If Viktor Navorski had been stranded at Singapore's Changi International Airport, he might have lived out a fulfilling life there. For about $30 you can get a night's sleep in a clean room, toss in a massage for another $20 or so, or catch a movie. You might miss your flight while deciding where to eat or swimming in the rooftop pool. Several lounges feature live music. Want to get away from the airport? No problem, just take a free bus tour of the city. Add a school system and you could raise a family there.

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I took a flight from Dulles (IAD) to Johannesburg (JNB)that had a refueling stop in Dakar. At 17 hours including the stopover, it was horrific. We were not allowed to get off the plane in Dakar, and now I understand that the airline was doing us all a favor.

The car ride from Cape Coast to Accra was by far the worst part. Well over three hot, dusty hours of tooth-jarring bumps and insane traffic of the third world variety. Once you get there, however, things get better. If waiting in the airport isn't your thing, you can get one last taste of Ghana at the swanky restaurants located on the edge of the airport parking lot (including an immaculate, air conditioned Chinese restaurant (very surreal) and a pleasant outdoor cafe). But inside the airport, in the departures area (the arrivals area was a different story), you find yourself in an immaculate relic of Ghana's old affluence. That is, the airport is clean, modern, ambitious, and deserted. Helpful signs pointing to the "Internet Cafe" and "Shopping" lead to blank, cavernous halls. The airport has been condensed into one area on the second level, where you'll find a small cafe proffering cold drinks and bagged snacks, a stately duty-free shop full of high-end Ghanaian trinkets, and a surprisingly posh seating area complete with two (count 'em! two!) wide-screen TV's. There's not much to do once you're there, but there's a lot of room to walk around. It's sad to see so much space gone to waste--one can only imagine what the airport was like when it was first built. The staff seem to be really happy to work in the airport, and like anyone Ghanaian they're friendly. They'll cheerfully call you "obruni" right up until you're packed into the plane. Oh, and the bathrooms, like the rest of the airport, are deserted and clean.

Monrovia Liberia (ROB)

Conakry Guinea (CKY)

Sierra Leone (SRK)

These airports were my introduction to West Africa. I was in for a shock when I first landed at Conakry Airport. You are greeted by mobs of people forcefully grabbing your bags. They have a baggage carousel, that they bring the luggage to in hand carts to be placed upon (it doesn't work). There was actually only one ATM in the whole country of Guinea and that did not work.

It was shocking to me at first but now I think it's a good experience and reminder that we are very privileged in the West to have our nice airports and ATM machines. I can't blame the hustlers who made my airport experience uncomfortable. I mean, what should I expect? If I was African, I would be a hustler too. What else is one to do when crushed by poverty?

You think the airports are scary? Try getting on an ancient Antonov 24 (complete with cockroaches in the plane) to fly between the airports. I didn't choose this flight either, it was booked for me by the agency I was working for.

If you believe that Dakar boasts the world's worst airport, you have clearly never been to the Gbessia International Airport in Conakry, Guinea. Large airplanes do not stop over to "refuel" in Conakry, because there is no jet fuel. Many planes don't even turn off their engines while they're in Conakry, as if the act of doing so might endanger the possibility of ever leaving again.

As a passenger disembarking in Conakry, one is deposited unceremoniously onto the tarmac, and then must pray that Allah will direct you as to what to do next. Other than a few bedraggled soldiers standing around looking hungry, there are no people to direct you anywhere, and no signs pointing you to the terminal.

If you are lucky enough to determine which of the crumbling buildings you are supposed to go into, your fun has only just begun. The initial customs line is really more of a mob scene, with friends and relatives of the customs officials and guards being waved through at random while others clamor to press small bills into their hands .

Once past the checkpoint, one emerges into a tiny arrival hall that contains one small conveyor belt that seems to be missing a number of it's panels. The whole airport is open air, but instead of having breezeways, the "interior" of the airport instead swelters in its own haze of pungent humidity, and this room is the worst of all. The most effective way to successfully retrieve one's luggage is to leap upon the conveyor belt itself and heave your luggage over the top of the gathered throngs to an accomplice who is jockeying for position amongst the chaos. Given that no one will stop you from doing this, everyone else is doing it too.

If the fates have allowed you to come into possession of all of your own luggage (and believe me when I say that "lost" luggage here is really and truly lost forever), your most fervent hope becomes to leave this room as quickly as possible... but alas, you can't.

It is now time to have all of your bags opened and searched, your motives questioned, your finances ("How much money do you have in your pocket right now?") discussed, and your character maligned by a line of gendarmes who clearly believe that they have landed the most lucrative posting in all of Guinea. In order to leave this room, you may very well have to decide which of your belongings you wish to give to your new friends, and/or how much money you wish to part with.

When you are finally released, you must steel yourself to walk out into a frenzied gaggle of clutching, groping, and shouting taxi drivers (there would be touts, but Guinea doesn't have tourists) who desperately try to prevent you from leaving the airport and crossing the main highway from whence a taxi may be had for less than half the price.

While arriving in Conakry is always an adventure, leaving again is no less so, and the idea of spending the night in the Conakry airport is not an appealing one. Security is virtually non-existent, as random people wander across the tarmac at will, but bored functionaries still make a show of hassling you, making inappropriate comments towards your female companions, and running your carry on bags through an x-ray machine that apparently hasn't worked in at least 10 years.

There are no discernible boarding announcements, nor information of any other kind, but when an airline official appears at the one departure doorway, people run (literally) to the opening and jostle for position in case (as seems quite probable), there are not enough seats on the plane for the number of people who are waiting with boarding passes in hand.

Once on the tarmac, there is a basic security check, run by the airlines themselves, for European flights. Usually this consists of a table, a man, and a portable generator powering one overhead light. For inter-African flights, there is no pretension of security whatsoever. It does not inspire confidence, and most people appear only too happy to step into the plane itself and leave the Gbessia International Airport behind.

I, for one, kind of like bad airports, and for any other adventurous souls, I can whole heartedly recommend the Conakry airport as an experience not to be missed.