Blogs from South, Jordan, Middle East - page 49

...andthefinestmerchandisethissideoftheriverJordanonsaletodaycomeondown!!hehe! Well, actually it was Aqaba, not Aggribah, but I'm such a fan of Aladdin I couldn't pass up that opportunity. (Hi Ian!) Sooo, lets try for a shorter post today, I'm falling too far behind. After our exploits on Mt Sinai we continued to the Egyptian coast to board a hydrofoil for the '1 hour' crossing to Jordan. Well, that was accurate, it did take about 1 hour to cross. What they didn't mention is the 4 hours sitting on extremely uncomfortable wooden benches inside customs with absolutely nothing to do, the ~1 hour it took to travel 200m and get on the boat (involving loading on to and off of buses), the ridiculous amounts of arguing and gesticulation between officials, or the 45minutes we sat on the stationary boat at the other end ... read more

Our adventure for the fall of 2006 was a trip to Petra and Wadi Rum in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. From Eilat we crossed the border to Aqaba and caught a taxi to Wadi Musa. We were hosted at the Petra Gate Hostel during our stay. This hostel is really a hotel, and for a very reasonable price we were treated more as family than as customers by the staff. Unlike the hostel of the same name at Jerusalem, this hostel is highly recommendable. Petra is absolutely fantastic, a must see. The Bedouin are very friendly and happy to share information that you won't find in the tourist guides. The manager of the Petra Gate Hostel, Naser, arranged our return to Aqaba, this trip including an afternoon exploring the desert around Wadi Rum and a ... read more

There is only a very early morning bus and a mid-afternoon one going to Amman from Damascus and I missed the early morning one so I had to negotiate a taxi. I found a indian-british guy who was heading the same way so we teamed up and after an hour of waiting managed to get enough people to fill the cab. We made it quite quickly to the border where the driver greased our way through with a little bakhsheesh so we didn't have to wait for the hordes of turks that were ahead of us. Arriving in Amman I managed to get a cab right away to the bus station I wanted to take. As mentioned in my previous blog I didn't want to linger too long in Jordan, not because the country didn't interest ... read more

Here I am in Petra finally - the site of Indiana Jones fame. It all starts with an 800m ride on an old, grumpy and smelly nag to the entrance of the Siq (canyon). Then it's a leisurely stroll down the 1.2km Siq until you arrive at the most well known wonder of wonders - the Treasury. But it doesn't stop there. Further along there are countless edifices and tombs carved into the rockface. The Bedouin people used to live in the caves until they were moved out to a nearby town in recent years. I'll let the pikkies speak for themselves. Next destination was Wadi Rum, where we did a jeep safari into the Jordanian desert and camped overnight in a Bedouin tent. This was "Lawrence of Arabia" country, where he made his unexpected tactical ... read more

New blog, this time from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. I'm writing this blog from Aqaba, which is Jordan's only port city at the southernmost tip of the country. This is my last stop in Jordan, as I will shortly be leaving Jordan and entering Israel, hopefully. It still remains to be seen what the Israeli border guards will think of my Syrian visa and border stamps, but I'm hopeful they will let me in, although probably not without some sort of search. But, with regards to Jordan, I've been in the country for about 5 days. As with all the countries I've visited, a very interesting place. Compared to Syria, which I just came from, it is much more westernized. Foreign investment is widespread, and there is not as much as an aversion to being ... read more