On Wednesday, we woke up in our lovely $35/night hotel. Now, you might be wondering what a $35/night hotel looks like. My answer would be: sparse decoration and creative plumbing! There was nothing on the walls except a mirror and a print-out pointing in the direction of Mecca. The bathroom consisted of a squatty potty. With the shower located directly over the potty. So you had to stand on the toilet to shower. The best part was that the sink was located outside of the room, but the pipes ran through the wall and emptied into the potty/shower room and flowed across the floor and into the potty. Heh. Definitely a creative arrangement.
Before starting our trek to Sulaymaniyah, we delivered a goodbye note to our new friends from the day before, since they were already at work when we were up and at 'em. We were sad that we didn't get to say goodbye in person, especially since they had been so nice. Hopefully we'll meet again, though.
Our travel plans were to take a taxi to Koya, and from Koya to Sulaymaniyah. According to the guidebook, this was the best way to make sure that the taxi driver didn't take us through Kirkuk, which is definitely a city that we had no desire to go through. We found a taxi to take us to Koya, but it had a sheep shag carpet on the roof of the taxi! It was so thick and plush that our heads were constantly rubbing against it. Otherwise, the drive to Koya was pretty uneventful.
We were dropped off somewhere in Koya, which seems to be quite a small town, meaning that we were, again, quite the random sight for the locals. We tried to catch a taxi to Sulaymaniyah, but the driver was trying to charge us double what we knew we should pay. Some nice English-speaking locals stepped in and helped us figure things out so that the driver would just take us to the Sulaymaniyah taxi garage in Koya, where we were pretty sure that we could get a better price. He still charged us more than the price we agreed on for the short ride, which was really the first rather negative experience we had with taxis in Kurdistan. But, we did get to the Suli garage and found a taxi for what we wanted to pay. We then had to wait until a fourth person came who also wanted to go to Suli- the taxi only leaves if it is full, or we would have to pay for the empty seat. We only had to wait for about 45 minutes, which really wasn't so bad, and then we were on the road again.
The drive was really beautiful- through mountains and by a huge lake. The road was pretty steep and full of switch-backs in the mountains, and we came across at least 7 semis that just had stopped in the middle of the (rather narrow) road. Not pulled over to one side or the other- just stopped in the middle! Up until this point, we hadn't really had any problems going through the checkpoints, but between Koya and Sulaymaniyah we definitely were more carefully scrutinized and had to get out to be looked over. Sulaymaniyah has been experiencing protests for about two months or so, but just earlier that week the protests had turned violent, so the military presence was definitely higher in numbers and more visible the closer we got into the city, and I think this is why we were checked so much more carefully on our way in.
We arrived in Sulaymaniyah around mid-afternoon. One of my friends from high school lives in Suli with her husband and two adorable little boys, and they had invited us to stay with them, which was so nice! They are also fluent in Kurdish, which was really helpful when we couldn't figure out how to get the taxi driver to take us from the Suli garage to the Rand Gallery (a mall near their house), and then when the driver wanted to over-charge us. We were able to call them up and have them give directions and negotiate with the driver, which was pretty great! (Also, thank goodness for SIM cards!)
My friend came to meet us at the mall, which was approximately across the street from her house. It was such a delight to meet up with my friend and reconnect with her and meet her family and play with her so-cute-they-melt-your-heart-into-a-puddle-of-goo children and get a better understanding of what life is like in Kurdish Iraq. They were so hospitable, and we were really thankful to stay somewhere with friends that had a Western-style toilet, no oppressive smoke smell, and coffee!
We spent much of the afternoon just chatting and catching up and napping (Jessi had come down with a bad cold, and the short nights and abundance of smoke everywhere we went was catching up with her). It was raining off and on, so it was not a bad afternoon to take it easy.
For the evening, we had decided to go to the mall across the street and check out the burgers and milkshakes, and then we planned to go to the new movie theater and see a movie. Since all three of us are living out of the US, we thought it would be fun to have American food and see an American movie in Iraq. We ordered our food, and the power suddenly went out. No one even blinked. The restaurants kept on taking people's orders. About a minute later, the power came back on. This is pretty normal all over Iraq. The government supplies power for a limited amount of time each day- maybe up to 16 hours per day during low-demand seasons and as little as 6-8 hours per day during the summer. Every neighborhood or business has a generator that is scheduled to run when the government power turns off. If the government power shuts off unexpectedly, most businesses have a generator that automatically kicks in, but, in the neighborhoods, you're really just out of luck. Since we were there in the spring, the power was actually relatively stable- this was probably one of the few power outages that we experienced.
Our dinner was quite nice, but by the end, Jessi and I were both so tired. We were tired of being stared at constantly and of getting ripped off by taxis and of not being able to communicate and of being women in a society where women are really second-class citizen. Really, I think all of the intense travel had just caught up with us a little. The prospect of taking a taxi in the dark across a strange city that was experiencing riots to see a movie and then returning in a taxi and probably getting ripped off for every cab ride was just a little too much for the evening. So we wandered leisurely around the mall, checking out the stores, which included Ekea, an IKEA look-alike.
We spent the rest of the evening back at the house, chatting with our friends and hearing about their life and the English center that they run. We also had one of the biggest thunderstorms that I've experienced (and I know a good Midwestern thunderstorm)! The thunder and lightening seemed like it was right on top of us, which might be a function of Suli being surrounded by mountains, so the storms just crash right on top of the city. The power was even knocked out (briefly, thankfully) after one particularly close lightening strike that made the entire world look like it was on fire.
It all seemed so normal. And then our friends started getting text messages from some of their friends with live updates from a protest happening somewhere in the city where protestors, including women, were being beaten and jailed. Not normal.
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| This way to Mecca! |
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| Squatty. |
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| And shower. |
Before starting our trek to Sulaymaniyah, we delivered a goodbye note to our new friends from the day before, since they were already at work when we were up and at 'em. We were sad that we didn't get to say goodbye in person, especially since they had been so nice. Hopefully we'll meet again, though.
Our travel plans were to take a taxi to Koya, and from Koya to Sulaymaniyah. According to the guidebook, this was the best way to make sure that the taxi driver didn't take us through Kirkuk, which is definitely a city that we had no desire to go through. We found a taxi to take us to Koya, but it had a sheep shag carpet on the roof of the taxi! It was so thick and plush that our heads were constantly rubbing against it. Otherwise, the drive to Koya was pretty uneventful.
We were dropped off somewhere in Koya, which seems to be quite a small town, meaning that we were, again, quite the random sight for the locals. We tried to catch a taxi to Sulaymaniyah, but the driver was trying to charge us double what we knew we should pay. Some nice English-speaking locals stepped in and helped us figure things out so that the driver would just take us to the Sulaymaniyah taxi garage in Koya, where we were pretty sure that we could get a better price. He still charged us more than the price we agreed on for the short ride, which was really the first rather negative experience we had with taxis in Kurdistan. But, we did get to the Suli garage and found a taxi for what we wanted to pay. We then had to wait until a fourth person came who also wanted to go to Suli- the taxi only leaves if it is full, or we would have to pay for the empty seat. We only had to wait for about 45 minutes, which really wasn't so bad, and then we were on the road again.
The drive was really beautiful- through mountains and by a huge lake. The road was pretty steep and full of switch-backs in the mountains, and we came across at least 7 semis that just had stopped in the middle of the (rather narrow) road. Not pulled over to one side or the other- just stopped in the middle! Up until this point, we hadn't really had any problems going through the checkpoints, but between Koya and Sulaymaniyah we definitely were more carefully scrutinized and had to get out to be looked over. Sulaymaniyah has been experiencing protests for about two months or so, but just earlier that week the protests had turned violent, so the military presence was definitely higher in numbers and more visible the closer we got into the city, and I think this is why we were checked so much more carefully on our way in.
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| Views along the drive. |
We arrived in Sulaymaniyah around mid-afternoon. One of my friends from high school lives in Suli with her husband and two adorable little boys, and they had invited us to stay with them, which was so nice! They are also fluent in Kurdish, which was really helpful when we couldn't figure out how to get the taxi driver to take us from the Suli garage to the Rand Gallery (a mall near their house), and then when the driver wanted to over-charge us. We were able to call them up and have them give directions and negotiate with the driver, which was pretty great! (Also, thank goodness for SIM cards!)
My friend came to meet us at the mall, which was approximately across the street from her house. It was such a delight to meet up with my friend and reconnect with her and meet her family and play with her so-cute-they-melt-your-heart-into-a-puddle-of-goo children and get a better understanding of what life is like in Kurdish Iraq. They were so hospitable, and we were really thankful to stay somewhere with friends that had a Western-style toilet, no oppressive smoke smell, and coffee!
We spent much of the afternoon just chatting and catching up and napping (Jessi had come down with a bad cold, and the short nights and abundance of smoke everywhere we went was catching up with her). It was raining off and on, so it was not a bad afternoon to take it easy.
For the evening, we had decided to go to the mall across the street and check out the burgers and milkshakes, and then we planned to go to the new movie theater and see a movie. Since all three of us are living out of the US, we thought it would be fun to have American food and see an American movie in Iraq. We ordered our food, and the power suddenly went out. No one even blinked. The restaurants kept on taking people's orders. About a minute later, the power came back on. This is pretty normal all over Iraq. The government supplies power for a limited amount of time each day- maybe up to 16 hours per day during low-demand seasons and as little as 6-8 hours per day during the summer. Every neighborhood or business has a generator that is scheduled to run when the government power turns off. If the government power shuts off unexpectedly, most businesses have a generator that automatically kicks in, but, in the neighborhoods, you're really just out of luck. Since we were there in the spring, the power was actually relatively stable- this was probably one of the few power outages that we experienced.
Our dinner was quite nice, but by the end, Jessi and I were both so tired. We were tired of being stared at constantly and of getting ripped off by taxis and of not being able to communicate and of being women in a society where women are really second-class citizen. Really, I think all of the intense travel had just caught up with us a little. The prospect of taking a taxi in the dark across a strange city that was experiencing riots to see a movie and then returning in a taxi and probably getting ripped off for every cab ride was just a little too much for the evening. So we wandered leisurely around the mall, checking out the stores, which included Ekea, an IKEA look-alike.
We spent the rest of the evening back at the house, chatting with our friends and hearing about their life and the English center that they run. We also had one of the biggest thunderstorms that I've experienced (and I know a good Midwestern thunderstorm)! The thunder and lightening seemed like it was right on top of us, which might be a function of Suli being surrounded by mountains, so the storms just crash right on top of the city. The power was even knocked out (briefly, thankfully) after one particularly close lightening strike that made the entire world look like it was on fire.
It all seemed so normal. And then our friends started getting text messages from some of their friends with live updates from a protest happening somewhere in the city where protestors, including women, were being beaten and jailed. Not normal.
