On January 4, the day that we were to leave
for Singapore, fortunately the owner of the
inn who had gone on a vacation came back.We had asked the maid who was in charge of the inn about how to use a pay phone in the inn but she refused to tell us probably saying she didn't know whether it was OK for us to use the phone. Her English had a Creole accent and I often had difficulties in understanding her.
So we called the car-rental agent and asked him to pick our car up.
A small bus which picked up tourists at resort hotels came to the inn at 8:30. There was only one passenger in it when it came but at the next hotel it picked up 15 Japanese tourists. I found there were quite a lot of Japanese tourists although I didn't meet any of them.
We went out of the airport building after we checked in and saw a Seychelles Kestrel perching on the roof. It tore its prey under its feet and ate it.
There was an announcement that passengers would be boarding the plane 15 minutes later than scheduled. An ambulance carrying a sick person to be transported to Singapore drove up to the airplane door.
More than 30 minutes after the scheduled departure time the airplane took off from the "Nirvana of flying foxes and birds"