Skip to main content

Aden

I caught a shared taxi to Aden without hassle though again it stopped on the outskirts of Town. For the first time in Yemen I was mobbed by taxi drivers as I got out of the car. I played quiz show host trying to ascertain who was going to be the least hassle. The winner was a fraud. The only English he knew was "I know that Hotel, only 500 rials."
He was also a liar. We had to stop twice for directions and he asked me for 'only' 2000 rials when we finally got there.

I stayed at the Rambow Hotel. Named after the French poet Rimbaud not the fictional Vietnam Veteran Rambo. It might have been quite grand once but now you would say it had character. It wasn't too bad but became uncomfortably hot the second night when the electricity failed to kick/be turned on.

Aden was a lot less interesting than I thought it would be. Once occupied by the British I was expecting they would have made left more of a mark on then town than a store that sold Argos products (seriously) and some old guy who bought me lunch he met the queen when she visited in '54. Nothing much happened except for having lunch with a guy who met the queen when she visited in '54 and stumbling across an English secondhand bookstore allowing me to stock up on some reading material for the next month. Most things of any interest were under renovation.

After sitting under a tree most of th afternoon reading I went down to the harbour to watch the fishermen unload their catch for the market. Most of it was the standard stuff you would see anywhere. The exception was a massive tuna that dwarfed the bloke that had it slung over his shoulder, taking it to a filleting table before hacking it to pieces. Around the market restaurants were cooking up the days catch. I figured you couldn't get much fresher.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Strung Treng

Strung Treng was an unexpected stop over, more a hospital visit then the usual tourist stuff. I was waiting in a guest house restaurant for the bus to Laos when i was rather suddenly overcome with a fever and fatigue. I rented a room and slept for almost 24 hours straight. The manger was understandably concerned, he thought it might have been Malaria, and sent me to the doctor for tests. It wasn't Malaria but was probably Dengue Fever but I needed a 10 hour bus trip back to Phnom Pehn to confirm this. Either way the 'cure' was Panadol, plenty of water and rest. I was going to do this in Laos anyway so decided against the bus back to Phnom Pehn and caught the bus to Laos the next day instead.

Amasya

Lonely Planet suggested that Amasya is one of the prettiest towns in Turkey. Set in a mountain valley with a river running down the middle, I couldn't agree more. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves when I eventually post them. Once again the weather was perfect and it hadn't snowed here at all which was good because I had a lot of walking to do. It was a strange town. Mostly because it was one of the more modern towns I had come across, it almost had a cosmopolitan feel to it. But then there would be a horse and cart parked in the street. Most people spoke some English. They would come up to me (blond hair = foreigner), especially children and say hello, welcome, what is your name? where are you from? but that would be it as if that was as far as their grasp on the English language would go. This was excellent but as the conservation wasn't going to go any further (my Turkish matches their English) it made for a weird silence until one of us went on our way. I d...

Torun

The train ride from Warsaw to Torun was a little different as I spent the entire journey in the Cargo carriage, old west stole away style. I would like to say that this made it more exciting but it really didn't. The train was full and even though I had a ticket with a seat number and everything on it this really wasn't enough for rather large man who was in my seat and was two thirds of the way through a six pack (at 8 in the morning no less). The conductor wasn't getting paid enough to care so I found myself sitting on my backpacker surrounded by bikes and other unfortunate souls who were unlucky enough not to score a seat. My first problem with the Hostel I stayed at in Torun was that the directions were from 'a' train station, just not 'THE' train station. What was a 5 minute walk was actually 50. Once there I was greeted by no one. A few knocks on the door, a yell up stairs, a ten minute wait while looking through my guide book for some where else and f...