Articles from this Category
2 October 2006
Above: Chinatown by night in the lead-up to the Mooncake Festival. In the evening, Jacob and Janet took us out for a drive and a wander around Chinatown. The area was very nicely illuminated and decorated with lanterns for the Mooncake or Mid-autumn Festival. Janet was very proud of how Singapore celebrates the various multi-ethnic […]
30 September 2006
It was after 2100 when I was picked up by step-dad, Lawrence, from Changi Airport. Roaming charges in Singapore are quite reasonable and I was able to ring him from inside the plane before disembarking, so that I didn’t have to wait too long. Back at Lawrence’s place, Mum had been out and was dropped […]
30 May 2006
I hate flying from west to east because it’s hard to get up in the mornings. I woke at 0700. After a momentary doze, it was 0900. There’s not much we had to do anyway, being with parents who are approaching 80 years of age. Step-dad’s relatives Jacob and Janet came to visit. Mum asked me […]
19 May 2006
We have a full social calendar today, after having yesterday free for exploring Dubai’s malls and shops. Not that there’s much we wanted to buy. For lunch, we met Carolyn, Brad and their two children. They are from New Zealand and moved up over a year ago. They enjoy the lifestyle here and wouldn’t consider […]
17 May 2006
Above: Military helicopters at Sana’a airport. Leaving Yemen Leaving Yemen was sad for me. Sana’a had been my home for 5 weeks. I’ve never been to a school that’s been so cool. Where in the world would you find your teacher wearing a gun holster (with bullet holders) to class? I also loved the climate […]
15 May 2006
Visiting Jibla While Ibb is an important town for the region, the historic and touristic value of the area is actually at Jibla about 30 mins away by van. It was a nice hillside town. It is famous for its museum which was the Palace of Queen Arwa (1048–1138). She was reputed to be a […]
15 May 2006
Taizz stopover The plan for the day was to head to Taizz for a walkaround, before continuing to our nightstop at Ibb. We had breakfast of eggs, bread and tea at the hotel. Eelco went for a last walk in the old city of Zabid but we didn’t bother. To get to Taizz, we walked […]
14 May 2006
Getting to Zabid As a final exploration of Yemen, we are headed to the lowlands and surrounding highlands in the west of the country closest to the Red Sea. Kim and I, together with Eelco who speaks better Arabic, headed to the shared taxi stand near Bab Al Yemen around 0800. But we were redirected […]
13 May 2006
This morning, Kim realised that he had lost about EUR200 while in Shihara, made up of Japanese Yen and New Zealand dollars. He suspected that it may have been taken while we had gone for a walk after arrival in Shihara, despite having been given a padlock by our hosts. [Edit: I realised many years […]
12 May 2006
I didn’t sleep very well, waking at 0130 then dozing till 0630. Breakfast was served in our room and consisted of a sesame flat bread and a honey bread. You can’t go wrong with sweet stuff! Kim and I hesitantly used the horrible toilet, somewhat in fear of even worse ones on the road. Eelco braved […]