Trip Report, Nigeria 2011 Part 2 – In Nigeria

This is the second part of my trip report to Nigeria, the first of which was my outbound IAH-LOS flight, and the final part will be my return LOS-IAH flight.

Customs-

I had no trouble with customs as I was just carrying two duffel bags (I had one small carry-on duffel and one large ~50lb checked in duffel).  So it didn’t look like I was trying to ‘smuggle’ anything in… If anything I probably looked like a western expatriate or off-duty military.  This was interesting because the last time I came to Nigeria I had conventional checked in luggage (full sized rollers) and was dressed ‘way’ down (plain sweats; I like to dress low profile when travelling to/from Nigeria), and all of my bags were searched.  Thoroughly.

Lagos time! -

For the first couple nights I stayed at the Governor’s Hotel in Ojodu, Lagos.  The rate was 12500Naira/night (decent rate, ~$80/night USD) and I was very pleased with the hotel.  I would definitely recommend it to anyone that happens to be in Lagos and needs a relatively safe, clean and amenable budget lodging. 

Amenities:

• 24/7 Electricity & Water (omg Instant Win!)
• Working, clean Air Conditioning (Thumbs up)
• Free Wifi (wasn’t working the first night but was working from my first morning there).  My speedtest results showed the download bandwidth ranged from 500kbps to 1Mbps.  Which is fine (even by western standards) for all browsing purposes, but wouldn’t be good for streaming content.
• Free  Breakfast!  The complimentary offering of the in-house restaurant (I’d call it more of a Café) varied from day today.  One day they served bread with scrambled eggs & stew and one day they served yams & scrambled eggs.
• HDTV (~40 inch) in room!  Albiet the only channel offering HD content was Supersport (the Sports Network).  A ‘basic cable’ offering was present.  I was able to watch EPL matches, news, music videos, Nigerian soaps, etc…  If I had brought an HDMI cable I would have been able to watch my movies on the TV. Nice.

Hotel Breakfast

The room (I’m a slob, I know!)

Anyway, once I got settled in.  I immediately setup my SIM card so I would be able to communicate while out there.  Setting up my prepaid MTN SIM was a snap.  There is something to be said about the cellular network infrastructure in Nigeria.  I was using an unlocked T-Mobile (US) Galaxy S II.  In Ojodu I was on a 3g network, and in Ikeja & Victoria Island the network had HSPA+ speeds! (That’s 3.5g or 4g  in the US, depending on what provider you use)  I had speed tests as high as 6.5Mbps down in Victoria Island.  That’s more download bandwidth than the majority of landline broadband connections in the US. (I’m impressed)

After a couple nights at the hotel, I spent most of the rest of my stay with a friend in Ikeja.  But for Christmas, I wanted to travel to Akure to visit some family.

So, on Christmas day we took the public bus from the station in Lagos to Akure.

Trip Facts:

• Distance from Lagos – Akure = ~185 Miles
• Cost: 1550Naira/person each way
• Travel Time = 7 (SEVEN) Hours

This might have been the most lolbad roadtrip I’ve ever taken in my life. For sooooo many reasons…

1. We were packed like sardines in a can.  The “public bus” was really a compact minivan/minibus (Toyota HiAce) w/a seating capacity of maybe 8.  We had 14 people & and their luggage.  To make matters worse, I was tallest passenger and had to sit in the back row in the middle. 
2. Did I mention the bus had no working A/C?
3. What about the girl sitting beside me that had to sing along to every song in her mp3 player? (Audition4NigerianIdolplz)
4. How about the old lady seated in the row in front of me who proceeded to take a swig of her bottled water, gargle it, then open the window and try to spit it out the window. Fail. I had a nice ‘saliva+water’ drizzle.  Thanks ma’am.
5. But the kicker was that the driver had to jump start the bus before we left the station in Lagos. (?????????????????)

Wow.

On a lighter note, the drive was quite scenic. (Nigerian ‘Interstateways’ are nice.  During the day.)

And I saw  Ferarri  wtf….

It’s [Insert Caption Here] time!

• “Brand New???”
• “Merry Christmas, Baby.”
• “Damn, Nigerians got mad $$$ yo”
• “WTF ARE YOU GOING”  (-Katt Williams)

But seriously, where was it going???  I don’t really care who owns it, but rather why it passed us up (blazing on the flat-bed tow truck) and where was it going heading eastbound away from the greater Lagos area on Christmas Day?!

Anyway, the rest of Christmas was great, and we ended up getting a private car + driver for the return trip back to Lagos.

On my last day in Lagos we ventured into Victoria Island for a little sight seeing.  Victoria Island is a very affluent part of Lagos.

We went to the Galleria, a mall in VI.  It was a nice, standardish mall, even if most merchandise was overpriced by American standards. 

I also got to see some VI residential real estate and beaches.  WOW.  Next time I come back to Lagos I definitely to spend some more time checking out some of these areas (Any super rich 9ja LF friends???)

Overall, I had a great time in Lagos and will hopefully be going back sooner, rather than later.  If you have any questions about travelling to Nigeria please let me know.

 

 

A couple extra notes.

1. There were a lot of hip hop artists/celebrities/comedians in Nigeria during the time I was there. Cool!  In the time I was there Rick Ross, T-Pain, Fabolous, & comedian Mike Epps all had their own shows/concerts.  Next time I come I will definitely check one of these outs if they are in town and having a show.

2. KFC!!!  Did I really just fly ~6500 miles for fried chicken? (lolsterotypes)

Trip Report, Nigeria 2011 Part 1 - IAH - LOS

Happy New Year! … So I haven’t blogged in two years (no big deal), but who cares. Let’s get started!

I decided to use this blog as the means in which I would write my trip report for several reasons:

1. I’m gonna copy this to some of the frequent flyer forums I subscribe to (flyertalk/milepoint)
2. Several people have asked me how my flight/trip was. I wanna tell them all every detail!!! …but I’m lazy. With this blog I can just type this up and have them read the entries to see how my trip was.
3. I need to get rid of all these pictures!

I’ll be splitting my trip report into 3 parts. Two parts for the flights and one part for my time in Nigeria.

IAH-LOS

I arrived at the airport ~3.5 hours before departure. In retrospect this was not necessary. Keep in mind I was flying BusinessFirst (BF) and didn’t have to wait through economy check-in and general security, but in the future if I’m travelling internationally on any itinerary where I have elite access benefits, I’ll probably come to the airport closer to departure.

Continental (CO) started non-stop service between Houston (IAH) and Lagos (LOS) on Nov. 16, 2011. This route is rumored to become of their most lucrative due to the large population of Nigerian nationals in Houston, the large amount of American expatriates working for companies in Nigeria, and the fact that both cities are oil centers. Add the fact that Nigerian’s grossly over pack when travelling internationally (excess baggage revenue anyone?) and you have a veritable cash cow for CO.

I have no better proof of this luggage issue than what happened to me when I arrive at terminal E. First off, for the LOS flight tonight they had a scale at the beginning of the check-in queue and CO had a couple staff weighing everybody's bags before they got in line to use a kiosk. While my instincts tell me this is probably standard for this flight (I don’t fly IAH-LOS everyday…), it was funny seeing all the Nigerians trying to negotiate (??) with the staff about their bag weight trying to get to a kiosk.

Anyway, I walked up, and one of my bags was >50lbs (Pot, meet kettle?), and the attendant was quick to tell me I needed to lose some weight to check that bag in, but after finding out I was BF she said its ok and forwarded me to EliteAccess check in (baggage allotment on CO for intl BF is 3 bags @ 70lbs max each).

Now a pretty young lady saw this and had the audacity to ask not only me, but the guy in the EliteAccess line checking in behind me if we could check in bags for her. This is an epic fail for so many reasons:

1. She had 6 (SIX) bags to check-in. Who goes to an intl flight checking in SIX bags? I’ll tell you. Nigerians. (ilovemycountry!)
2. She had all of her bags laying on the floor in the middle of the terminal. Smart. Very smart.
3. She came up to us right in front of the CO clerk. The CO clerk laughed at her and said something to the effect of “You know, if TSA catches you you’ll be instacuffed.” I LOL’ed.

Aside from that the rest of check-in went without hitch and it was off to the United Club for me to chill (drink) until boarding began.

BusinessFirst is CO’s premium cabin offering in their international routes that use metal fitted for two cabins. In our case we were on a Boeing 777-200ER. Now this is my first time flying a transoceanic flight in a premium cabin, so my review of the hard (seat) & soft (amenities, service) product might be a little biased as I don’t really have anything to compare it to.

Prior to boarding, a clerk came out to all the BF customers waiting in line and scanned our boarding passes before they started the official boarding process. Is this a nice touch as far as hospitality is concerned or are they just trying to keep people from boarding prematurely? I have no clue, but I like to be positive so I’ll take it as an extra touch of hospitality/service

-The rear of the BF cabin

-My seat. Right side, window.

-Thinly veiled brag? (lolvanity)

When I had taken my seat my attendant:

1. Took my coat
2. Offered pre-departure beverage
3. Brought out dinner menu & took order

-One of the monster GE90-94B’s

-Amenity kit. I’m not going to go into the amenity kit, there are several sites/blogs on the web that review airline amenity kits. I’ve linked the images to CO’s page for the kit.

Let me say, there is a HUGE selection of movies on the AVOD, by my count it was ~190 movies, and you still have music, TV shows, and games available to you. Really awesome AVOD. Internet would be a plus though, especially on such a long flight.

Soon after departure, dinner began. (Excuse the picture quality, remember this is a night flight)

-Appetizer (Chilled lobster with fresh dill and Du Barry sauce. Air-dried beef garnished with melon and oranges)

-Main Course (The Chef’s Selection: Braised beef short rib with red wine sauce, spicy aji amarillo mashed potatoes, fine green beans, baby carrots and cherry tomato).

Dinner was great. I watched a movie and then decided to force myself to sleep as we would be arrive in Nigeria about 1:40pm local time (GMT+1)

As far as the seat is concerned. It wasn’t that great for sleeping. From what I’ve read, CO’s BF offering is definitely not the best when it comes to intl business class offerings over all and that includes the ‘flat-bed’ seats. I’m about 6’0, 200lbs and I wasn’t able to lie comfortably in a ‘bed’ that’s allegedly 6’6’. This is partly because the seat, when laid out in bed mode, is almost like a canoe in that it is wide in the middle, but narrows at the head and feet. In short, the listed dimensions are deceiving and you shouldn’t have problems sleeping in this seat if you are <5’8’ish and/or sleep on your side.

A couple hours before landing we had breakfast! I LOVED IT. I also had 87345687 croissants, no big deal.

-Fresh seasonal fruit and yogurt/Smoked and peppered Atlantic salmon with cream cheese and salmon roulade

A couple final notes:

• The FA’s brought us all bottled waters in our sleep, just a nice touch to wake up to IMO.
• Again to touch on the AVOD…The Programming/Movie selection is so exhaustive I could actually see people packing lighter because of this. I don’t know if people still actually use portable DVD players, but you definitely don’t need to pack one if you plan on using it for just the flight.

Let me know if you have any questions about the hard or soft product or anything else related to this flight. Happy holidays!