ABSTRACT
Yemen occupies the south-west of the Arabian Peninsula with a coastline along the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. High mountains offer a cooler climate and provide the country with a more abundant water supply than the rest of Arabia. In ancient times this supported the Sabaean (Sheba) civilization which grew rich on the trade in frankincense and myrrh. However, Yemen nowadays is classified by the UN as one of the world’s poorest countries. It is an example of a complex tribal society that is slowly opening up to Western investment and tourism. In this respect the kidnappings and deaths of tourists in the late 1990s and the association of Yemen with terrorism were a major setback for the fledgling tourism industry. The fascination of the country for Westerners is that it still retains the lifestyles of bygone centuries and a feeling of isolation from the rest of the world.
