Madagascar Entry Visa? Check.

If you ever want a pleasant experience getting a travel visa. Go to Madagsascar.

At first glance it would appear to be a major pain. Their website, www.madagascar.org.uk has no content other than the address phone number and email. No list of services, no downloadable forms, not even the office opening hours. Completely crap as websites go but it did have the email address I used it to ask them how to go about obtaining a travel visa.

They responded quickly though and within a day or two I received the instructions with the relevant forms attached. Strangely, though I noticed that the subject line read FW:RE:Madagascar Visa. Scrolling down I could see that rather than respond to my request, the representative at the embasy had taken a response to an email request from someone else a few weeks earlier and just forwarded it on to me. Sounds like something I would do! Although I like to think that I would at least sanitize the email so that you couldn't tell that on June 5th a woman named Helen B. at the University of West England (UWE) enquired about obtaining a teaching visa. She'll be in Madagascar in October. Apparently she used the same forms as me for her application. I wondered what kind of teaching she'd be doing. I tried google but only found that she works in finance and once won a kit kat egg with a mug at the UWE staff easter raffle. Sometimes the web isn't all that great a source of information. I'm sure it was delicious though. I imagine that, with no website, her Madagascar research must be top secret. However, now that I've stumbled across the visa application part of her plan I'm sure the rest will reveal itself soon enough. Or not. Either way it would be an amazing coincidence if our paths crossed somehow. Madacascar is more than twice the size of the UK so it's probably unlikely though.

This level of carelessness is a bit shocking for an international embassy but given the lack of sophistication of the website and the @yahoo.com web address I suppose it's fitting. Anyway I call it carelessness but I think, as I found in the Carribean, it is just a casual attitute, and more laidback approach to human interaction. It was this casual attitude I was surprised by and grateful for when I went to drop off my visa application.

According to their email, the opening hours are from 10:00 to 2:00. (See what I mean about being laidback). Since I'm on my last week of work it didn't really bother me to sleep in a bit later and take a quick trip over to Great Portland St tube to drop off my application for 10:00. Having been bitten once by the massive queue outside the Russian embassy when I last needed a travel visa in '07, I was well prepared to wiat. I had a fully charged ipod and my Lonely Planet guide to Madagascar which I've had for months and desparately need open since I have not yet planned even so much as a single night's accomodation.

Unexpectedly there was no sign out front or armed guards or flag flying or lineup down the street anything and if I didn't have the address I would have walked right by. Instead the Embassy of the Republic of Madagascar to the UK is a plain looking victorian building in W1 with an unmarked black door and a buzzer.

I rang the buzzer, opened the door and noticed that the inside was even more non-descript with plain white (or maybe offwhite or light beige I really wouldn't know the difference) walls and still no flag or brochures or photos of lemurs or anything else Madagascar-esque to me know I was in the right place. I was greeted immediately by a well dressed lady with a friendly smile instructing me to follow her to the waiting room and have a seat. Ahh, the waiting room eh? Good thing I brought my book and ipod!

Actually it looked more like a living room than a waiting room, with inviting high ceilings and comfy looking leather couches and chairs. At least I hoped the couches were comfy as I was sure I had a long wait ahead of me. Still no flags or propaganda of any kind. Way different from the Russian Embassy for example with cyrillic writing and portraits of Lenin everywhere you look.

To my surprise though, rather than kepping me waiting for 3 hrs, she sat down next to me on the couch and asked to see my application. She quickly checked that everything was in order and complete, asked a few routine questions took my fee and said the visa would be ready later on in the day. That was it. No lineup. No hasstle. No stress. I checked my phone 10:03. Now though, instead of sitting on a comfy couch for a while reading about Madagascar in what looked like someone else's very comfortable living room, I had to go to work. Thankfully, only a few more days of that.

Hopefully the rest of my trip goes as smoothly.