a jihadist insurgency. After a military coup in 2020, Mali now plans to hold democratic elections in 2022.

Mali is home to the Great Mosque of Djenné, the largest mud mosque in the world.

The Niger River is Mali’s lifeblood. It’s also a really unusual river due to its protracted route. The River Niger starts in the Guinea Highlands and flows northeast through Mali all the way to its mouth 4,180km downstream in Nigeria. To put this in perspective, its source only 240km from the Atlantic Ocean, but the river instead runs directly away from the Atlantic Ocean into the Sahara Desert.

Mali is also home to Lake Faguibine, a lake formed by the flooding of the River Niger, however, this lake has rather dramatically disappeared leaving a vast open crater due to reduced rainfalls.

Another endangered landmark along the River Niger is Timbuktu, an ancient centre of culture and trade. Timbuktu is reportedly deteriorating as the Sahara Desert encroaches on the city. Alongside this, Mali’s precarious political situation means the city has not been able to develop into a tourist destination and raise funds for preserving the city. Timbuktu is now on the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger.

Map of Mali

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Day 107 - Maldives 🇲🇻

Welcome to the Maldives, a small nation of 26 atolls spanning the equator in the Indian Ocean south of India. The Maldives is tiny. Despite being made up of 1,192 islands, its total landmass is smaller than that of Malta. It’s the smallest country in Asia by landmass. The largest island, Gan Island is a mere 8km long and 3.4km wide. 

The Maldives was devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. All but nine islands experienced serious flooding, and six islands were completely destroyed.

This is partially explained when you learn that the Maldives is the lowest country in the world. The highest point in the country is 2.4 metres above sea level. It’s therefore pretty obvious that the Maldives is one of the most endangered nations on the planet due to climate change.

I’ll leave you with a more upbeat fact. The Maldives is home to the world’s largest seaplane airline. Trans Maldivian Airways (TMA) operates a fleet of 55 seaplanes serving 79 island destinations. TMA’s main hubs are docks alongside Velana International Airport and Ibrahim Nasir International Airport. Perfect for connecting flights for an island getaway.

The TMA Terminal alongside the regular, land based Ibrahim Nasir International Airport

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Day 106 - Malaysia 🇲🇾

If there is one thing this project has made me good at, it is the ability to knock out a blog post in minutes. No guarantees of quality. Tonight is one of those evenings when I’m in a bind. We have a friend coming round in 15 minutes, and I’m guilty of procrastination.

Right, onwards with Malaysia!

Malaysia is actually smaller than I imagined. Its total size is smaller than that of Finland. Malaysia consists of Peninsular Malaysia, north of Singapore and part of the island of Borneo. Here are a few assorted tidbits about Malaysia.

Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy (like the UK), however with a twist that the king or queen is elected by nine state sultans every five years. The last kind of Malaysia abdicated after he married a former Miss Moscow and reportedly moved to Russia.

Malaysia is home to the largest known cave chamber in the world, the Sarawak Chamber. Its largest dimensions are 700 by 400 meters and can reportedly house eight Jumbo Jets in a row. Possibly a long term storage solution for the current aviation crisis?

Tanjung Piai, at the lower tip of the Malay Peninsula, is the southernmost point on the Eurasian landmass, so in theory, you could drive to Malaysia from Europe. Kind of like in the TV show Race Across the World.

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Day 105 - Malawi 🇲🇼

What I knew about Malawi before today

Not so much, I knew it was a relatively poor landlocked country in Subsaharan Africa and was named after Lake Malawi. 

What’s Malawi’s top tourist attraction?

Probably Lake Malawi, or failing that going on a safari to seek out the Little Five.

What was the last war or conflict Malawi took part in?

Malawi has been involved in fighting against the Allied Democratic Forces insurgency as part of the United Nations Force Intervention Brigade since 2014

A bizarre fact about Malawi

One-fifth of the country is water despite the fact it is landlocked. Talking of water, Malawi was home to the first Carlsberg brewery outside of Denmark. Carlsberg set up Carlsberg Malawi in 1968 and brewed beer in Malawi until 2016 when the brewery was sold and rebranded to Castel Malawi.

Was Malawi a former colony?

Yes, Malawi was previously British Central Africa Protectorate before finally becoming independent in 1964.

What are Malawi’s main exports?

Malawi’s biggest export is tobacco which contributes to more than 60% of the countries earnings.. The Malawian president however recently proposed switching away from tobacco production, largely because global demand for tobacco is in decline.

What’s Malawi’s National dish?

Malawi’s national dish is nsima a porridge made from maize, cassava and sorghum flour. It’s often served with fish and other sides such as beans and greens.

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Day 104 - Madagascar 🇲🇬

As I sit down to write this, I’m indulging in a bowl of Ben and Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream. It’s undoubtedly the best ice cream you can buy (well certainly in my local Danish supermarket). It’s a rich mix of vanilla ice cream blended with lumps of raw cookie dough and chocolate chips. What could be better? 

The reason I’m sharing the details of my unhealthy lifestyle is that today’s destination is Madagascar. One of the only things I know about Madagascar is that vanilla always seems to originate from Madagascar.

Supermarket isles the world over are lined with rows of luxury products proclaiming that they’re exclusive, and worth more than their competitors because they contain “Madagascan Vanilla”. It turns out that this is actually a little bit deceptive. 80% of the world’s vanilla is grown in Madagascar. So, dear food marketers, if you want a truly exclusive product, you should probably source your vanilla from somewhere other than Madagascar.

Even if Madagascan vanilla is ubiquitous it’s certainly high quality, and delicious. Demand for Madagascan vanilla has resulted in prices skyrocketing and has is also causing somewhat of a gold rush in Madagascar. High vanilla prices have infused large sums of money into small villages where vanilla is grown in the Madagascan hills. 

Despite this recent influx of vanilla money, Madagascar is still one of the poorest countries in the world. The infrastructure is very underdeveloped and the GDP per capita was only $471 in 2019. Let’s hope the default ice cream flavour continues to be vanilla and Madagascar has a wealthier future.

This is undoubtedly the most I’ve ever thought about, or written about vanilla before. Anyway, to partially offset this vanilla-based detour, here are a few bonus Madagascan facts to round off today’s post.

Lemurs are native to Madagascar and only found in the wild in Madagascar. There are a hundred species of lemur to be precise. In fact, Madagascar is known for its biodiversity. Despite being roughly the size of France, Madagascar is home to over 200,000 known species.

Unlike Madagascan vanilla, the people that come from Madagascar are not called Madagascan, but Malagasy. Many Malagasy people can partially trace their routes back to Austronesian ancestry.

Apparently there’s a children’s movie about Madagascar starring Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Sacha Baron Cohen and David Schwimmer. I haven’t seen it. Should I?

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Day 103 - Luxembourg 🇱🇺

I visited Luxembourg in early 2019 as part of an extremely long detour on the way back from the UK to Denmark after Christmas. Visiting Luxembourg was definitely worth the extra kilometres. 

We visited Luxembourg City, which must be one of Europe’s most dramatic capital cities and is split between two distinct, almost unconnected levels. Complete with a fort, palaces and meandering river within a gorge, Luxembourg City has a very old-world Europe feel.

This traditional impression of Luxembourg City is starkly punctuated by visiting the new glistening glass district of Kirchberg. Kirchberg houses the European Parliament, European Investment Bank and European Court of Justice. On a personal note, nothing gave me more pleasure than visiting these wonderful institutions while my own countries xenophobic premier was doing everything she could to strip me of my European citizenship. Yep, I’m still not over Brexit.

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Luxembourg City

Anyway, back to Luxembourg. Luxembourg also has excellent thermal baths, although as we learned you can’t buy swimming shorts anywhere in Luxembourg City in early January.

One thing we did get to try though was Luxembourg’s excellent Crémant de Luxembourg - a delicious sparkling wine. I think it may be my absolute favourite sparkling wine. What’s even better is you can go out and drink whatever you like because all of the public transport in Luxembourg City is absolutely free. If you don’t want to get too drunk though, I’d recommend trying the steak tartare. It’s truly excellent.

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Steak tartare in Luxembourg

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Day 102 - Lithuania 🇱🇹

Today we head back to the Baltics, this time to the final of the three Baltic nations, Lithuania. I am very short on time, so here are five things I find interesting about Lithuania:

1. Lithuania has an abandoned Soviet nuclear power plant very similar to Chernobyl. In fact, the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant is so similar to Chernobyl, the EU required it to be decommissioned before Lithuania was allowed to join the EU. Ignalina was also used as a filming location for the recent HBO drama series Chernobyl.

2. Apparently Lithuania has the highest number of hot air balloons per capita. It turns out there is actually a time and a place to use stock photography with balloons floating on the horizon.

3. Like Denmark, Lithuania also has a self-proclaimed, unrecognised. Formed in 1997, the Republic of Užupis has a population of 7,000 and is located within Vilnius.

4. Lithuania has a bizarre, creepy looking “Hill of Crosses”. It’s a hill, covered in over 100,000 crosses dating back to medieval times. It’s seen as a symbol of Lithuanian independence. Oh, and did I mention it’s incredibly creepy in appearance?

5. Lithuania claims to be the geographic centre of Europe and has even built a monument to commemorate this. Sadly for Lithuania, this isn’t a widely agreed-upon fact and the Estonian island of Saaremaa made a claim to be the geographic centre of Europe last week. It looks like tensions are heating up in the Baltics.

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Day 101 - Liechtenstein 🇱🇮

Today’s destination is Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein is one of only two double landlocked countries (the other being Uzbekistan) and is also the smallest country we have covered so far on this journey.

Liechtenstein is also the first (and only) country in the world you can rent for a holiday. If only Liechtenstein had been as progressive with gender equality - women were not permitted to vote until 1986. The law only changed due to a referendum which narrowly passed with a result of 51%. Naturally, only men could vote in the referendum. I wonder how many of these men are still alive today. I really hope they’ve changed their views since...

I visited Liechtenstein back in 2017 when we were travelling through Switzerland on our way to Italy. We spent the night in a tiny Swiss village called Jenins and then drove through Liechtenstein, briefly stopping in Vaduz. I think it’s also the shortest amount of time I’ve ever spent in a country.  

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Day 100 - Libya 🇱🇾

Today we visit Libya, a country almost everyone associates with oil, desert, Muammar Gaddafi and the two devastating civil wars lasting from 2011 to 2020.

For me though, every time I think of Libya, I think of Danish trains.

Unlike Denmark, Libya has no operational railways and has had none since 1965. It’s kind of surprising then, that a brand new train ordered by the Danish rail operator DSB went missing and turned up in Libya. 

The reason for the missing train was Silvio Berlusconi’s government was trying to bribe Gaddafi into selecting Italian firms for a whole host of ambitious Libyan railway projects. The IC4 train was decorated in a special paint scheme and fitted out with a luxury VIP interior. Today it sits unused and stranded on a tiny unconnected section of track collecting dust.

All aboard the train to no-where. Image courtesy of Oryx

Denmark eventually got its trains, and despite huge delays, cost overruns and breakdowns, you can now ride the IC4 all over Denmark. You can read a more in-depth account of this bizarre train theft on the Oryx blog.

The situation in Libya also seems to be finally looking up. There has been a ceasefire in Libya since October 2020 and the UN is deploying ceasefire monitors and supporting Libya’s new unity government in preparing for free elections in December.

Let’s hope Libya’s future is finally peaceful, democratic, and prosperous. 

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