---
type: Video
title: "I Ignored Western Media and Went to Yemen 🇾🇪"
description: The first half of a road trip across southern Yemen — an open gun market, 500-year-old mud skyscrapers, a wedding with no women in it, and an armed police escort into Wadi Doan.
tags: [yemen, seiyun, shibam, wadi-doan, guns, weddings, khat, conflict]
timestamp: 2026-08-05T12:00:00Z
resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxN5BcLetqA
video_id: RxN5BcLetqA
upload_date: 2024-10-20
duration: 1075
---

# I Ignored Western Media and Went to Yemen 🇾🇪

Harry flies from Cairo into [Seiyun](/places/seiyun.md) — the only route he can
find into [Yemen](/countries/yemen.md) — and starts a road trip west to the port
of al-Mukalla with a guide, [Jamal](/people/jamal.md), and a driver, Abdul.

What he expects to find is the war. What he says shocked him instead is how
beautiful the country is, and that with tourists kept away by the security
situation he had the whole of it to himself.

The three stops in this half are the open-air gun market at Seiyun, the mud tower
blocks of [Shibam](/places/shibam.md), and the valley of
[Wadi Doan](/places/wadi-doan.md) — which the police will not let him enter
without an armed guard.

## Key moments

- [00:02] The setup: the poorest country in the Middle East, a civil war between
  Iran-backed Houthi rebels and a Saudi- and Western-backed government, over
  250,000 dead, and the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
- [00:32] Why anyone outside cares — the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and a chunk of
  world trade that passes through it.
- [00:32] What actually shocked him: not the conflict, the landscape.
- [00:32] The visa required an HIV test and a hepatitis test.
- [01:05] The plan — Seiyun to al-Mukalla — and the question behind the channel:
  why the countries with the nicest people he's met get labelled bad places.
- [01:36] Flights only from Cairo. North Yemen is off limits, Houthi-controlled;
  the south he calls fifty-fifty.
- [02:06] Around $1,000 return, on the only airline that flies the route.
- [02:06] Over the Red Sea and Suez — 12% of global trade, and the reason the
  geopolitics work the way they do.
- [02:40] Met by Jamal and Abdul. A lot of people are carrying guns.
- [02:40] The gun market — wide open, on a central road.
- [03:16] A Kalashnikov, about $1,000. His guide's estimate: 30–40% of people
  carry one.
- [03:46] Army surplus, uniforms, an RPG launcher.
- [03:46] A necklace handed over as a gift — and the comparison to Egypt, where
  the same gesture arrives with a $30 price attached.
- [04:20] A "bomb" quoted at $200, described as cheap.
- [05:28] Shibam — the Manhattan of the Middle East, and what he calls the first
  skyscrapers in the world, 500 years old.
- [06:00] The Yemeni way of sitting, which he declares one of the great
  inventions.
- [06:00] The biggest problem, as locals name it: the cost of living, not the war.
- [06:30] The currency isn't stable — big purchases are made in Saudi riyals.
- [06:30] No women anywhere on the streets, and the statistic behind it: Yemen is
  the worst country in the world to be a woman.
- [07:02] Talking to a group of married women through Jamal. They offer to find
  him a wife.
- [08:07] The history of the Houthi movement — the Believing Youth in the 1990s,
  radicalisation after 9/11, the slogan, the rebellion, the Saudi airstrikes and
  the Iranian backing that turned it into a proxy war.
- [08:40] Millions displaced and dependent on aid, which he notes doesn't make the
  news.
- [08:40] Invited to a Yemeni wedding on day one.
- [09:11] A tent in the middle of Seiyun, running two or three nights depending on
  the family's wealth.
- [09:11] No women inside at all — men and women separated throughout.
- [09:41] Arranged marriage, and the detail that in some cases the man doesn't
  know who he is marrying until afterwards.
- [10:15] Day two: the government requires all tourists to have armed security.
- [10:45] The escort is a police requirement for the road to Wadi Doan. The guard
  has fired at the enemy recently.
- [11:17] Khat — the only real recreation in a dry country. A bag at 15,000
  (from video – unverified).
- [11:54] An hour of chewing and the drive gets faster.
- [11:54] Wasp honey, around 600,000 (from video – unverified), left unguarded by
  the road — and nobody takes it.
- [13:09] Prayer time, with the whole town in the mosque. He watches rather than
  prays, and washes first.
- [13:40] Inside a family's mud house, cool in the heat. The hardest thing about
  life here is affording to get married.
- [14:11] The drainage: the town is built on a slant so it never floods.
- [14:45] Electricity, three hours on and three hours off, and it used to be
  better.
- [15:18] Bukshan Palace — colourful among the mud, built by a businessman who
  paid for the village's roads, telecoms and student scholarships, and who now
  lives in Saudi Arabia. Both his palaces stand empty.
- [16:25] A local's own diagnosis: the divisions within the community are the
  problem, and unity is how Yemen gets itself back.
- [16:31] The verdict on the first half — the worst situation of any country he
  has visited, with people earning $40 a month in government jobs.
- [16:59] The thing he says he could most easily have overlooked as a man: where
  the women are, and that they can't drive and are circumcised at birth.
- [17:35] Credit to Jamal and Abdul, and the tour company, published in the
  description.

## Extracted pages

- Places: [Seiyun](/places/seiyun.md), [Shibam](/places/shibam.md),
  [Wadi Doan](/places/wadi-doan.md)
- Country: [Yemen](/countries/yemen.md)
- Person: [Jamal](/people/jamal.md)
- Tips: [Judge a place for yourself](/tips/judge-a-place-for-yourself.md),
  [Travel with a local guide](/tips/travel-with-a-local-guide.md),
  [The gift that isn't free](/tips/the-gift-that-isnt-free.md)