End of Yemen

It's a real shame that Yemen gets so few tourists.  The likelihood of being kidnapped before you finish your holiday is such that travel insurance is probably a bit pricey, but the intrepid traveler could enjoy surprisingly lush mountains, empty beaches, amazing ancient cities that look like they might collapse at any moment and a pleasingly weird tribal culture.  Popping out to the shops?  Make sure you take your jambiya, a foot-long curved dagger that is worn in the belt at pretty much all times (although weapons are banned in a lot of offices so you can't always take it to work).  Getting married?  Enjoy the month of paid holiday you get to ensure you have time to do all the partying that is required.

When you get married, you get to wear an awesome hat.

A local sheikh

The end of my deployment in Yemen unfortunately coincided with the opening of a high quality astroturf football pitch just behind my house, where my team dealt a devastating defeat on the Indonesian embassy side.  I will miss a lot of things about Yemen, but having to wait for a vehicle to pick me up to travel 50 yards will not be one of them.

There is a fairly amusing military group called the Houthis who control the north of Yemen.  Their slogan is "God is great, death to America, death to Israel, damn the Jews, Islam will prevail", and they like to plaster this all over the place, on mosques and NGO signs and so on.  They have some beef with Al Qaeda as both think that they are the coolest terrorist group in Yemen.  I came across the below in Kawkaban, a beautiful walled city near Sana'a; the big red and blue bit reads "Al Qaeda - made in America".

Houthi graffiti

I'm stationed near the Turkey / Syria border now, luckily on the Turkish side.  This is a disappointingly sensible country so is likely to provide less fuel for this blog, but we'll see how we go.