Dubai. United Arab Emirates

We were able to catch a bus to Dubai from Muscat. It was quite comfortable and had two drivers as they do a circuit from Muscat to Dubai and then down to Salalah and back to Muscat again.


At last there were a few more women travelling with us but the majority of the passengers were Indians, with a few Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, and a couple from Iraq and a mother and her daughter from the Sudan.





The bus station was a short sweaty walk, in the 44 degree Celcius temperature, to our hotel. We had got Kerri to book our hotel so it was a much better price than we could get researching online even though we hear that hotel occupancy rates are down 16% here.





Well, what a contrast to the rest of the Middle East we have visited! There are few veiled women and lots of Philippinos. Shops advertise Philippino food and posters advertise accommodation and work for Philippinos. Many of the stores advertise in Russian for the package touriss that arrive here. This would not be a good place to learn Arabic as so many people speak English. It is so common to see people with two cellphones out yabbering in English or a mix of English and their mother tongue. There are 4.3 million people in in UAE and only 20% are nationals.



In this city you can snow ski indoors, visit (you have to book) Dubai's iconic 'seven star' hotel built like a sail from a traditional boat (dhow), do a mosque tour and learn all about the prayer rituals, kite surf, watch camel racing, and visit a Bedouin desert camp.





We headed for the tourist information office but arrived to find that it had been demolished to make way for a new metro station that is under construction at present. Lots of footpaths have been ripped up and this may also be related to the metro system. The urban bus stations have nice air conditioned waiting rooms but no information on what buses of all the buses they show on their maps actually stop at the stop.





This is all reminds us of Bangkok, without the horn tooting and tuk tuks, in many ways. It is a shoppers' paradise but even the Pierre Cardin stores are advertising 75% off.

We did a red bus tour which took us 7 hours in total. The commentary on the goings on here and the development projects reminded us of the developments on the Gold Coast when we lived there. There are dozens of shopping malls and entertainment centres like Disneyland and here they boast they will have some even larger than any thing in the US. At the same time there is still lots of construction. We could see the piles of sand 4 kilometres out in the Arabian Sea for The World development but it can only be accessed by boat or helicopter and then the islands are privately owned.

We have been able to get around on the free shopping buses. We are going to do a dhow cruise on the Dubai Creek before we pack up our gear and catch a flight to Melbourne. We will be there for 2 weeks and then head back to NZ.
Will put photos on here in Melbourne.

Muscat, Oman

Oman is difficult to get around as so many people use private transport and Muscat is even more so as it doesn't have public buses. We caught a shared taxi to a roundabout on the outskirts of the city and then had to engage it as private hire to take us to our hotel, of course it cost more for the short ride than the whole journey.







Muscat is a long narrow city spreading for 50 kms along the coast and fitting in where it can around steep rocky peaks. It is divided into three parts, the old port where the royal palace is, the commercial and business centre at Ruwi, and the corniche and souq area in Mutrah.







Roundabouts are important landmarks in Oman as they are where shared taxis, intercity buses and minivans can be found and where you will be dropped. Consequently, they are well kept and often ornately decorated with some kind of theme, fish, dolphins, clock towers, coffee pots and even book sculptures. They have green well watered lawns which use treated effluent water but it seems a huge waste for a desert country.







We have been hanging out for some hot weather but Muscat has had several days of temperatures around 47 and only dropping a few degrees in the evening. The locals tell us it can get to 60 Celcius in mid summer. All government businesses close at 1 pm and lots of privately owned ones too, so everyone can get out of the heat and have a sleep. There is not much to do during this time so we usually head for the hotel and the air conditioning and catch up on the news, read, do our laundry, do some research or play spider patience on our notebook.







There are only about a handful of women working in the shops and only a few more on the streets. There is a large population of Asian workers from the Indian sub-continent and some have their wives and children with them but most don't. A lot of the restaurants serve Indian and Chinese food and we are enjoying a curry in the evenings.







One of the museums we visited was free and showed old photos of the history of the city. It was another well thought out display with models and dioramas but it was not well attended.







In the evenings the corniche is packed with men sitting drinking juice and chatting with their mates. The Asians toss bread for the fish and throw out their handlines hoping for a bite. Trucks loaded with huge rocks thunder past on their way to the Sultan's palace as it undergoes renovations. Some of the old men sit barefoot on mats playing dominoes and other board games. The grassy areas at the roundabouts are often crowded with men chatting until the early hours of the morning. Unlike Yemen, there don't seem to be many smokers here amongst the men.





The souq has been upgraded and sells jewelery, daggers, perfumes, carpets and incense and burners. There are rows and rows of fabric sellers selling matching sets for saris as well as rows and rows of Asian tailors sewing galabehas for the local men.







The local muslim men wear long-sleeved white dishdash with a little tassle at the neck. They wear an embroidered hat usually of two colours. It seems only the Asian men wear western clothes. A few women cover their faces with veils but most of the young ones don't seem to.





The main road from the airport to the city centre is called Sultan Qaboos Road after the present Sultan. It is lined with beautifully designed modern buildings and several are named after the Sultan such as the huge mosque, the university and a large sports complex.





Typically the private residences are walled and only a couple of storeys high with a tower to hold the water tanks. They include lots of arches, and often crenallations. The air conditioning units are hidden behind ornate grills or incorporated into the overall design so they blend in, even the water tanks have crenallations looking like little look out towers on top of the buildings. The Sultan has put a lot of thought into the architecture of the country.





Many old mud built houses are being knocked down so lots of places lack real character and with everything being so new it is not as interesting wandering around the towns as other places in the Middle East have been.



The shops have interesting signs like: foodstuffs sale, repairing and maintenance of electronic items, or sale of electronic and sanitaryware. There is very little advertising just a description of what business it carries out.

All our Oman photos have been accidentally deleted!

Nizwa, Oman

Took a comfortable bus from across the street from our hotel and mentally prepared for the 10 hour bus trip across the gravel desert. It was the day of our 31st wedding anniverasary!

Once again I was the only female on the bus and no sooner had the male passengers boarded then they were all asleep. They draw the curtains, take their shoes off and sleep the journey away. Mind you, there is nothing to see along the way. There were a few signs warning of sand dunes and that was probably important if it was windy as the sand is so fine. There were also the odd signs warning of camels. Our guide book says that if you hit one it will be a pregnant female and a top racing camel; therefore it would be very very expensive.

We were finally dropped off by the side of the road and one of the passengers walked us to where we needed to catch a shared taxi to our hotel. Without his help we would have taken a while to find our way about.

The hotel was actually a 'residency' and it had several workers boarding there. It was licensed as a one-star place but it was pretty expensive and quite grotty. It's a long time since we have been in a place with bugs and cockroaches but it was the cheapest place in town.

Not far down the road was a fast food place called 'Hungry Bunny' and there were crowds of people as it was the first day of business for them. It looked a lot like a Mc Donald's restaurant and sold pretty much the same stuff. We ate there one night and met the Egyptian manager who was in a flap as hordes of locals turned up to try out the latest place in town.

We visited the old city which lies in a fertile oasis with plantings of date palms and vegetables. The Ministry of Tourism has spent money renovating the old fort from the 17th century. There were chutes where they would pour boiling date syrup over invaders and they had wooden planks over the steps just inside the doors which they removed as the enemy came up. The enemy would then fall through to a pit below and at the same time a guard would fire on them through a slot above. The stairs were deliberately circular so battering rams could not be used to knock down doors as they wouldn't fit. The wooden doors also had steel spikes to make battering difficult.

There were displays of the use of indigo dyes as well as an exhibit of the traditional facemasks that the local tribeswomen wear. We only ever saw one lady with a mask but each tribe has its own pattern.

The old souk has been incorporated into the fort complex but now it is a clean, cobbled, and tiled modern space which still continues to serve the locals as it did centuries ago. They were heaping up their vegetables into attractive piles and walking their goats and sheep around the stock yard for prospective buyers. All of this happens between 7am and 11am and then it is deserted as they go home for prayers, a meal and a sleep.

There are several old irrigation channels in the valley. In the olden days there was a solar clock or sand clock to measure each farmer's usage and at night they used the moon and candles so everyone had a share of the water. The Sultan took taxes from the farmers who brought their produce to the souk.

One day we flagged a shared taxi down and headed for Bahla, another old city with a fort. Unfortunatelty there are no tourist offices anywhere so we didn't know that the fort was not open for visitors as they were renovating it. Nevertheless we wandered about and chatted to the locals near the fish market. We looked in on an old man in his blacksmith's workshop. He had a small electric leafblower that he had turned upsidedown and cemented into the floor. This was his modern version of bellows. He had hoes and plough blades that he was repairing.

On Friday we were in town when all the locals came from all parts, parked in tthe streets blocking traffic and headed for the mosque and their Friday prayers. When the mosque is full they pray on the footpath outside the mosque that has a cover to protect from the sun and rain.

Salalah, Oman

The bus ride from Sayun in Yemen was pretty comfortable. Luckily we decided to take a sweatshirt as the air-conditioning was really cold. There were not many passengers on the bus so we could spread out. Lil was the only female travelling.

There was a reasonably full moon but there was not a lot to be seen in the gravel desert nor the sandy desert. We stopped a few times at the start of the journey, at every petrol station in fact, but they had no petrol. We pulled into a petrol station and about 20 metres from the bowser we ran out of fuel. All the men in the bus, about 15 , had to get out and push us up to the pump!

At the petrol pumps there were places to eat and a place to pray so the men got out to say their prayers. The trip eventually took us 14 hours and we had expected to take 18 so it was good to arrive early. Maybe this was because the roads were in really good condition all the way. We did read that wealthy Saudis and Omanis had contributed to paying fior the roads between Oman and Yemen.

We arrived at the border to Oman at 2am and had to buy an Omani visa. It didn't take long and cost about $24 NZ.

The hotel in Salalah was a new place and a short walk from the bus station through the souq. Immediately we could see a huge difference between Yemen and Oman. All the street and shop signs were in Arabic and English. The hotel was a two star (the cheapest in town) and felt like a four star. It was so comfortable it was hard to leave.

There was not a lot to do in Salalah but we walked around the new mosque that was having the final touches done to it. The streets are well laid out and very wide. Our hotel felt like it was in the middle of a building site there were so many new buildings in various stages of construction.

Salalah is famous for frankincense. It traded the tree resin since 5000 BC to Europe, India in exchange for spices, and to China. The tree bark is cut and the resin that oozes out is scrapped off and dried. The dried resin is then burnt on a charcoal burner as a perfume. Many shops still burn the frankincense.

There are many workers here from Bangladesh, India and the Philippines. We enjoyed a few Indian curries as a nice change from rice and beans.

We visited the Al-Baleed ruins and museum. It was a well organised and beautifully presented display of the history of the region and the story of shipping trade over the centuries. It lies beside ancient ruins taht are still being excavated. There was also a section on the former king, Said Bin Taimur, and under his rule the country was closed to foreigners. There were no secondary schools, two primary schools, two hospitals run by American Missions, and only 10 kilometres of sealed roads. His only son Qaboos Al Said took over in 1970 and had his father sent to London where he stayed for the rest of his days.

Qaboos appears in photos, carpet weavings and portraits. He has turned the country around and now it is very modern, organised and CLEAN. You can be fined for littering, the taxi driver told us. You can also be fined for having a dirty car. It is also pretty expensive. It doesn't have as much oil as the other countries surrounding it either. Qaboos had tried to encourage small businesses and education is free. We have seen businesses where women are at the front desk, but not many.

Businesses open at 7am and then close at 11am. Everyone goes for prayers and rests in the heat of the day to return to work at 4pm, trading until 8pm or even later. It is difficult to cross the streets at night as everyone is on the move. They love their modern air-conditioned cars. there is no public transport other than shared taxis. They have depots where they leave from and you stand on the side of the road and flag one down going your way. It picks up more people along the way. Of course there are taxis that you can hire to take you where ever you want as well.

Salalah is famous for its summer rains and drizzle called khareef . The people of Muscat come here to enjoy the cold wet days and picnic in the valleys that burst into green over this time.

We visited teh

Sayun and the Hadramawt Valley, Yemen

We were sad to leave San'a and Victor and his family. We were overwhelmed by their kindness and hospitality. It is a rare privilege to be invited to stay with a Yemeni family. The children were a delight and so eager to try to understand us and speak English with us.

We had to fly to the next leg of our travels over the desert area of Ma'rib where there is a lot of tribal tensions. Recently we saw riots on TV in the area. We could have taken the coastal road but would have had to have faced an 18 hour bus ride. The flight with Felix Air was pretty smooth and only took an hour but the captain had to have two goes at landing which was a bit nerve wracking.

Sayun is in the Hadramawt Valley and we could see the fertile oasis as we flew along the valley. There were rows and rows of date palms and fields of crops with many small towns rising up the sides of the valley.

The Sultan's Palace of mud-brick and painted white looms over the main square.It was built in the 19th century as a defensive fort and became the residence of Sultan Al Katheri in the 1920s.

It is now the base for the tourist police and a museum with stone and bronze age relics that were discovered in the valley. There were also photos of travellers who came to the area in the 1930s. Other than that there are not many sights in Sayun.

New Zealand apples arriving at the souq.

We managed to buy a small digital camera in a small dusty shop and found a couple of internet places to do some research and and catch up on emails. The locals are pretty friendly and generally leave you alone. There are hardly any tourists in town and some days we are the only ones.

We took a taxi to the nearby 2,500 year old town of Shibam.

It is thought to date from the 4th century but was built on an even older city.

The gate to the old city.

The walls of Shibam contain about 500 dwellings- seven and eight story tower blocks built of mud.

It has been a UNESCO site since 1982. Each tourist is charged $3 US towards the upkeep of the old houses. Several houses were being renovated and their old carved wooden doors were being replaced. The goats wandered in and out of open doorways looking for food and the sheep lay on the dusty narrow lanes panting in the shade while the chooks scavenged amongst the rubbish.

The houses have shafts on the outside walls running the the length of the buildings that are used as toilets.

Some children returning from school at lunchtime wanted their photos taken and displayed their Barbie exercise books.

One day we met a Russian guy and went together to another town nearby called Tarim. It was part of the weekend so there was nothing at all going on there. When we arrived the qat sellers were packing up their hessian sacks full of qat and heading off to chew and eat.

The local taxi drivers wanted us to charter their whole taxi for an outrageous price so we ate ice cream and hung around until a shared taxi was full. We had to have 4 sitting in the middle seat with us while the passenger in front bought the space beside him so he would have somewhere to rest his sack of qat and his bottles of water.


Eating with Ivan from Moscow at our local restaurant in Sayun. We ate beans and eggs, vegetable stew and omelette. He tried the local dried and seared fish with rice.

We are having problems loading photos and our blog entries so will have to wait until Oman to load some photos and fix + hours!!!!!

Amran and Thilla, Yemen

Amran is situated on a small hill with a citadel above. The city marks the border between the tribal and government run areas. It lies on the old Frankincense trading route. Today there is a huge modern city on the outside of the old city. A lot of the modern buildings are government offices and military buildings.
The old city is surrounded by a high wall and the buildings inside it are all adobe.

The local children were pretty excitable and some were aggressive - snatching at the books we had in our hands and grabbing our arms and clothing. Some of the young ones surrounded Vic begging to have photos taken and then all scrambling to be in the shot. Some of the locals reprimanded the kids and others chased them away when they saw them crowding us.
It was qat chewing time when we arrived so there were very few shops open and the old souq was closed so we didn't spend too much time there.

Our next stop was Thilla ( Thulla ). On the way here we passed many poultry rearing sheds as well as the usual crops of wheat and maize.

Thilla is a UNESCO listed site, with about 8,000 people living inside the old city walls and 4,000 outside. There are 25 mosques in the old city. There were a large number of young men on well-polished and decorated motorbikes. They were
recklessly driving fast through the narrow streets. Probably they are the rewards of growing qat in this fertile valley.

The adobe houses had alabaster windows to let light in and afford privacy for the women. Some whitewashed the window frames to make them a feature and to add interest to the houses that would otherwise have melded into the same coloured hillside.

We were met by a couple of local guides who also happened to own souvenir shops. They pointed out the houses that were built by Jewish families with their coloured windows in the shape of the Star of David. There were also houses with the Maltese cross.

The streets were clean and tidy even though some animals were stabled on the ground floor.

The main water cistern had been emptied as it was leaking and now they have to wait for the summer rains to refill it.

We had a speedy trip back to San'a where we were able to burn a CD of the photos from our camera and Vic's one too. We need to look for a replacement camera to record the final month of our travels.

The children were asleep when we got back to Victor and Asia's place and we were disappointed that we had missed seeing them.

Shaharah, Yemen

We headed into the old city to meet our tour guide for a trip to Shaharah. We travelled in a 4x4 vehicle and were joined by Vic from Austria. The tour did not start well as the young driver / guide forgot to copy the travel permits so were turned back by the police at the first checkpoint and had to hang around for an hour or so. None of us were impressed by his loud wailing music either as we couldn't talk to each other.

Some time out of San'a we were joined by another tour group of Russians and a police escort. The police pick-up had 2 officers inside and about 8 on the back of the pick-up. They had a mounting in the back of the vehicle for a machine gun that one of the guys toted around proudly on his shoulder. The rest of the men were armed with Kalishnikovs and their cheeks were bulging with wads of qat. We had one policeman in our vehicle and there was one with the Russian group.

Since 2003 North Yemen has a group of fighters who are anti-government. They feel the government is too pro-western. These two groups battle from time to time so the police escort was necessary for us. There have been several incidents of kidnapping of foreigners.

This part of the country is under the control of tribal leaders or sheiks. Victor tells us that the people who are kidnapped are treated like kings as the tribes want to draw international attention to their issues.

We stopped at a village restaurant for lunch and got to meet the Russian group and their guide from Uzbekistan. At lunch we learned we had to pay for the escort group as well as their qat and their lunch. For lunch we had mutton broth soup, cabbage salad, salta- a meat stew with lentils, spices and fenugreek. We had no cutlery and had to use the flat bread to scoop everything up in order to eat it. This was followed by very very sweet black mint tea.

We arrived at a small village in a Bedouin area and had to pick up a Bedouin guide as well. The Bedouin would not allow our 4x4 vehicle to continue up the steep mountain road to Shaharah so we had to have another driver and a wreck of a 4x4 vehicle to continue our journey.

The steep road to the village above the valley was dusty, rocky and bumpy. John and the guide sat on the back while Vic and I were inside. About one kilometre from the top of the mountain and the village of Shaharah the road was blocked with workmen repairing it so we had to turn back and travel back into the valley. We took a badly maintained road and it was worse than the first one.

The village was a fortified place 2,600 metres high. At the village we stayed in one of the three tourist hotels. There were mattresses on the carpeted floor, a hot water heater and shower, squat toilet, and a large common room where we ate dinner. The electricity went off for a short time but there was a back up generator.

We sat on the floor and ate a dinner of bread, beans, rice and egg omelette. The Uzbekistan guide played the urd and sang some traditional songs. After dinner we had a warm lemon-flavoured non-alcoholic beer, a warm shower and an early night.

The next morning we had bread, boiled egg and a spreadable cheese breakfast followed by sweet black tea and headed of to look around the village. There were two open water cisterns where veiled women were filling buckets of algae-green water and taking them on their heads back to their houses.

Some of the local children joined us and pointed out the mosques, local school, and prison. Sometimes we were crowded by children begging for pens, to have their photo taken, and money , of course. 46% of Yemen's population is under 15 years of age and women have an average of 6.5 children. 73% of the population live in rural areas. According to UN stats, 45% of the people live below the poverty line of $2US per day and only 50% are literate. So, there are children everywhere eager to follow you and try their luck.

Outside the village is a stone bridge that is 340 years old. It has helped link the villages on each side of the gorge after centuries of being apart.
The walk downhill was meant to take 2 hours but the photo-snapping Russians and their unfit guide meant we took 3 and a half hours. Unfortunately for us our camera decided to pack up during the trip so we used our memory card in Vic's camera.

The walk down went through the qat terraces. The valley and the numerous ranges around it were pretty dramatic.

We dropped our Bedouin guide off at his village and headed with the police escort from there out of the area. We passed lots of young men with knives and guns and we saw a couple of burnt out armoured cars rusting away in the valley. Some young men threw stones and sticks at our vehicle but none made contact.

Once out of the valley we were back on the sealed road and headed for Amran where the police said their goodbyes.

Manakhan, Yemen

We had an early morning with Victor and the children and his friend Hussein drove us to the Haraz Mountains.

Along the highways are asphalt speed bumps covering water pipes that cross the road or just heaps of earth piled up to slow traffic. This is where veiled women in black sit begging, children try to peddle tiny apricot or peaches, and boys shake their plastic bags of bundled up qat for sale at the vehicle drivers.

We passed several police checkpoints, and had to hand over our travel permits. We got the permits from the tourist police in San'a for no charge and had to have several copies made to hand out at each checkpoint. The permits listed the days we would travel and our destinations.


At the first checkpoint, the police asked where we were from and where we were staying, they next asked for a pen. Victor told them we were staying with him. When he told them his name was Victor they didn't believe he was Yemeni as Victor is not a Yemeni nor a Muslim name. We had to pull over at every checkpoint as they phoned the station and checked his ID. They were not interested in us at all. Victor's dad studied in Germany and named Victor after a good German friend. Victor is the only Yemeni called Victor and get hassled often about his name.

Some of the villages we passed through were called souqs and they were a few steel buildings selling all the same things. There were small pick-ups parked in the narrow streets from the back of which men sold their bags of qat. They outnumbered the shops. The dusty streets were ankle deep in plastic bags and rubbish. There doesn't seem to be any system in place to get rid of waste, so it blows every where sticking to trees and clogging the irrigation channels.

Manakhan is a area for trekking where guides take walkers from village to village through the mountains. We didn't have time for that.

We drove to an area where there is a tomb, Al Khutayb, it is a place for pilgrims of a particular Muslim sect.


We met many pilgrims from Saudi, France, Madagascar and Pakistan.

An old man showed us the way to the mosque at the top of the hill and then posed for a photo with his prayer beads and Koran, he also wanted a tip.

Victor has no head for heights so he stayed below but the pilgrims invited us into their tiny mosque. As Victor and Hussein are not of the same sect they were not allowed into the mosque. The area is well looked after with well watered lawns of green grass and gardens of oleander flowers. The houses nearby are well made of cement and the roads are newly sealed. The money from the pilgrims goes to keep the area in good condition.

After our trip we went to a neighbourhood restaurant for lunch and then Victor went off to meet his friends for some qat chewing and gossip.

Kawkaban, Yemen

We set off with Victor and the children in a friend's car to Kawkaban about an hour from San'a.

The road was pretty windy and zig zagged up to 2,800 metres above sea level. There were lots of terraced qat farms on the way along with their towers.

Jebel Kawkaban is a fortress and village and was built with gigantic grain silos and water storage cisterns to provide protection in times of conflict.

No sooner had we arrived when the local kids volunteered to tell us the history of the place and show us around, for a small fee, of course. They could only speak Arabic so we couldn't understand everything.

There were very few people in the streets but young boys came from nowhere with their wheelbarrows full of souvenirs to sell. They followed us where ever we went, ever hopeful that we would buy key rings, candle holders etc.

We looked at the local tourist hotel and it had large rooms with mattresses on the floor and squat toilets.

There were several open cisterns that fill up with the monsoon rains in the summer. The cistern holds the water for the whole year and was looking pretty empty.



Tourists like to do treks in this area and need a guide to go from village to village.

Victor and Ahmed buying a snack at the local shop.

Wadi Dhahr, Yemen

We went with the family and Asia's brother in his taxi to see the Rock Palace: Dar-al Hajar. It is about 30 minutes outside San'a. The palace as built as a summer residence for Imam Yahya in the 1920s. It is a huge structure made of red and white stone and sits perched on a rock.

We visited on a Thursday which is the first day of the Yemeni weekend. There were several groups of school children from a private school visiting as well so they were happy to practise their English each time they passed us on the stairs!

The palace is a favourite area for weddings and the weekend is the best time for them. We saw the men from a wedding party who wanted us to take photos of the groom and his entourage. We never saw the bride. Weddings are usually celebrated with lots of gun fire.

At a lookout point near the palace we were besieged by beggars, jewelery sellers, scarf sellers, falcon owners, as well as a 15 year old boy with small glasses who called himself Harry Potter and spoke 6 or 7 languages so he could sell souvenirs.

John and the falcons

On the way home we passed several plaster factories. John was keen to look at the cornices and coloured window frames that the workers cut by hand. The workers were happy to show him their products and Victor could translate for him.

Later we met a travel agent and planned a tour to Shaharah and bought a flight ticket to Sayun.

At dinner time we watched Asia making bread and cooking it in her gas oven. It was delicious. Yemen has over 40 types of bread.

San'a, Yemen

We had a good short flight with Royal Jordanian from Cairo to San'a but a long 4 hour wait at Amman airport in Jordan.

Arrived at San'a airport at 1.30 am and had to get a visa and then took a taxi we had prebooked to our hotel in the old city.

San'a is so different from any other place we have been. It the oldest city in the world, according to books we have read. Noah's son was the founder of San'a. Today it is the fastest growing capital city in the world.

The buildings are probably the first skyscrapers. They are towers. The ground floors are built of stone and the rest of the floors of mud brick. Traditionally the stables and storerooms were on the ground floor. The first floor was for entertaining. The second floor was for the women and children and the third and fourth floors were the bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchen. The top floor was the room with a view. Most towers are 6 or 8 stories.

Our hotel was a traditional building and the dining room was on the top floor. The windows are decorated with coloured glass and set in plaster and we could look over the old city. The white lime wash on the building help reflect the heat and keep the rooms cool. There are still 14, 000 original tower houses in the old city.

We contacted Victor, a Yemeni, from the Hospitality Club, an online group that offers accommodation or friendship to others in the club. He works for a Canadian oil company and has one month on and one month off. Our request to stay with him and his family arrived on his month off so after recovering from our flight at the hotel we were picked up by Victor and Asia and their two children, Ahmed (7) and Noor(5).

We had a great time with the family, with Asia cooking some delicious Yemeni food and Victor introducing John to the ways of life for Yemeni men.

Yemenis are traditional Muslims and Asia has to wear black covering her head, arms and legs with a veil across her face. She kept her head covered the whole time John was in the house but was uncovered if I was there with her. We went shopping one afternoon with the children and the men went to chew qat. The shopping centre had only women shoppers.

Qat or Khat, are the leaves of the Catha edulis shrub. It has the ability to slow down time. The WHO classes it as a drug of abuse that can produce mild to moderate psychic dependence, and is banned in most Arab and Western countries. About 80% of the Yemeni male population chew qat regularly. The towers beside each plantation are to house the guards that keep watch over the trees.

John and Victor went to a stylish Yemeni house where they sat in a room furnished with squabs on the floor and upholstered cushions against the walls. There were bolstered arm rests between each person and the men sat around the sides of the room. There was a large TV screen and the men drank water, soft drinks, smoked and chatted. About 50 people came and went between the 4pm to 8pm session. There were several professional people and John talked to men from insurance, an IT analyst for the military, engineers, and other government workers. It is a time to talk politics and right the wrongs of the world.

Victor told us later that some of the men at the qat house were from a tribe that recently kidnapped a couple of Dutch tourists. These guys asked Victor if he had any grievances with the government that he would like put right. If so, then they would kidnap John in order to get the government to do do something about the grievances. Lucky for John, Victor had none.

Environmentally, qat is bad news for Yemen. 55% of all the water in Yemen goes to irrigate the crops. In 1970, 8,000 hectares was used for qat but has now grown to 103,000 hectares and there are still new areas being developed. The profit is 5 times better for qat growers than for crop farmers. When you walk through the old city after lunch you see all the stall holders with huge bulges in their cheeks as they stuff the qat in. Young boys also get into qat chewing at an early age. Some women chew qat as well but not as much nor as often as the men. 17% of the average family's income goes on qat with over 14,622,000 working hours lost each day in Yemen, as men set aside chewing time.

Ahmet and Noor were very quick to pick up new words in English and try them out. We made origami boxes, played string games and 'paper, scissors and rock'. I helped Asia with her English lessons. She goes to a language school two hours every day and was shy at first to speak but is doing really well. We met Victor's mum and a couple of brother as well as Asia's brother who drove us in his taxi.

The Al Saleh Mosque is a new mosque built by the current president at a cost of millions of dollars. It is the most beautiful mosque we have seen in the Middle East to date. Victor and his friends tell us that Yemen needs hospitals and schools and would have preferred the money was spent on that but the president wants a legacy. Mosques cannot have their names changed unlike hospitals and schools.

Near the gate of the old city we saw a blind-folded camel going round and round. It was attached to an arm like a pestle and it was grinding sesame seeds for oil. It had been walking about two hours when we saw it and it stopped for awhile and then continued. Apparently it wouldn't walk if it could see it was going in circles.

There is a river bed that is cobbled and sealed and the traffic use this everyday. When it rains once or twice a year the road becomes a river.

The men in this area wear knives attached to their belts and they pull them out at weddings and use them for dancing. Even young boys have them. Victor doesn't wear a jambiya as it is not the tradition where he comes from.