Originally Posted by
Sir C
I'm not sure about speaking English and playing cricket but they've made laws governing, well, everything, just to create discipline. You can't smoke in public, all schoolchildren have to have their heads shaved, you can't sell second hand goods or food in the street (imagine an African town with no street trade!) Every shop or office has guards in quasi-military uniform and they all carry AK47s. The atmosphere is really quite odd. Lovely people, mind.
I haven't been to Timbuktu. That's bandit country up there. You might want to consider somewhere safer, like Damascus or Mordor.