Another good nights sleep and was down to the cafe to meet the driver to go to Wadi Rum. We had organised the trip with a guy at the Al-wadi restaurant - it consists of an overnight stay in a desert camp including dinner and breakfast and travel to the camp and on to Aqaba and includes a tour of Wadi Rum. I believe that this is the cheapest and definitely the easiest way to do Wadi Rum but I can't get rid of the notion that we were conned at some point along the way. The cost was 50 JD each but I know that a lot of camps charge 25 jd a night to stay there anyway so with that in mind it wasn't so bad. Martin, Aina and myself was continuing on to ... read more

Woke up in the Palace hotel in Amman that certainly did not befit its title, the previous night had a marvellous Falafel meal for approx 2 pounds it was rounded off nicely with the local tea which consists of about 8 tablespoons of sugar and a few tea leves - nice. Had a good nights sleep and was all ready for the next leg to Petra, me and Ania and Martin had arranged to go on an organised trip from Amman to Wadi Musa (the nearest town to Petra) instead of just getting a bus to take in a few sights on the way. The cost was 23 JDs (about 25 pounds sterling) on the way I made some new chums Paul from Leeds who is now an ex-pat living in Kenya and his girlfriend Maggie ... read more

Woke up in the Citadel bright and early to escape the worse of the heat to visit Palmyra. Palmyra is one of the largest set of Roman ruins that are still standing - well some of it is anyway. The city was a staging post for the caravans from Asia and Europe and as a result became very prosperous. The leader of the city died under mysterious circumstances and his wife took over - Queen Zenobia. Queen Zenobia became ever more powerful and decided that she wanted to break away from Rome and took on its forces which she lost amd Palmyra was destroyed and what is still standing is its ruins. Having visited the ruins last thing the previous night and first thing in the morning me and my new chums missed the worst of ... read more

Early start to get to the bus station when arrived though there were no buses. One of the locals advised me that the bus station had moved to near the motorway so I had to get a service taxi. On the way I am sure that the driver tried to offer me his wife to which I politefully declined - arab hospitality is great but I think that is going a bit too far. As opposed to the nearly 2 hour wait in the Beirut bus station amongst the garbage and flies my 15 minute wait in air conditioned luxury was a joy to behold. The journey was 1 and a half hours to Hama and cost just over an English pound - even got a sweet. Booked into the Riad hotel and no sooner as ... read more

Hi everybody, Just got time now to update my blog, the great thing about solo travelling is the people you meet:-) Spoke to a lovely Chinese girl on the flight to Frankfurt and a guy from Beirut on the plane from Frankfurt, even copied some of my music onto his laptop but I'm not sure he'll thank me for that. After the interminable 5 hour wait at Frankfurt airport, I was finally called for boarding one thing that struck me straight away was that there was only 2 caucasians on the flight to Beirut. In addition to myself there was a polish UN soldier, not sure why he decided to sit next to me though maybe safety in numbers. The Flight was delayed by 30 mins so after arguing with a taxi driver finally got to ... read more