Skip to main content

Al Hudayda

I asked the hotel manager in Manakhah about getting to Al Hudayda. He assured me I just had to catch a taxi to Al Magraba on the main road and wait for a taxi to pass by. And so I waited. And waited. And waited but of course taxis don't leave Sana'a until full so I wasn't having much luck. Not that I minded much. I just sat in a road side cafe drinking tea,watching what was going on around me and answering the same three questions to anyone that cared to ask. With the help of a local I eventually managed to hitch a lift as far as Banjil. Turned out for the best really. Its must more comfortable on the bends when you have the back seat of a land rover to yourself. The drive out of the mountains along a wadi was quite impressive but once out of the mounatins the drive to Banjil and the shared taxi to Al Hudayda from there was like the drive from anywhere to Port Augusta. Long, flat, hot, featureless, boring.

During the day Al Hudayda is dead. There might have been a bit going on earlier in the day but I stayed up the Night before to watch Dirty Harry on telly and so slept in. The stores are closed and most of the people you see are sitting the shade either on the street walk or in the park. The city is clean and laid back so would make a pretty decent seaside resort town. However it lacks just one thing. A beach. Either way it's pretty relaxing to just grab a juice, the latest book thats been handed to me about Islam and join the locals under a tree before walking along the corniche to watch the sunset and then watch as the town comes alive. Merchants come out from under their trees and you can't walk the streets without bumping into a stall selling fruit or vegetables or perfume or spices or calculators.
After eating nothing but chicken, rice and beans for two weeks some fresh fish made for a welcome change.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hamburg

Its hard not to say how much I liked about Hamburg without contradicting what I said about Denmark. It had the bars and clubs, but it also had graffiti on the walls and dog shit on the street. It had a buzz to it. And strange things happened. Among other things, I was in a net cafe near my hostel when i got a tap on the shoulder. Turn around there's a bloke I had met in Jordan 4 months earlier. Creepy. Turns out he had just flown in for the weekend to meet someone he met randomly in Poland. I could have just as easily been in Bergen. Other than catching up with random friends I checked out a few of the museums and churchs around town. Highlight was probably the History of Hamburg museum which had more model cityscapes, planes, boats and trains than a boy at heart could poke a stick at. I got lost looking around a harbour that seemed bigger than the rest of the city. I also found myself in the middle of a joke when two germans, two indians and an Australian went out until dawn on t...
3 comments
Read more

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) a...
Post a Comment
Read more

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.
Post a Comment
Read more