Taj Awsan Hotel Al Hudaydah

... in Sana'a are made of big stones. This makes the house cool in the summer, and warm in the winter. I like the weather in Sana'a.

The life in Sana'a is easy. People are not hurry for anything except driving fast.

Ladies wear the black suit to cover themselves from neck to feet, some ladies even cover their face with vail. But when they are in ...

... and they were following the custom of not smiling during the time leading up to the wedding. I wondered how well he even knew his bride, as the wedding was probably most certainly arranged by the parents. It was a magnificent cultural experience, partly because it was so unexpected. I was glad to be in a village for the Muslim weekend rather than out in the wilderness of Socotra Island like I had originally planned. I went to sleep by 830 pm, and it had been a great day.

... didn't inhibit our ability to understand each other. Little kids would incessantly cry "sura, sura" ("picture, picture") as I walked by. The biggest difference here was that no one asked for any money for taking their picture. Very uncommon in my travels through the Middle East. Tourism here is nothing on the scale of that in Egypt or the Holy Land countries. . . From Wadi Dhahr we proceeded further out of Sana'a ...

... to find a cup of coffee here. Actually it is difficult to find anything here or to leave this place once you arrive. When we arrived in Mokha John and I headed strait for the port. The guard there said we must stop and speak with customs first before we cross out onto the pier. The man there told us that unfortunately there would be no boat today but there would definitely be one leaving bukra, insha Allah. Fair enough, we can wait ...

Quick note because I am still feeling quite ****** from the Malaria medication I was taking to treat the Malaria that I in fact did not have. Damn the doctor in Al-Khokha and his $5 Fisher Price microscope. I am on my way home from a week's holiday for the end of Ramadan and eid celebration. Al-Khokha on the Red Sea, Taiz, Ibb, Yareem, and Demt ...

When I first arrived to Yemen, I planned to treat it like any other country - spend barely any time in the capital, and then fly out to somewhere remote. However, a few hours in San'a changed that and I just wasn't able to leave. I settled on doing an all day 4wd trip to the areas surrounding San'a and we left at 8am to head to Wadi Dharh, a dried river bed with lots of trees (and qat ...

... we - me, Gregor (Slovak), and Rich (Brit) - took happen to be fairly lush. The foliage consisted predominately of cacti, colorful flowers with massive thorns, and trees with spikes. Enormous spikes that tear into your flesh when you are more worried about not falling off the side of the mountain. And once you make it across the dangerous part you then realize that you have no less than 300 needles sticking out of you and wonder when you signed up for the complementary ...

En fait, je viens d'accompagner un gars qui bosse dans la station radio locale, c'est lui qui m'a montré où était le cyber café et il voulait à tout prix que je vienne voir sa radio : radio Hajjah, si ça branche quelqu'un... J'étais assis à la terrasse d'un bouiboui pour boire un thé et bouquiner (rien d'autre à foutre et mon chauffeur devait être étalé devant la TV) quand 2 autres gars assis là, dont un parlait anglais m'ont branché (j'avais pas eu le temps de lire 2 pages ...

... ne connait pas, comme par hasard, il n'y a pas de routes où je ne sais quoi. En fait, il est habitué à trimballer des retraités qui veulent se laisser conduire. Il comprend pas que quand on arrive dans une nouvelle ville à 15h, j'ai pas envie de rester dans l'hôtel même avec la clim. De l'extérieur, vous devez vous dire que c'est dangereux le Yémen. A part dans la région des bédouins, un petit peu mais sinon pas du tout. Je me ballade ...

Ahlan wa sahlan, The weekend before last Evan, Aaron and I travelled west to the coastal city of Hodeida then south to Zabid and Taiz. The bus ride there was fairly uneventful compared to previous bus experiences in this country (Hadhramaut springs violently to mind), though the bus itself was probably the dirtiest yet and, as we passed through the heavy mountain rains a few hours out of Sana'a, my 'tightly-locked' window decided to leak rainwater all over my lap. Well anyway, we ...