the blue horizon

This post is a victim of Apathy.

This post is a victim of Apathy.

This post is a victim of Apathy.

This post is a victim of Apathy

This post is a victim of Apathy.

I Wasted no time in Sayun and headed straight for Tarim about 35km away. The drive through the fields,date palm plantations and Mud brick villages of the Wadi could have been through rural Egypt. Tarim was famous for two reasons, its mud brick palaces and Islamic scholarship. Most of the 'palaces' were crumbling to pieces but the one in center of town was still pretty impressive. I didn't come across the scholarship side of town until I was drinking Tea just outside the taxi station watching some old men playing dominoes. ost. Some teachers invited me over to have a chat. Like most teachers I had met on this trip they wanted to practice their English and find out about where I was from. When I said Australia they said that there were some Australians studying at the school and offered to take me to see him. It never occurred to me that people would come from all over the world to this little village in Eastern Yemen to study Islam. It turns out there were also people from

My driver dropped me off at the airport way too early. It turns out he worked at the airport too. Which also explained why he disappeared for a few hours a few days earlier. I sat out front of the terminal waiting for the doors to open and watched as the locals brought in various goods to be transported to the mainland.. MOst of it was in boxes so I had no idea what was in them but one had split open revealing to goat carcasses. He just brushed them off a taped the box back up. No one battered an eyelid. At least it wasn't carry on I guess. Upon leaving the airport I was asked where my guide was? Am I buy myself? They only seemed content when they asked where I was staying. I just gave them a name from the guide book. I don't think "i Have no idea?' was the right answer. A tourist convoy had been ambushed and three people shot a few weeks earlier in a nearby province so I was kind of expecting this. As per usually every policeman I saw asked me those questions aas they

Still in Aden I spent a good ten minutes trying to explain to a taxi driver that I wanted to go to the airport. It came to the attention of a passing police car. I tried to explain to them for ten minutes that I wanted to go to the Airport. They sent out a message over the loud speaker calling for anyone who spoke English. I just picked out Inglezi, I assume thats what they were asking. Maybe it was "hey, get a load of this dumb English guy." Either way a guy came over from a nearby cafe and asked in English what I wanted. I said I wanted to go to the airport. And he said to them in Arabic exactly what I had been saying in Arabic for the past twenty minutes. The look of their faces said somelike "oh, the AIRPORT." After a sleepless night on account of the fan not working and having to get up 6am to catch a flight this would probably be as frustrated as I get, if it wasn't so funny. Not laugh out loud funny, you know, Seinfeld funny. At least this driver was hone