I woke up feeling much better and fully rested. I had had a pretty bland diet of rice the day before and was extremely hungry. I ate a fairly large but simple breakfast and then desided to at least wander around town and get some fresh air. Maku is basically one long street (several kilometres)with shops and houses lining it and it doesn't have the opportunity to expand sideways as it runs between a canyon. This means that it is the most bizarre town I have ever been to. It must be frustrating if you live at one end of the town but your favourite barber is just down the end of the street, a mere 8 kilometres away.

One of the guys who had helped me get to the hospital yesterday, but who I hardly recognised, pulled up beside me and offered me a lift from one end of the town to the other as I looked for the only internet cafe that seemed to be open. And even when we got there, the internet wasn't working!

I decided that I was well enough to travel the 4 hours to Tabriz and arrived in the early afternoon, checking into the recommended Guesthouse Darya. While the owner, Ahmad, was friendly enough and the rooms undeniably cheap, I was a little disappointed. The rooms were as bland as you could get and the beds where probably converted hospital beds, not what I really wanted to see again given my problems yesterday! But luckily Ahmad had a "deluxe" room at about 6GBP that I checked into feeling that at least for one night I could still have relative comfort and a good night's sleep. I will move to the cheaper rooms tomorrow if I feel better.

One of the things Ahmad recommended I should do was to walk to the tourist office and speak with Nasser Khan who has to be one of the most affable and informative people I have met. Immediately tea was served and my every need and question attended to - from money changing and bus information to Iranian traditions and an invitation to breakfast the next day. He even had sound medical advice for my improving condition. I spent the rest of the afternoon in his company speaking a mixture of languages - he speaks 8 languages fluently - and drinking tea.

Of all the media and political reports one gets in the West of how dangerous and crazy Iran is, not one mentioned the biggest danger you face here - the traffic. Some horrendously high figure (more than 10,000) is given as to the number of people killed in road traffic accidents each year. And when you try to cross teh streets you can see why. Even if the green man is lit and the traffc lights are red the cars don't seem to stop. Effectively this means that you just have to walk in from of oncoming cars, stand your ground and hope that either they stop or swerve past and narrowly miss you. Alterbatively, as I prefer to do, just sandwich yourself between two Iranians and cross when they do. That way you'll have a buffer against the oncoming traffic and a human warning as to when to jump out of the way! And so it was that I negotiated my way around the city traffic trying to find a decent, cheap restaurant.