Aleppo

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As I think I've said before, Syria is far underrated by westerners. In Aleppo we found lovely, welcoming people with ingrained hospitality as well as beautiful architecture and great culture in general.

Starting the day with big fresh juices and cheesy toaties did help the good mood I admit - not our usual boiled eggs, white bread and jam and cucumber that we have been coping with through the Middle East. I don't think I'll ever want to eat boiled eggs or pita bread again... Add those to the overeaten foods list along with pot noodles from China!

Our hostel was a character in itself, stone walls and arches, and my Kiwi roomie Tania and I managed to get a lovely romantic room with mood lighting and an old fireplace. Kind of wasted on us, but funny none the less.

We spent several fascinating hours wandering through the Aleppo souk. It's actually a world heritage site itself, but is still a living breathing market, jam packed with locals and the odd tourist. There are sweet stalls and pastry shops to make your mouth water, butcheries that make you want to turn vegetarian and dazzling arrays of gold, scarves, jewellery and every possible item a Syrian housewife could ever want.

A few of our group eschewed the official tour and made our own way through, which paid off as not far in we made friends with a scarf/pashmina vendor named Aladdin (really - I checked his passport!) who ran the the shop with his camp brother and horny cousin - yes, really. Aladdin had become an Australian citizen and lived in Sydney quite a bit of the time. They were a great bunch and we spent a few hours just yakking and drinking tea with them. No pressure to buy, they are just genuinely nice people. After walking through the market some more, we went back and bought pashminas, sheesha's and hung out again, watched the gay brother freak out some of our guy friends (he's very forward) and they even bought us lunch, for which I made the mistake of offering to pay, apparently that's an insult. Oops.

Having been marketed out, it was off to the Turkish bath for the ladies of our troupe. And let me tell you, that was an experience! You will note I have no photos of that, due to the fact that nudity was compulsory. We certainly got to know each other much better after a couple of hours of being scrubbed, sauna'd, washed and sliding round marble floors naked together. And guys, don't get any ideas, it wasn't sexy, just extremely funny and slightly cringe-worthy!

When walking through the souk earlier, there was a large party of singing males who were celebrating the wedding of one of them the day before - as we were told, he had 'broken his virginity' and this was celebrated the next day. Like a stag party in reverse. The bride had been taken offf by her friends and female relatives to be bathed and party themselves - they were in the same bath as us. Loads of singing, dancing and even eating lunch in the bath house. We were invited to join in, such nice friendly people! I avoided dancing around on the slippery floor, but it was great entertainment to take our minds off the beating we had taken from the two buddha-like Syrian ladies, who we are sure moonlighted in S&M houses when they weren't beating innocent tourists in bath houses. In the absence of names, we dubbed them both Madame Lash. Scary women!

And for dinner we had another obligatory banquet of course, with beautiful food - forget the mains, I could grow fat and happy just on the bread and many types of dips that meals start with here. Mmmm...

Unfortunately my scarf-buying for various female relations meant that my pack is now bulging and packing is a long exercise. But what a great experience of a country! Forget the hype and any axis of evil comments you hear, Syria is a lovely, lovely place with lovely, lovely people. And great sugar coated almonds!

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