Back to the capital briefly

Nothing morning

We had a sleep in today till 0845 before having breakfast of muesli by the poolside. I wanted to have a last wander around town before our afternoon flight. There wasn’t actually anything specifically we could see so it made sense to take another look at the town’s icon, the Sultan’s Palace. This features on the Yemeni YER1000 note actually.

Sultan’s Palace in Seiyun.

Yemeni YER1000 note.

We stumbled upon a very good display of old photographs by early travellers Freya Stark and Daniel van der Meulen.

At around 1130 I wasn’t hungry still. But it made sense to eat something before checking out and flying. So we settled for another murtabak instead of a proper meal.

Leaving Seiyun

We managed to get a late check-out at 1300 and taxied to the airport. Outside the airport, I ran into the muffin seller from my internet cafe near Medan Tahrir! What a small world!

Waiting in the departure area, I saw a very Malay-looking man dressed in long Yemeni dress. Then I realised that he had a Thai passport, suggesting that he is from southern Thailand. Probably a student, like many Malaysian Muslims.

Our flight to Sana’a left on time and had a lot of Filipinos and Brits working in the petroleum industry. We landed a little early at 1545.

Flying over the desert.

Back in Sana’a

Taxi from the airport to the old city was a little pricey at YER2000. I didn’t try very hard to haggle but instead walked out of the airport fenced area to try to catch a taxi. Instead, we ended up in a shared dabab van for YER30 per person.

Unfortunately, it only finished the journey at a station. We had to take a shorter dabab ride to the Saila, which cost more at YER40 per person. We walked back from there to the hostel.

Sami was taking the lead with making dinner. It ended up being a group effort with Kim doing the rice, Eva and Lou the vegetables. I did our laundry! We only had a night in Sana’a before our next adventure tomorrow!