Blogs from Jordan, Middle East - page 97

Greetings!!!! Well we finally left Luxor on an overnight 16 hour bus up the Red Sea coast, crossing the Suez canal and down the Sinai Penninsular to Sharm El Sheikh. Not exactly luxurious but hey it got us there eventually! Sharm as the locals call it is basically Las Vegas by the Red Sea - an inexplicable metropolis emerging from the surrounding desert. Although in Sharm's case once you have seen the water it is a bit more understandable why we are all there! The weather was beautiful and warm and Sharm is much less dusty than the rest of Egypt. We stayed in a cosmopolitan hotel filled with Russian mafia types with their dyed blonde girlfriends (seriously!), overweight poms and the odd kraut. We went straight into a couple of shore dives at Shark's Bay ... read more

After driving out of the desert, we could scarcely believe that we would be beach side after less than an hour on the road. Our destination was Aqaba, a town on the Red Sea, located somewhere between Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. This is where lots of Jordanian families and young people come to enjoy their holidays and weekends. It is also rapidly gaining popularity with Western visitors who come to check out the sights below water. Scuba diving and snorkelling is the big draw card with the Westerners here. I was determined not to like Aqaba but it ended up being one of my favourite destinations. On the weekends it is the strangest mix of cultures - Muslim ladies splashing about in the sea, fully covered in their hijab, men lying back in the sand ... read more

Der Tag beginnt gleich eigenartig. Ich hatte meinen Wecker auf um 5 gestellt, um pünktlich wieder am Flughafen zu sein, aber mein Handy hat heute Nacht, wohl weil es auf Jordanien eingestellt war (man kann bei den Kisten ja inzwischen die Zeitzone wählen), schon sehr korrekt auf Sommerzeit umgestellt, was ich aber erst am Flughafen gemerkt habe, wo ich dann folglich schon um 4.40 für einen 7.30 Abflug war... etwas arg früh. Positives Erlebnís auf dem Weg war, dass der Taxifahrer das METER eingestellt hat, womit ich überhaupt nicht gerechnet hatte, da man normalerweise den Preis zum Flughafen aushandeln muss. So kam ich sehr billig davon. Am Gate stand dann tatsächlich meine langerwartete Fokker 28. Eine richtig geile alte Kiste, die Royal Jordanian sonst nur für Flüge nach Bagdad nutzt (purer Pragmatismus...). Wieder hatte ich einen ... read more

Well here we are. Wadi Musa. Home to the famous ‘Lost City of Petra’ As mentioned, we found Wadi Musa to be a bit of a sad place. Compared to other parts of the country, people are pushy and not as friendly. There are two distinct parts. The lower part is where the big multinational resorts are, and the upper bit where we stayed (oh yes, we really went budget in Wadi Musa!) Tourist fatigue really seems to have set in here as the people try their hardest to get a bit of money from the thousands of tourists who make a whirlwind stop in their town before thundering off down the road to the next attraction. We have taken heaps of photos here. There are four pages of them on this blog. To see them ... read more

Dear Friends, My stay in Jordan was only a couple of days long but it was interesting and great fun! I visited Petra at length, went to Jesus' baptism site, had a quick "swim" in the Dead Sea and will be heading to Damascus tomorrow morning. The border crossing To travel from Egypt to Jordan there are two main options - either a short trip through Israel or by boat from Nuweiba in Egypt to Jordan's only port, Aqaba. Because I want to travel to other countries in the Middle East, especially Syria, the Israeli stamp on my passport could cause me some future headaches and I decided to take the 2 hour ferry trip. After a chaotic departure I arrived in Jordan in the late afternoon and, together with 6 other foreigners (3 Japanese, 2 ... read more