Into the city
Once the hotel room situation was all settled, we headed off to explore the old city. Well, at least that was the plan. It turned into a complete fiasco. First it was hot, I know, I know, I keep talking about the heat but it is heat like no other here—-AND I LIVED IN SAUDI ARABIA!! Second, it is crowded. Not like Tokyo crowded, but close and add in the crumbling sidewalks/no sidewalks in places and the no right of way for pedestrians. It creates a bit of stress walking with kids. Mel mis-judged a step and fell hard, twisting her bad ankle. She is ok, broke her jumper but we made it work for the time being. We continued down the main street—-so loud you couldn’t hear anything the person next to you was saying—and it started to get dark which made the frogger game of weaving through the traffic and watching our footing with each step more difficult.
At one point we were crossing a street and Bill put his hand on a car that was stopped to make it clear we were crossing. Bill and Mel started to cross and when Z and I stepped out the car pulled right out, full speed and I had to yank Zach back to avoid him getting hit. There were many other close calls and as the sun set and it got dark I was done. We were on a non-sidewalk street with 4 lanes of traffic and had another close call with Z. I was done. Sweat dripping down our legs and off our heads, the smells, and to top it off, the mosquitos had just come out. All done. We made a call to skip the old city and try again tomorrow and headed back to the hotel. Mel stumbled again, everyone was starving at this point so Zach walked up to a tuk-tuk driver and negotiated a ride back ($3). I was less than thrilled, but at that point I wasn’t sure if it was better to be on on foot or in the tuk-tuk. We hopped in, Zach in the tiny seat in the front. It took 45 minutes, to travel the maybe 1-2 miles. SO much traffic.
We got dropped off at the food area and while my first impressions of the city are not so great, the food, oh my goodness, the food. We were so hungry we got way too much food but it all looked so good. Vegan places everywhere!
