The New Marrakesh - Damascus

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Syria was an amazing experience for me, and I met loads of the world's most generous people I ever have in my life, and finally saw a country untouched by the western world.

On the trip to the border from Lebanon, I slept most of the way on the Syrian bus therefore the 3 hours trip went by very fast. The border crossing was pretty smooth and straight forward, everything went smooth and it just took us about 2 hours because I think they had to check who the hell we are, Hong Kong SAR perhaps is quite unfamiliar to them.

We started our day off in Damascus by visiting the biggest souk in Syria, where we wandered in from west gate and out from east gate of just a few of the many old shops, narrow streets, mosque, and dessert houses, bakery shops, and cafe, we didn't, however, wander into any of these interesting shops that line the streets of the old market except Syrian Dessert House and Hammam - Roman Bath.

In the middle of the souq, near the Great Mosque, we found this Hammam we've been looking for, (or Turkish/Roman Bath or Syrian Bath, anyway....you name it), we paid 350 Pounds (around US$8) each for the funny package and I was pointed in the direction of a hook, right opposite of the main transparent glass door, where pepople outside the door could able to see inside, which presumably was to strip off and hang my clothes on. So I stripped down all my clothes and immediately covered myself with huge towel and sat on the bench, wondering what to do next. A staff member pointed to a corner and said "SHOWER!!". I sort of stood around like an idiot, and not really knowing what to do. I thought I'd sit down and start scrubbing, but couldn't find a anyone do the scrubbing after the shower. Few minutes later, the same staff found me and point me to another corner and said "STEAM!!". I steamed myself for less than 5 minutes and went out coz I didnt like it, and finally I was asked to sit on the wet floor and my full body was finally scrubbed, cleaned and massaged by the same staff, the whole proccess took less than 10 minutes.

Damascus is a really nice city, it is alot nicer than Beirut and Amman, and doesn't seem to very busy like in Tehran, even though there are 20 million people living in the country - one-forth are populated in Damascus, and most impressed me is, Syrian people are very helpful, polite, well behaved, educated, respectful, funny, laid back and stressless. Wherever we go within the country, their people say "WELCOME TO SYRIA", it melts my heart. They are very proud to be Syrian and very proud of their country - which impressed me the most.

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Comments

[Tommy]

I'm so interested in ur story.

[Justin Ling]

Well written
Simplicity at its finest.....your write up temp me to visit Syria!