I had moved my class forward to 1300 today, to finish at 1500 so that we could leave reasonably “early” for Aden by road.
There were five of us: Aaron, Evan, Gary, Tom and myself. Three Americans, a Brit and a Malaysian. We walked to the taxi stand around 1530. It took a while for us to negotiate an acceptable rate to charter a shared taxi to Aden. And during that time, a crowd including beggars, gathered to watch with interest.
As we set off, Evan realised he didn’t have his passport. So we detoured to the school to pick it up. I took the chance to get some extra money.
It rained on the way. The journey of over 7h went reasonably quickly with chit-chat. There was a bit of locker-room talk amongst them as they knew each other quite well.
We found that the US passport is extremely thin with very few pages. Must be a hassle on a big trip. On the other hand, I have the “double the number of pages” of the Malaysian one which looked like the “War and Peace” novel to the Americans. They noticed my year of birth in my passport and labelled me as the dinosaur of the group!
I tried qat for the first time. It is supposed to have a mild intoxicating effect but I don’t think it had any effect on me at all! It tasted awful at first but after a while you don’t notice it. With no pleasurable sensations, I won’t waste my money on it again.