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I used to take an Air France flight Aden, Yemen (past capital of South Yemen) to Djibouti. We would over-night there to continue back to Paris before catching a flight to the states.

When we would land in Djibouti, we would get seat assignments. The trip from Yemen was a free-for-all, find a seat and grab it.

In Djibouti, they made us que up and wait while they wrote with a crayon our seat assignment on the ticket, then cross the seat off on a paper map of the plane.

I had asked why this wasn’t done in Yemen as there was often physical fights on the plane over who got what seat.

The stewardess (from Paris) explained they have tried several times but Yemen workers always screwed it up so bad, they gave up.

In Al Mukalla, south central Yemen, and third city with Internation flights, The american and brits who were regularly flying in kept complaining about the “eastern” toilets. After six month they finally installed two urinals. No plumbing, I discovered with my first (and last use). They just hung them on the wall to dump on your shoes and across the floor, in the international airport terminal.

At the same Al Mukalla airport, I watched a guy argue for 20 minutes with door attendant why he couldn’t bring his goat on the plane with him. Eventually he got made and left with his goat.

Same place, I watched the pilot and co-pilot pull a ladder out of the cargo area, climb up to an engine on the 707 we were flying in 1993 to beat with a hammer a portion of the cowling that would shift during each flight. The front half of the seats in the same plane had been torn out to make cargo room for pallets of stuff brought back from Abu Dhabi or Dubai.

There were two flights a week when we started from Al Mukalla to UAE. Tuesday to Abu Dhabi, Thursday to Dubai. No time on the flights. We were to show up when the airport opened, and probably sometime that day the plane would come. My Project Manager once stood outside in the afternoon on a Thursday and watched a 707 fly by. When he inquired inside, they got on the radio with the plane. Nobody needed to get off from Aden and they wanted to hurry on to Dubai so they didn’t stop. They suggested he come back next Tuesday. It would probably stop and there would probably be an open seat. No need to change the ticket or anything; any Alyemda ticket was good for any of their flights going anywhere, any day.

And that is the two nicer cities in the Country. I only flew to San’a once, that was a scary place for a white guy. Very fundamentalist Islamic.

Villages with open sewers, no water beyond a single well were common.

Yemen wins.