I'm originally from the UK and made a post over a month ago about how I was scared to go but now I'm back! In one piece!!

I spent most of my time in Najaf where my family live. Didn't go out much/ very far because of the heat (it hit 70°C/158°F) but I did get to experience what the day to day routine/ life is like for the Iraqi people.

I visited my grandfather's grave in the largest cemetery in the world, Wadi Al Salaam, next to the shrine of Ali Ibn Abi Talib. Muslims (well Shia Muslims at least) believe that if you are buried next to him, the angels cannot interrogate you in the grave, you will not feel fear as he will stand by you through everything, and you will have the best chance to go to Heaven.

I visited his shrine, went to Kufa where I visited his house and Muslim ibn Aqeel's shrine, went to Karbala where I visited Hussain and Abbas' shrines, and a few mosques + shopping centers like the Najaf Mall. The currency is so weak! $1 = $1165 Iraqi dinars, so at first I felt like quite the millionaire holding all these 1000د.ع notes, until I realised they'll only be enough for a couple of bottles of water and a chocolate bar.

I was pretty scared of the ISIS situation going on over there but within 3 days I'd completely forgotten all about ISIS and was just enjoying spending time with my family and going out to explore.

In Najaf, because it's a holy city, women dress very conservatively. You show your hands and your face but wear a long black cloth that goes over your head all the way down to your toes, over your normal abaya and headscarf. However the men could literally be taken out of the West, their eyebrows are done, their hair is quiffed up and styled (or goes down over their eyes in an emo hairstyle), their black jeans are so tight they look like leggings, their short sleeved pink graphic tees make them look so out of place. Even the 40y/o + men are walking around like this, it's not the minority, and they dress this way even inside the holy shrines. There are men wearing the thobes but not many, I'd say 30%. I think that was quite a shocker to me.

Baghdad looks a lot like New York or London in the way people dress, girls and guys wear what I've come to know as normal clothing.

Since it is so hot outside though, people don't go out until after evening prayers (7:20pm), when the Sun's set and it's a little cooler. It is still very hot though, we take bottles of solid ice with us when we go out and they'll be completely melted within 15 minutes.

It was so weird to mop up the floor and have it dry in 2 minutes, or wash and hang your clothes out and find them completely dry 10 minutes later. I found that mind boggiling. Speaking of washing clothes, electricity is pretty shitty so you couldn't use the washing machine whenever you wanted to.

We had 3 sources of electricity over there; the nationwide electricity, the street generator and the home generator. Usually it's supposed to switch between them every 2 hours, and the generators are too weak to power AC or washing machines, sometimes even the fridge! All we'd have is ceiling fans for 4 hours. Many days though, the nationwide electricity comes on for 10 minutes then cuts off, then 15 minutes and cuts off, and it'll be gone for hours and hours, so on those days we'd wash clothes by hand and spend all day laying almost dead underneath the ceiling fans.

The traveller's diarrhea was real. I got it within the first week, and it didn't stop (but did get explosive occasionally) until I left the country. It was like opening a tap! I had diarhhea for a whole MONTH guys. I lost like 15lbs though, which was awesome! They did have 'western' style toilets in touristy areas and fancy restaurants, and our house, but they mainly had the hole in the ground toilet. I'd prefer it if I wasn't terrified of seeing a cockroach.

They have geckos as pests! They're about as common as spiders in the UK which means I saw them quite often. Some were teeny tiny (as big as my pinky finger) and some were as long as my hand. The most common pest is ants. Little tiny ants. Usually if you sweep + mop the floor daily with disinfectant they won't be a problem, but drop one piece of fruit and it's like a freaking army comes out of nowhere! Someone dropped a piece of cantaloupe skin and I found it maybe 10 minutes later, I literally could not see the skin itself, it was completely swarmed by the little fuckers.

Despite all that, I actually really enjoyed my time in Iraq. I already miss it and might go back for this Christmas holiday if I'm free and don't have any commitments. Apparently it gets freezing cold over there in the Winter but I'd prefer to go out then, and hopefully visit more places. I loved having my family around, since I only have my parents and siblings in the UK.

There's a lot I didn't talk about because I'd be typing forever, but feel free to ask me any questions about my time over there :)