The Yemen Trip: March 23, 2005

Yemen March 23 – March 27, 2005

March 23, Day 1, Thursday

SO my big trip to Yemen started, as all my trips do, with packing the night before. In one of the most amazing acts of foresight ever (why will become clear later) I decided to bring $100 cash with me. I didn’t have hand sanitizer, however, so this trip was down and dirty the whole way. I caught a cab to the airport early and got on the plane to Yemen, no problem. The fun started when I landed.
I had read on the plane that Yemeni ATMs don’t work with Western Credit cards. After reading that I checked the date of publication for the book. It said January 2003 so all I could do was hope that things had changed in the last 2 years. They hadn’t. First I had to buy a visa at the airport. They didn’t have an ATM available so I had to change my dollars over to Yemeni Rials at the little hole in the wall exchange back with the falling-off counter. It was at that point that I discovered that the visa to enter the country cost $60. Now, for all you not-math people $100-$60 = I don’t have enough money for 5 days in Yemen. Now amazingly enough I also had an extra backup $20 in my bag because I always have an extra $20 in my bag just in case I don’t have a lot of money in Yemen. So at the start of my trip I had $60. I got into the country fine and then went to the nearest ATM. It didn’t work.
So the only thing I could think of was to catch a cab to the American Embassy. The Cabby charged me double what the trip was worth I discovered later, which really stressed me out since I didn’t have any money. However, the US Embassy turned out to be very helpful. They were no US guards outside, but the Yemeni patrol officer spoke perfectly good English (he even swore really well) and he let me use his cell phone to call the Americans who were inside the fortress (the thing was seriously well built). The first dude I talked to was just a Marine on duty who said he didn’t use ATMs but eventually I got in contact with the Embassy Human Relations guy or something and he actually called the Arab Bank for me to confirm they had a working ATM. After that the nice Yemeni guard told a Taxi where I wanted to go and I headed to the bank. The ATM only pulled out dollars, so I had to exchange it across the street. Needless to say I pulled out a few extra dollars as back up. Crisis averted.
After that I decided I needed a change of scenery. By this point it was about 8pm. I walked down the street a little way and spotted a travel agency. I decided then I’d see about a trip to Aden on the Arabian coast in Southern Yemen. So I walked in and asked the guys. They turned out to be extremely friendly. They spoke a little English and because I spoke English they practiced on me. They called up the bus agency and confirmed that there was a bus going to Aden at 1am. That worked perfectly for me because that meant I didn’t need to get a hotel since I could sleep on the 6 hour bus ride. After that they let me use their bathroom and their internet (from where I sent out my first plea for people to meet in San’a). I also took a picture of the guys because they were so cool and also because the head guy was a perfect example of the classic Yemeni dress. Most of the men wore long single-piece white clothes with daggers in belts at their stomachs. On top of that the all had suit jackets on. It really reminded me of Turkey where, because of the heavy push towards modernization and everything representative of it, the guys all whore suits. However, Yemen’s culture could virtual be summed up in their outfits, namely, the trappings of modernization within a structure of traditional values.
So after getting my picture the head dude offered to drive me to the bus travel office so I could buy my ticket. This was my first experience with Yemeni hospitality. In fact I would have to say that the Yemeni people have been by far the nicest people in the Middle East.
After buying my ticket, which was extremely easy as the women working there understood my broken Arabic just fine and could respond in English, I went across the street to the Sinbad hotel. The manager also spoke English and was more than happy to talk to me to work on it. I ended up eating there for really cheap and they guy even suggested a good way to eat healthy (fish and vegetables apparently). I pulled out my Arabic vocab words while I was eating and the guy and his friend ended up translating all the words I didn’t know. After I finished I paid the $2 for the great meal with bread and packed up. On my way out the door I spotted an American movie playing on the TV in the lobby. This channel will show up later in this narrative as it played great American movies with Arabic subtitles all day long.
After about 5 minutes of reminiscing with my American movie I hiked off towards where I thought the bus station was. I ended up find one place I thought it was, which turned out to be wrong, but luckily I still had 4 hours to go so I hiked further on up the road. I eventually reached Bab Al-Yemen (Door of Yemen) which is the main entrance to old San’a, a very quaint marketplace and the highlight of San’a.
At that point I chose not to venture into the old city, as I was planning, at the time, to do that on the last day. Instead I hiked a little way on up the road in search of Yemeni Soccer jerseys. I spotted one place selling soccer jerseys in general but when I asked the guy about Yemeni jerseys he said no one in Yemen had those things. After talking for about 5 minutes I started to draw a crowd. Eventually an English-speaking guy showed up and we got to talking. He said I wouldn’t find a Yemeni soccer jersey anywhere since there was no factory that produced them. So I conceded defeat on that point, but the guy offered to help me out in general. He showed me his shop in the middle of this little mini-market right inside Old San’a. He runs a perfume and make-up shop with his 4 or 5 brothers and they work from 8am-12am. He’s named was Ismail and he turned out to be an ok guy. He spoke English and really wanted to practice so I obliged and spoke English with him for a few hours while I waited for my bus. Me and him eventually worked out a plan wherein I would go down to Aden at 1am and return back to San’a at about 9pm and then he would help me find travel documents and a bus to the Eastern part of Yemen which is apparently really beautiful (and possibly where Osama bin Ladin’s father is from).
After we talked for a while and exchanged emails he showed me to the bus. After a few false starts as I went to the bathroom (always go to the bathroom before a bus ride) and getting a bottle of water (which it turned out later they sold on the bus) I started my 6 hour trip to Aden.

March 24, Day 2, Friday

Now, my plan was to sleep most of the way there if I could since I hadn’t slept that night at all and was not planning on getting a hotel. I got some sleep, but every couple miles there are checkpoints in Yemen and the guards kept waking me up to check my passport. After I explained who I was the first couple times the other people on the bus took over and just explained for me. I think they definitely wanted to expedite the process, but I also got the feeling they just wanted to help me out. This was just another example, for me, of the kindness of the Yemeni people.
The bus ride turned out quite well in the end. I got to where I wanted to go at the time they said they would get there. This is pretty phenomenal for any bus system; the bus system in Yemen was actually quite excellent. I immediately caught a cab and headed for a hotel in the Crater, a big tourist spot. The hotel staff ended up being useless and rude, which was odd, so I left. I then realized I had forgotten to buy a bus ticket for my return trip to San’a that afternoon. So I had to ask my cabbie to drive me back to the bus station. After I took care of that SNAFU I went back to the Crater. I tried for about 45 minutes to get the driver to find these natural cisterns which are supposedly carved into the mountain, but he turned out to be incompetent. Unfortunately it was Friday and there were no other cabs around so I had to stick with him.
The being lost turned out alright because I got to see a side of Yemen off the beaten trail (because we couldn’t find the beaten trail…) I saw a soccer team gearing up for practice right in the middle of the street; I got to see the dirt roads through the housing blocks. I also saw another place with soccer jerseys, but that turned out to be a no go. Eventually I gave up on the cisterns and we drove off to a little island off the coast of Crater where a little castle was. The driver pulled to the side of the road and I started to hike up the mountain. It wasn’t a very easy climb but I made it alright. I walked up to the front entrance of the castle and almost fell into the big moat surrounding it. It is really deceiving because there is a slope up to a platform level with the door which seems like it should really have a bridge to it, but there isn’t one. I tried to bust out my video camera, but apparently I had left it on in the bag so its battery was dead. After getting over that I went in search of a way to the top.
As I walked around I also became a touch homesick looking at the nice blue sea right below me. There were fishermen going out in boats, but it was the guys standing on the rocks fishing that really made me think of the Blow Hole back on O’ahu and that whole southeastern stretch of the island where guys always had their poles out even in the worst weather. But on the other side of the world in Yemen it was actually a little hotter. After climbing a little wall, I found an old medieval style bathroom. The funny part was that the holes in the bottom of the toilets hung over the city below! If anyone had been using those things the whole town would have known about it.
After the bathroom epiphany I walked a little further to the entrance. On either side of the door there was graffiti to the effect of “Fuck you Bush” and “Bush and Cheney go to Hell” (see pictures). These were actually the first specifically anti-Bush graffiti I had seen in the Middle East so naturally I took a picture. It was actually odd seeing that in Yemen because apparently the President of Yemen and Bush are close friends and Yemen is actually an ally in the region. When a couple of American doctors were killed a while back, the Yemeni President called Bush and Bush sent in the Marines. Between the Yemeni Army and the Corp the tribal wars and kidnappings were pretty much taken care of, to the point where there haven’t been many in the past year, if any.
After that I explored the little castle and then headed for the roof. There I saw two weird Yemeni kids. I asked ‘em if they could take a picture of me and they said no. I was a little taken aback, so I just set up my time delay and took the picture myself. I realized a little later they said no to taking a picture of/with them, but even still I thought it a little strange. Maybe they were hiding some spraypaint.
I immediately left that castle as I felt very uncomfortable around those guys. I decided the fastest way out would be to throw my bag out the door and slide down the little plank of wood to the ground. It was about a ten foot drop. After a not-so-graceful decent I continued onward. While I had been sliding the kids had come down the steps and when I waved by to them they said, “Majnoon (Crazy).” I hurried off down the mountain and half-way down I realized these guys were following me. I think they may have just wanted to talk to me, but I didn’t really want anything to do with them, so I stopped walking and simply let them go past. After that I decided I needed to change so I went into a near by ruined and changed.
Now, changing in one of these nasty ruins is quite a test of one’s dexterity. I had to simultaneously put on my clothes while balancing on one foot, but since I was changing my underwear as well I had to take my shoes off so I was barefoot balancing on top of my shoe while putting my clothes on. Then I had to do more balancing while I put my shoes back on. In the end it was worth it however because that climb made me a sweaty little ball and it felt great to be in fresh clothes.
Amazingly my cabbie was still there (although not that amazing since I hadn’t paid him yet) and we set off again. I tried looking for jerseys one more time, but it didn’t work. We checked out a little strip-mall, which they did actually have in Yemen, but it was closed for Friday. So I told the driver I wanted to go to the site of the USS Cole attack. After asking a guy on the street we headed off. The place turned out to be on the other side of Aden, but that didn’t matter ‘cause Aden is dinky. The place was guarded by some sort of military/police station and I had to give them my passport to walk out on the little patio. I discreetly filmed the area, but then I looked to my left and saw some warships sitting across the bay so I figured it was more likely over there. I left the little area (from which I also sent a postcard home) and went to the unguarded parking lot right next to it and got some film of the spot. It really wasn’t anything spectacular since people usually don’t build monuments to their failures. After that I bought some Mecca-Cola (a French company trying to corner the Middle Eastern Soft Drink market) and moved on to the beach.
There were actually 2 beaches that were really nice. One was the locals’ beach apparently and it looked pretty cool. Everyone there was playing soccer and having a good time. However my driver apparently thought I wanted the private hotel beach right next to the public beach. On a normal day I would have gone with the public beach, but for whatever reason I simply was not interested that day. Instead I went and ate breakfast at the hotel and discharged my cabbie (I paid about $27 (5000 rials)). After breakfast I changed and went out to the beach. I fell asleep on a table for about 2 hours.
When I woke up I decided I’d go for a swim just to be able to say I had swam in the Arabian Sea. I actually swam/walked over to the sea wall they had set up and climb around for a while. There were actually a lot of rocks completely covered with shell creatures and they were really cool. After I got back in the water, all the kids were staring at me like I had discovered the New World and 2 minutes after I got off the a wall kids swarmed it. I just floated away satisfied with my small revolution. Then a police boat showed up blowing its horn. Apparently the people at the public beach weren’t supposed to be there or something because they all ran away. The cops came back a couple times to scare the people away and eventually most people left. It was prayer time then, but I’m not sure if that had anything to do with the people getting kicked off the beach. After that I took a shower, which was nice, and then sat down and read my book.
As I was reading I saw some old white dude walking around looking lost. I figured he was a tourist so when he walked by I said hi an invited him to sit. By that time I was looking for someone to talk to. He turned out to be from Sweden and was on vacation in Yemen for awhile. He didn’t speak any Arabic, but apparently old people get a lot of respect in the Middle East, especially if they are lost foreigners. Eventually we discovered we were both going to the bus station for buses at 2pm so we caught a cab to the bus station. I got a chance to bust out some more Arabic with the bus drivers as I knew the name of the station but the Swedish dude only had a bus ticket to show them.
From there it was pretty easy. I stop off at bus station and he continued onto his. When I got onto the bus an hour early I found only one person on it. Ironically enough he was sitting in the seat right next to mine (yes, they have assigned seating on the Yemeni buses…that’s better than Greyhound!). I tried to sit in another seat for a little bit, but every time I settled down the occupant of that particular seat would show up! By about the fourth time I gave up and just sat in my seat. Eventually a pair of seats did show up empty. Before I moved however I got the opportunity to chew some Gat.
A little lecture on Gat: Gat is a very popular tobacco-style narcotic in Yemen… in fact it is just about the ONLY thing people do in Yemen. Alcohol isn’t allowed in the country so there are no bars, except one in Aden. There aren’t that many movie theatres and I didn’t see any shopping malls, so basically the only thing for people to do is chew Gat all day long. It is chewed so much, in fact, that Yemen’s agricultural sector has been almost completely taken over by it and all of the good farmland goes to Gat growing.
Gat turned out to be disgusting; a noxious weed to say the least. The kids that handed to me (they were teenagers I think) thought it was pretty funny and so did the guy I was sitting next to. I finally moved to the open seats and got the chance to discreetly spit it out. The people usually don’t spit it out however, and it simply becomes a huge mound of Gat bulging in the cheek. It looks like everyone just has cheek cancer or something. I eventually asked the kids for more so I could save it as a memento.
The bus got moving and it was pretty uneventful again; Checkpoints and book reading. We stopped at one rest stop and I actually saw the Swedish guy again and got his email address. Then we continued on back to San’a. I got a nice look at the Yemeni countryside as I went, as well as the thousands of Gat farms.
I made it back to San’a at about 8pm and went to find my buddy Ismail. I saw his brother in the shop and thought it was Ismail. They thought it was pretty much par for their lives. After a saying hello and such and try to get to the point and asked him if he could get me travel documents so I could get to Hadramaut in the East. He said it wasn’t possible. Now, I did generally like the guy and he was a nice enough human being, but really upset me that he had just flat out lied about the possibility of getting me to Eastern Yemen in the timeframe I specified. He did manage to get me a hotel however, with a TV which had cable so I spent the night in my room being angry and watching TV.
The interesting thing about Yemeni hostels is that they are pretty cheap (about $10 or 1000 rials) and that they all have TV. On these TVs they have porn, which is just hilarious considering every woman in Yemen is completely veiled and the marriages are still arranged (although these are more traditional than religious as I’ll discuss later). Aside from porn they also have Arabic News channels and a Movie Channel which plays nothing but good American movies with Arabic subtitles ALL DAY LONG. That was probably one the best things that happened on the whole trip. I got to see great movies on that channel like Godfather III, The Untouchables, Psycho and Mask of Zorro (there were a couple B-raters also but mostly the movies were really good). That night I fell asleep to Godfather III after cursing my poor planning cause I could have just gone to Ta’izz…



March 25, Day 3, Saturday

The next morning I woke up and washed my face and headed down to Ismail’s store. I may have mentioned this before, but it is still funny that the man runs a women’s make-up store. Again, all the women in Yemen are fully veiled all the time, so the only time they can use the stuff is at home with their husbands, which I guess makes a certain amount of sense but it is really strange, especially since Ismail makes money off it.
The night before Ismail and I had figured it would be easier for me to go to his hometown of Ibb and then Ta’izz rather than going east because Hadramaut is a 24 hour round trip. He was supposed to help me get travel documents, but of course he didn’t. In his defense he had to run a shop all day. He got me a cab to the police station at least. However, the Cabbie really had no idea where he was going so we got lost for about an hour as he asked everyone he could find where the Tourist Police were. We eventually found them through a back alley in a field underneath some hotel. After talking with them for a while (they were pretty cool to) we discovered that I did not need travel documents to go to Ibb. So after having wasted 2 hours I got back to Ismail and he found me a shared Taxi and I headed off to Ibb stuffed in an 8 seat taxi with 10 people.
The cab system between cities, like the bus system, actually worked really well as I discovered since I used them exclusively from then on. The prices between cities are fixed and the cabs only leave when they are stuffed to overflowing. However, they get you there in a timely fashion and they don’t try to rip you off, which is comforting. Yemen is not by any means a developed country and it has tribal problems which almost make it seem backwards, but the fact that some Hawaiian kid who speaks broken Arabic (and even Swedes who speak no Arabic) can get around no problem at least speaks to the kindness and organization of the people.
The cab ride took 4 hours, a lot of which I slept through, although I did have to bust out my passport for a bunch of checkpoints. Every single passenger in the car offered me some Gat, making motions and saying it made one out of one’s mind. Since there isn’t much to do on a 4 hour cab ride (except study Arabic vocab words) I guess being out of your mind would be a good idea. I declined.
We stopped for lunch at a big cafeteria style place because apparently the big meal in Yemen is lunch. There were hundreds of travelers in this place and the chicken turned out to be pretty good. The place also had sinks with soap. After washing off my hands (which I see as a luxury when I’m traveling) I collected my bread and we continued on to Ibb.
On arriving in Ibb I got of the cab and one of my traveling buddies asked me if I had a place to stay or a hotel. I told him I didn’t have anything. He just looked at me, confused, and then walked away. I repacked my bag and started thinking of things to do. The town of Ibb is very nice, actually, and it is built all around the cone of this one mountain. At the very top of the town there was a really nice building so I figured, when in doubt, go up. I walked through the streets and saw fruit vendors and stores and thinking back on it now the place was organized and tidy compared to the overpopulation of Cairo. I saw many veiled women walking the streets and shopping and I even saw a guy and a girl holding hands! That really got me to thinking that maybe the veil in Yemen wasn’t really a sign of oppression, like it often seems in Cairo, but rather is just something people do. There is a marked separation between men and women in Yemen, but the men are respectful and they aren’t sexually harassing the women all the time, in fact I never saw anything like it once, even with the foreign women.
I also got many Gat chewing invites as I strolled, all of which I respectfully declined. I eventually found a sign in English, the only one around, that said something about Development. I thought it ironic since the English sign signified where the money was coming from for the development project. It turned out to be a hospital which was still under construction so I just left. I eventually remembered that my goals whenever I visited a country were to buy a flag of the country and get soccer jerseys, so I went in search of a flag. The first kid I asked told me to ask another guy who told me to go through some alleys and turn right. There turned out to be a flag place right there. After a little negotiating I decided to buy a big flag and also a Yemeni Flag Sash which apparently people buy in Yemen, although suspiciously I never saw anyone else wearing one. Regardless, I wore that Sash for the rest of my trip.
Armed with my sash I asked the storeowner and his buddies where I could find some soccer jerseys. They knew a place and lucky for me a motorcycle-taxi had just shown up! They called the guy over and told him the place and I got on the back of the motorcycle and I was off. The motorcycle taxi was a new concept for me, but it was actually really fun and effective. He could weave in and out of traffic and dodge around pedestrians so he got there pretty fast. I paid him and let him go. It turned out the place he dropped me didn’t have any Yemeni soccer jerseys. They also told me I wouldn’t be able to find them anywhere, but that I should check up the street because they might have some. So I went up the street and lo and behold….

BOOYA!!!!

Yemeni soccer jerseys galore! I had to negotiate with the guy to get the price down to something reasonable (another guy who walked in helped me out). After paying quite a chunk of my change to the guy I turned to a couple little kids in shop and joked “ma feesh fuloos! (no money).” The kids didn’t seem all that amused and after thinking about it for about a second I realized that these kids just saw me buy four pretty expensive soccer jerseys and they also thought that because I was an American I must have been filthy rich, so they probably thought I was insulting them…or possibly they just didn’t understand. Either way I stopped making money jokes.
After departing victorious with my soccer jerseys I decided to go for a walk up the street to see if I could find anything. As I walked I heard my first dirty words from strangers in the Middle East. A couple little kids behind me were yelling “Fuck You” and “Suck my dick” although it seemed more like those were the only words they knew and they wanted attention more than they hated me. I just ignored them and they left. A little further up I ran into my 100th Gat chewing invitation except this time I actually accepted. As we walked on up the street, me speaking in broken Arabic, we walked past this one random guy who looked at me kinda odd and said “How’s in goin’” I just said “Hey” but then I realized what that guy was and I stopped and turned in shock.
He turned out to be a Yemeni American who just happened to have been walking down the street right then as I was trying to speak crappy Arabic and he heard me. He told me he’s life story over tea, which we drank for about an hour. Apparently he was a party animal back in Buffalo NY and then he got some voodoo on him from some Pakistani or Indian kids and so his dad sent him to Yemen to get healed. Apparently he worked because he no longer heard voices in his head. It was pretty funny because other sane people tried to but into the conversation and not only did I not care to talk to them I was much happier to talk to the crazy guy because our conversation made perfect sense to me.
Eventually it was getting late and I decided it was time to go to Ta’izz, so my crazy friend got me to the cab station and I caught another cab to Ta’izz. The only interesting thing that happened on that trip was that whenever I went to search for a bathroom the cab would wait for me and actually not leave, which I thought was pretty cool. When I finally got to Ta’izz I grabbed my bag and went to orient myself at a restaurant. It was then that I realized I had forgotten my soccer jerseys and my dirty laundry bag in the Taxi! I immediately went in search of the cabbie and I saw a car pulling to a stop in the nearby parking lot. I ran up in a panic and asked if he had just come from Ibb. Thank God it turned out to be the right guy, and he knew what I was talking about so I barely managed to escape that crisis.
From there I caught a cab to some guidebook hotel. The first one I went to was full, so I used their bathroom instead. After that one of the dudes working there showed me another hotel right behind the first one. It was called the Riyad hotel I think and it was run by a 15 year-old kid…no joke...men actually deferred to this kid. I got a room, which had a toilet that didn’t work, but it also had a TV with the Movie Channel. After watching the end of some bad movie with the guy from ghost I went out and bought some quality pistachio nuts. After that I started watching Mask of Zorro, but I couldn’t justify to myself sitting in a hotel room in Yemen and watching movies so I tried to find the local Pizza Hut because that’s the place where tourists would be hanging out and I could possibly chill with them. I inadvertently rented out a mini-bus and he tried to find the place. It was apparently off his “route” because mini-buses in Ta’izz only run up and down one street, but it was late so he just took me. The Pizza Hut turned out to not exist or something so he took me to another restaurant he knew and I ordered some takeaway food. The restaurant was on a hill so he had to call over a couple kids to push his bus a little way up the hill so he could get a rolling jump start. After that we had to go to a little supermarket and buy me a fork. Then he took me back to my hotel. He ended up charging me only 300 rials which was exactly what I wanted to pay. I told him he was a good man, and he informed me that I lived right next to my hotel anyway. He was still a cool guy.
After that I went into the hotel lobby and saw on TV that there had been another bombing in Lebanon. The funny thing was, I was way more upset than the clerk guy. I asked him if the Yemeni cared about politics and he just laughed and said he just chews Gat. This was basically the capstone conversation about Yemeni people. I had heard the same thing from my crazy buddy in Ibb, that the Yemeni just chewed Gat and didn’t care about anything, but I hadn’t believed it until I talked with this hotel guy. At some point in the trip I remember I had asked one guy what he thought of Israel-Palestine and his response was “Where?” On top of that, Yemen is apparently a real democracy (although he’s been president for 26 years or so) and they really like their president, but they really do not care about anything going on in the Arab world. They are far more interested in developing their country, which in my opinion they are doing very well and they are maintaining their dignity at the same time.
After that I went up to my room, ate my food and watched The Untouchables.

March 26, Day 4, Sunday

I woke up the next day and set out to see the sights in Ta’izz. I packed my sweater and hat into my video camera bag, which worked pretty well, and walked up the road to the bus station. I asked for the bus to the top of the mountain, which is apparently a very scenic place. The bus took forever to fill up and it was really annoying. I got out of the bus a couple times, but eventually just gave up. Right before we left a couple women showed up and they wanted to ride up. However when they saw me in the middle seat they asked who I was. The driver said I was just an American tourist and she got all upset. I wanted to move into the back of the car but it was full and the guys told me to just sit. Eventually the women just shoved a couple kids up against me to keep me away from them. I thought that was pretty funny, but it was also interesting that none of the guys wanted me to just move for the women so they could just have the middle seat. I think the guys just didn’t want anyone else in the back, but I felt bad the whole ride that I was making the women uncomfortable. I got over it, however, when one of their kids was crying and I looked at the kid and opened my eyes really wide. The kid stopped crying and just kinda stared at me, but the old woman holding him turned his face away from me. I figured she was just racist or something and ignored her for the rest of the trip.
On the way up the mountain I saw some tourists on the side of the road taking pictures. I didn’t stop then, but I kept them in mind for my trip down the mountain. When I finally got to right below the top the bus dropped me off and informed me I couldn’t go up any further because it was a military area. I got to take some pictures with some of the guards, but when I told them it was digital and not film based, they lost interest because I could get them the pictures. After that I got out my jacket and hat and started down the mountain. I got to walk through a bunch of interesting little mountain hamlets and a mountain soccer field. I also got to marvel at the mountain farming. Apparently in Yemen the people carve steps out of the mountain and then farm the little sliver of land on top of the step. In the summer it rains and the food grows and that’s about it.
I got some kids following me around and yelping, and eventually I did find those tourists. They turned out to be Germans, a doctor and a psychologist, and they were on a tour of Yemen. They also had some excellent tea with Caramel in it. It was ironic that I had the best tea of my life on a mountain in the middle of nowhere.
Eventually they agreed to give me a ride down the mountain and let me take some pictures on the way. They were nice enough people, but were also more than happy to get rid of me. They dropped me off up the street from my hotel. As I walked I realized I was hungry and went to look for a place to eat. I decided I didn’t want to eat at the place called “tourist cafeteria” because I figured it would just be more expensive, so I ambled down the street a ways and found a local place. I ordered some chicken and washed my hands (soap!...although I think it was detergent) and dug into my chicken. After eating I went back to my hotel I moved out (by then I had packed the soccer jerseys into my backpack to make sure I could not forget them). After arguing with the kid at the desk about the fact that the toilet didn’t work, I left in disgust. I wanted some money back because using that bathroom was tortuous. However they didn’t give it to me so now I’m issuing an embargo against the Riyad hotel in Ta’izz, although it wasn’t all that bad…just a matter of principle.
I went and bought some more pistachios and caught another motorcycle to the taxi station. From there I caught a cab back to San’a. That car ride I slept through most of, but when I woke up my butt really hurt. The cabbie never took a single break, so basically my butt just hurt the whole way.
In San’a I went to see my buddy again, and of course he said he couldn’t show me around the city because he was busy, even though he said he could. I didn’t really care though because I’d been expecting it, and since he had to go to prayer anyway. So I went for a walk in Old San’a. I ended up finding a little museum and going up to the roof for a nice view. Then on my way out I met a Western woman in hijab. When I asked where she was from I was happy to discover she had lived in Hawaii for a number of years! Apparently she was writing a book on tribal customs in Yemen and teaching English at the same time, which I thought was pretty neato. She gave me her name and the title of her book, neither of which I remember but I have it written down somewhere, and I gave her my email. After that I went and got lost for a while. I found a little tea shop and had a couple glasses, but while I was sitting I got a real strong urge to start moving, so I got up and wandered around some more. Eventually I found my way back to Ismail’s shop and he told me he had to go get money and that I could walk around with him. We ended up taking the exact some path that I took on my walk, which was really weird. I got to go to an Internet Café for a while as well in order to check if anybody had any contacts in Yemen. Unforunatly it didn’t work, so I just checked the news. I also saw a guy playing Red Alert 2 online, which was pretty impressive. I saw a guy playing the same Computer Game in Sharm El Sheik in Egypt when I was there with my family, so I guess it must be pretty big around here.
After that we walked a little bit more and Ismail picked up some more cash. I joked about him being a drug dealer cause that’s what he seemed like. I also got a chance to ask him about his marriage. Apparently it was arranged and he didn’t really like his wife. He wanted to divorce her and go to India to study English so he could get a better job. I also found out that he supported his 4 brothers, 2 parents and his wife on the $300 a month his shop brought in.
Finally he had to close up his shop and my trip was coming to an end. I ran back into old San’a again to get some souvenirs and more pistachios and then we took some pictures and closed up. I still had 7 hours before my flight at 6 am, however, so I had to figure out something to do. The answer was easy, of course: find a hotel and watch the Movie Channel! I couldn’t very well walk around because I would probably have been mugged. Ismail suggested I just go to the airport, but I didn’t wanna do that because there was no TV there. I tried going to one shady hotel, but they said no. Then I went to the first one I stayed at in San’a, but they could let me just hang out for 3 hours for the price I wanted. Eventually one of the hotel’s guests, who was a teacher or something, explained that because the police come around and check on all the hotels at night, I couldn’t just hang out, especially since I was American and the army usually demands that Americans are baby-sat. So finally the dude got me a cheap cab to the airport, because I was a student who studied Arabic, and I just went to the airport. The cabbie was a cool guy too and it was a nice way to go out.
But that wasn’t the end! After a little searching I found a café with a TV so I just drank tea and watched movies until my plane came. I saw the end of Pitch Black, all of A Night at the Rocksbery and Psycho and I drank a lot of tea. It was extra funny because Yemeni military guys kept showing up and I thought they would wanna watch soccer, but when I suggested American movies they excitedly agreed! So I watched movies with the Yemeni army on a caffeine high.
After Psycho I decided to head to my plane. I did another balancing act in the airport bathroom in order to change, and then went to check in. I got to scold a guy for trying to cut in front of me, which was a new and exciting experience, and then I went to my plane. Of course the best part was that when I got on I saw a blond haired white girl trying to get into her seat I remembered that one of my best friends over here named Rebecca was also on this flight on her way back from South Africa. Sure enough it turned out to be her and we got to talk about our trips all the way back. We caught a cab together back to our building and thus ended my trip to Yemen, March 27.
In conclusion, Yemen was great. In the sphere of international politics it’s an interesting phenomenon because it is a democracy (slightly more real than a lot of the others), it’s an American ally which no one really knows, and instead of becoming a greedy, repressive society and complaining about Western influence, it has embraced the struggle for development and the people are still very friendly. When I told some people I was from America they said “ma sha allah” which essentially means that’s really neat and I wish I could have that to, but I don’t want to take it away from you. Many people asked me how to get to America and really liked America. Some people just looked away from me when I told them. I found from my crazy friend that a lot of people are actually scared of Americans because “they know Bush has your back.” I don’t know if I like being feared, but it’s better than being robbed.