In breaking news, Becka and I finally did Krak! After spending two consecutive weekends in Damascus, I finally made it to Krak des Chavaliers, or Quala’at al-Hosn, a place which I had planned to visit on about 5 separate occasions before various other things intervened. The last two weeks have been spent in the city, as last weekend I had an oral presentation on Sunday about globalisation and the mixing of cultures, and so spent a depressing number of hours writing my 10 minute speech, as my rate of writing in Arabic is about 1 minute per hour. On the Friday [View Full Entry]

---

---

After all the reports I’d heard about Aleppo, most of which were more negative than positive, or at best boiled down to the phrase ‘interesting, not beautiful’, I was not expecting to want to spend a lot of time exploring the city, however I was pleasantly surprised to find Aleppo both interesting and beautiful, and the two days we spent there left me wanting more, and intending to return for a weekend whenever we find the time. Our friend Sam arrived in Aleppo at the same time as us, so on our arrival into the out of town bus station late [View Full Entry]

---

---

After living in Syria for over six weeks we finally got round to exploring some more of the country in our holidays last week, when Becka, Everitte and I set off all alone to travel to Palmyra and up the Euphrates to Aleppo. We had had rather a late night the evening before our departure due to meeting up with a couple of English guys we met in Lattakia who turned out to be great company and one of whom, James, worked for a human rights organisation in Serbia and was full of useful information and fascinating stories. We met up [View Full Entry]

---

---

Since getting back from Jordan three weeks ago I have been too busy to blog, which presents a dilemma, because it of course means that I have an awful lot to blog about, so will have to try and resist the unnecessary level of detail I usually feel the need to include, and go for a lovely brief overview. We arrived back in Damascus after our week in Jordan on Saturday night and on Monday evening our friend Ali, a lovely half-Arab, half-Pakistani guy from SOAS, who is in the same class as Becka and I, invited us to go with [View Full Entry]

---

---

Getting to Wadi Mujib turned out to be something that should really be attempted with the freedom of a hire car, a fact which we hadn’t realised would be the case when we decided to go from Wadi Rum, rather than heading all the way up to Amman and back down again. After our night in the desert we ended up sleeping most of the bus trip back to Petra, where we arrived to find a taxi driver who said he’d drive us to Wadi Mujib for 80JD! We politely refused and told him we couldn’t afford it, but we were [View Full Entry]

---

---

We enjoyed our first and only good night’s sleep in Jordan at our final hotel in Petra, Hotel Sharah Mountain, and didn’t end up checking out til after 11am, largely due to the fact that they guys take twice as long to get ready in the mornings as me and Becka do. We spent about 15 minutes wandering around Wadi Musa trying to find anything that wasn’t biscuits or crisps to eat for breakfast. One of the great benefits of Syria having been a French mandate is that they have learnt the art of pastries, meaning it is always possible to [View Full Entry]

---

---

Our second day in Jordan was equally as eventful, if such a thing is possible, although the morning began rather badly, with our fancy three star hotel informing us we had to leave as they were fully booked, which we had a sneaking suspicion was not strictly (or at all) true. We took turns in the cold shower and then went down to reception where I asked if we could use the internet while we waited for Everitte to arrive from Amman to which the manager replied ‘It costs 3JD per half an hour’, which was not only not an answer [View Full Entry]

---

---

My first impression of Wadi Musa, the town nearest to the ancient Nabatean city of Petra, was of a town built for tourists, with the slightly depressed feeling one gets in British seaside towns in winter, when the main reason for the existence of the town is in short supply. Becka, Emlyn and I set off from Damascus on Monday morning and did the 6 hour bus trip across the Jordanian border to Amman, followed by the three hour bus ride to Petra in one long, long day. We arrived in Wadi Musa at around 7 in the evening after our [View Full Entry]

---

---

Yesterday Becka, Emlyn, Everitte, another Edinburgh student from Nashville, and I all went to Bosra for the day to see the old city and the Roman amphitheatre, which is apparently one of the best preserved in the world. The Lonely Planet called it ‘an easy day trip’, but as always it didn’t turn out quite as planned, and we ended up having a bit of an adventure both ways. On the way out, instead of catching the bus for 60 SYP and booking a return bus at the same time we got bundled onto a bus we were told was going [View Full Entry]

---

---

Classes at the University of Damascus started yesterday… and I have certainly learned at least one valuable lesson already. Children, listen closely. Do not make jokes about how funny it would be if you guessed all the right answers on a test and got put in a very advanced class, and certainly do not follow that up by saying you don’t mind what level you are in as long as you’re not the only one. On the bus ride into the university yesterday morning various Edinburgh students were rehashing the test, and of all the question they mentioned I hadn’t got [View Full Entry]

---

---