Mercure Aden

Monday 1 December Off Aden (at noon) N 12° 34.2' E 45° 30.6' A really beautiful morning. The sun was up behind us when I looked out, but you couldn't see the horizon yet, ahead. The sea was almost flat, and glassy. A few ships were visible, appearing to float in the sky as much as on the sea. When I did my walk after breakfast, having found an open route to the deck at the third ...

Yesterday was a day off because it's exam week and it was "study day" for the students. So my friends, T, Mandy, Jenny, Whitney, Luka, and I decided to go to the beach. We left later in the afternoon than we normally do because we got a late start. When we got on the boat, the guys told us that they might not be able to take us to the beach that we normally go to because the waves were too high. We looked at the water and it looked ...

Aden has been valued port in Yemen for over 2,500 years. In more recent times it has been under the control of the British and also served as the capital city of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen before the country unified in 1990. People have more liberal attitudes here and many women don't walk around with their bodies and faces fully covered in public. You can also buy beer here! It is however prohibitively ...

Just the daily things in Yemen make life fun and exciting. For example, doing laundry is a weekly adventure. Here is how to do it: First, you load the washer with water by filling up a bucket and dumping water into the washer. While you are doing that, you can also fill it with the "butt hose". The "butt hose" is ...

Hi everyone, <br><br>You might be wondering how I am writing to you about my weekend on Sunday morning. Well, our weekends here are Thursday and Friday since Friday is the holy day in Islam. Since we are so busy during the week, my roommates and I try to make the most of our weekends. We still have so much to see in Aden, but we decided to go for another hike on Thursday. <br><br>This is the second hike that I have been on since I have been here and it is one of the most ...

Hi everyone,<br><br><br><br>When I started this blog, I was kind of expecting that I would have a hard time trying to figure out what to write every week. But so far, there is still fun stuff to write about. Even every day life is filled with strange and mostly wonderful encounters. <br><br><br><br>Like I told you in my last entry, Tuesday was the big wedding day for the same wedding that we went to last Friday. This ceremony was quite a bit different ...

After one full week in Yemen, I am finally getting the chance to write my first entry. It has been a little hard because of everything going on and because access to internet is not as easy as I thought. With all of the activity of this past week, I don't really know how to condense everything into one entry, but I will try to do it without making it too long-winded. I also don't have any pictures on this one yet because I haven't taken the time to upload them onto a ...

... en version locale...). C'est une fournaise, très chaud, très humide, à partir de 10h c'est l'enfer. Aaaaahhh!! Pendant que je prépare ce mail de ma chambre, j'entends l'appel à la prière donc demain réveil à 4h. Cool. Avant hier soir à Aden, je suis retombé sur le groupe d'Espagnols (mes collègues d'enlèvement...). On est allé dans une sorte de boîte de nuit où il y avait de l'alcool, en fait des bières. Aden est un port assez cosmopolite donc ...

Non, c'est pas une connerie, pas une blague. Je suis très sérieux, voilà ce qui s'est passé : Pour rejoindre Aden, on prend une route qui passe par le territoire des bédouins donc on est accompagné par une voiture de flic. Je dis 'on' car je suis avec 4 voitures qui contiennent le groupe d'Espagnols. Il y a 2 4*4 espagnols avec conducteurs armés, ma voiture, les 2 autres voitures et la voiture des flics qui ferment la route. On est espacé de 50-100m ...

Hello all, A couple of weeks back a few of the guys and I went on an overnight trip down to Aden, a coastal city on Yemen's south-west tip. Accompanying me were Evan, Aaron, Gary (all three American), and Alex (Malaysian). Now Aden, a former British protectorate and just a short boat trip from the horn of Africa, is a totally different place from the north, with an element of Christianity tempering the conservatism that characterises the devoutly Muslim north ...