Sports, cycling, travel, scams, triathlons and other blogworthy events in my life
Got up early and left Bosra castle and ran smack bang into a bus heading straight back to Damascus (and my backpack) for only one us dollar. My luck was definitely in top form but it fell back to its usual level when I boarded the bus and found it wasn’t full of swimsuit models.
I Damascus I spent the day washing cloths and body, reading sci-fi and doing the internet thing. Revitalising stuff for the inner-geek.
Explored a bit more of Damascus in the morning. Packing my daypack I headed off to the roman ruins Bosra for the night. The ruins at Bosra are quite extensive but they have a dark and moody look to them like the buildings in big cities get when too much pollution turns them grey. I know this is only because they are made from dark grey basalt stone but it still looked really grubby and dowdy to me.
On the way to Bosra I was adopted by a Syrian university student who even took me to meet his mum (not like that) and gave me home made pizza. You have got to love these Syrians.
An additional attraction at Bosra was that it was hosting the 16th international Bosra music and dance festival, which is held every two years and lasts only ten days. Each night they have two different acts from around the world. That nights performances were from china and Egypt. China performed a series of difficult and potentially very painful acrobatics, which were thoroughly entertaining and thrilled the mostly Syrian crowd. On second was Egypt who did a series of colourful traditional Egyptian dances during which most of the Syrians walked out. Either to beat the traffic or because they had seen it all before. I felt really sorry for the Gypos because their act was actually very good.
After the show I slept in a room in the Bosra castle, which was kind of cool (except for the bloody blood sucking mosquitoes).
Most surprising event of the day: a local boy ran up to me and my Syrian guide and gave us ice creams. Then he left without asking for any money. Unbelievable! If a boy did that in Egypt his dad would probably give him a sound beating before selling him.
Am leaving Amman today to head to Damascus in Syria. Before I got to Jordan I had heard that the people were genuine and friendly and apart from the occasional scammer who bumps the price a bit on the buses I have to say this is very true. The other thing I heard was that it is expensive here. This is true but I have been able to spend about the same per day as I was in Egypt by sleeping on roofs, eating cheaply and using public transport.
As much as I have enjoyed my five days in Jordan it is definitely time to leave. Every time I start to run out of things to do in one country I get stuck into the Lonely Planet for a run down on the next country and get really excited about moving on.
The best thing the Lonely Planet had to say about Syria was that the black market exchange rate for us dollars in Syria is about twenty percent better than the official government rate. Needless to say I am taking a big stack of us dollars across the border to dabble in some illegal currency trading.
On day sixty now
Money going pretty fast
Aaaaargh have to work soon
A fair bit of this email was written before the recent terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The tales of my travels seem trivial and unimportant compared to these recent events but I wrote it all and I plan to write more (no kidding) so here it is anyway. Thank you to those of you who expressed concern over my well being. For the record I think things are as safe now as they were before the attacks but I am keeping my eyes open all the same.
Wel come to my email
This is a traditional greeting from Jordanian and Syrian adults. And they are not just saying it to get you to come into their shop and buy something. Well not always anyway.
Wel come! Wel come! Wel come! Wel come! Wel come! Wel come! Wel come! Wel come! Wel come!
This is a traditional greeting from children in Jordan and Syria. Mostly they just yell it at you until they get a response. Any response with a smile will do.
The service taxi from Amman to Damascus was in a big yellow westie (you may know these people as bogans or druffs or any of a number of other aliases that they use around the globe) dream car. Now I don’t know that much about cars but fixing up this multi valve multi litre gas guzzling Buick was definitely the stuff that westie dreams are made of. The sanding, lowering, painting, tinting, polishing, supercharging and ‘banging a girl called Sharon in the back of’ alone could keep a westie off the streets and out of trouble for the best part of a decade. I reckon. I was doubly stoked because it looked like the trip to Damascus was going to be a very short one indeed. Or at least it would have been if the driver had driven anywhere near the cars potential. Clearly he was more concerned with poxy issues like the cost of fuel rather than looking cool in front of any of the other big American service taxis that sped past us on our sedate journey to the Syrian capital.
It cost SIXTY FUCKING US DOLLARS (that’s 40 pound sterling, 130 New Zealand dollars, 110 Australian dollars, 3000 Syrian pounds, need any more?) JUST TO GET INTO THE FUCKING COUNTRTY. All I can say is that it had better be pretty bloody good.
Driving into Damascus at night is like driving down an extremely low budget version of the Las Vegas strip. No I haven’t been to Vegas but my mate Simon’s been there and I have seen it on TV. Every building, pole, tree or other suitable structure has a brightly coloured light attached to it, which more often than not was flashing as well. One could say that there were more flashing lights than you could shake a stick at if it weren’t for the fact that all the sticks had flashing lights attached to them.
At the local transport terminal was offered a taxi to my hotel for a one hundred Syrian pounds. But I know better than to take the first (or any) taxi offered when you are a silly tourist arriving in a new town so I politely said “la shocker run” (no thank you in Arabic). To my utter disbelief he just smiled, said, “have one” (no worries) and walked off. He didn’t even lower his price. To be honest I was a little shocked. I’ve been through this scenario a dozen times now and it’s supposed to go like this:
Scamming taxi driver: Hello my friend where is your hotel?
Clever tourist: Oh it’s the blah blah blah hotel, but I’m ok thanks.
Scamming taxi driver: I’ll take you there for and the special tourist only rip off price of one million dingbats (for example).
Clever tourist: No thanks I’m okay, honest.
Scamming taxi driver: Okay then how about coming with me for seven hundred thousand dingbats that’s only three times what the locals pay?
Clever tourist: No really I’m fine. I think I’ll just catch that bus over there for eight dingbats.
Scamming taxi driver: (buggers off in a huff and looks for a much more stupid tourist)
Clever tourist: (smiles confidently and walks off coolly)
This new turn of events was so disconcerting that I nearly chased him down and demanded that he take my to the hotel for one hundred Syrian pounds immediately. I mean did he know something that I didn’t? Then it dawned on me that he didn’t even begin the dialogue with the traditional scammers greeting, “Hello my friend!” Now I was really worried. As you can imagine I needed to find out what the hell was going on, and fast. I walked up to the nearest shopkeeper and asked him in which direction one of the big landmarks near my hotel was. He threw me even more by offering me a lift there with him and his brothers who had just finished work and were going that way. Something was not right. In the car the three brothers didn’t even try to sell me anything and as I got out one of them even offered to show me around the next day! Clearly something is very fishy is going on in Syria and I intend to find out what it is.
As for the offer of a guided tour, I took a number, so it didn’t get awkward, but had I no intention of calling. I think I have grown too used to pottering around strange cities at my own pace with the Lonely Planet as my only guide and friend. Stop me if I start to sound too sad.
Once I was settled onto (roofing it again) a good hotel I popped out to have a quick look around the downtown area and was pleased to note that I was within a short walk of everything a backpacker could ever want. That is if I don’t mind playing a quick game of Frogger across a four lane motorway. This is mere child’s play for a Cairo veteran like myself. To make it even easier Damascus drivers hit the break instead of the horn when presented with a near collision with a pedestrian. And some have even been known to give way. Soft. During my sortie I was offered the services of female companions (hookers) on several occasions. I wonder, do I look that hard up? Or has news of my poor form on tour arrived here before me somehow? If so, how? Another riddle to be solved as I lie awake in the dark at night trying to estimate the number of mosquitoes by the volume of the noise that they make (usually loads).
Speaking of mosquitoes. All my time on top of hotels has meant that I am covered in itchy bites from bald head to toe. Literally. And I am bloody DYING for a bloody scratch. But I dare not because I will be swimming in the Dead Sea some time in the next couple of weeks and the last thing I want to have any cuts or scratches.
Took another bus up to Jerash, which are the best roman ruins I have seen in my tour so far. They even compare favourably to the ruins at Ephesus in Turkey. Hitched to Ajlun and saw another great crusader castle.
Back at the hostel it was another early night as I was in bed by ten. The early starts and the long days walking are really taking it out of me. Today at the castle I fell asleep for twenty minutes while the two twenty year old German boys ate their lunch. A passing group of Italian tourists found it very amusing apparently (revenge for me laughing at their embarrassing swimsuits at the resort in Tozeur I suspect). My nap made me feel very old and feeble until we bused home and both the Germans passed out in their seats with their heads lolling around to the motion of the bus. HA! The bloody youth today don’t even know they’re born.
Spent the day seeing some of the sights around Amman. Some Germans from the roof and I bussed down to Madaba to see some interesting churches and mosaics. I left them there and taxied to Mt Nebo where Moses is supposedly buried. They haven’t been able to find his body anywhere but I don’t think we should consider this yet another spanner thrown in the wheels of Christianity by modern science. I mean think about it. The only other character we know of who lived to the same age as Moses is Yoda and look how small he was in the end. It may just be that Moses’ remains are to damn small to find.
After that I hitched down to Kerak to see the crusader castle of Krak de Moabites. The journey took about three hours and five different vehicles. I travelled most of the way in a taxi van paid for by an old Jordanian guy (who refuse any money) and chatted to two of his sons (around 30) in the back. It turns out that the old fella has four wives and fifteen children! One of the sons described the family like this. “One wife, dead, two wife, five child, three wife, nine child, four wife, one child.” I’m guessing the first wife was probably shagged to death before the others could come along and share the burden.
The Krak was pretty spectacular although I did nearly knock myself out in one of the stairwells (and I have the scar to prove it).
Arrived in Amman today to and spent some time exploring the city. The first thing to strike me about Amman is that the cars are much nicer and newer here than in Egypt. So much so that I nearly got killed using my ears to check for cars whilst crossing the road. Where was the usual clanging, puttering and honking that I have come to associate with cars in the middle east I thought as I leapt the six feet to the curb in a single panic stricken bound.
There are also loads of very new Beamers and Mercs here, which you haven’t seen in my travels across the north of Africa. Many have German plates and rude German bumper stickers which lead the Germans I met here to speculate that Jordan might be the end port of call of a huge stolen car racket originating in Germany.
The people here are also more generous and genuinely friendly than other parts of my tour. It is not uncommon to be stopped by someone who has a genuine interest in you because you are a traveller and on a few occasions I have had local people pay for things and refuse money from me!
Are staying on the roof again in Amman and this time no mosquitoes. This is good because it saves time mucking around with a saline drip when I wake up.
Together the three of us travelled to Wadi Musa to see the magnificent sights of the third century BC Nabatean city of Petra used in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Experiencing Petra has to be the highlight of my tour so far. The massive facades of the temples etc in Petra are hundreds of feet high and are cut from the red, yellow, orange, blue, brown and white stone of the mountains surrounding the valley. The Lonely Planet says ‘if you only do one thing in Jordan then make it Petra.’ This is an understatement. We spent the entire day walking the site and we didn’t see it all. In the end I took over 70 photographs.
Spent the night on the roof of the hotel stars palace for some super cheap price. Had to drink about a litre of water in the morning to replace fluids lost to mosquitoes overnight.
The three hour ferry over the red sea to Jordan took a whole day. We arrive in Nuweiba at 7am. The ticket office opened at 9am. Tickets were purchased by 9.30am and we were ushered through to customs straight away. The ferry wasn’t supposed to leave until 12.30pm so we had to sit around for a while. Boarding the ferry was done piecemeal and we finally got away at 1.00pm the ferry across took longer than the three hours it was supposed to and then took another 30 minutes to ‘Parallel Park’ the ferry at Aquaba. Then we were let off the boat one at a time so we could all pick up our passports that they had taken upon boarding the ferry. Eight and a half hours after buying my ticket I was on Jordanian soil and the next stage of my adventure had begun.
I left the expensive resort town of Aquaba and headed to Wadi Rum on a mini bus. They were able to drop me off at an intersection 20kms short of my destination where I met some Egyptians working in Jordan. Together we hitched the rest of the way in the back of a military ambulance. I even got to play with the siren. Excellent.
At Wadi Rum I ran into a couple of excellent local guys. One is a Jordanian who does banking in Switzerland. The other is Lebanese and does IT in Beirut.
Was able to sleep on the roof in the cool night air and they actually charged me less for this if you can believe it. Bonus.
Up at 8am to sort out a visa for Jordan and finally have some success.
After that I went to the post office to post the books I bought yesterday. I could say it was a mission but it I think it would be more accurate to describe it as an experience. I had a head start because one of my roommates pointed me in the direction of the only post office in Cairo that does parcels. At the post office I quickly found the room with the table that had the people I needed to speak to. They made me fill out some forms and then they sent me to room twenty. I had some difficulty with this, as the rooms weren’t numbered. In room twenty I paid some money and was sent back to the table. Then I was sent to Mr Hassan so he can have a good look at my books to make sure that they weren’t dodgy. Then it was back to the table where I was sent to room twenty again to pay some more money. At the table once more they made me fill in some more forms and I was sent to the wrapping guy. The wrapping guy wraps my freshly inspected books with much gusto and then hits me up for a small amount of baksheesh for the show. After that it’s back to the table so they can send me to the posting desk where I fill in even more forms and pay over twenty English quid to send the books to my mums house in New Zealand. Finally I head back to the table for a sixth time to see if there is anything else I need to do and they looked at me as if to say ‘what are you doing back here again?’ The whole process took three quarters of an hour to post 2 books.
The bus ride to Nueiba was an interesting one to say the least. I jumped on the bus to find myself to be the only western traveller aboard. There were three Romanians next to me on the back seat but they didn’t speak any English so I got stuck into my novel and started my usual battle with guy in front of me who insisted on bashing my knees with the back of his seat. About 20 minutes after leaving Cairo the ‘bus waiter’ starts dishing out trays of food to everyone. I thought ‘wicked free food’ and never gave it a second thought that I was in Egypt AND that I was getting something for free. Around 4am the Waiter wakes me (not smart at the best of times) and tells me that I owe him twenty Egyptian Pounds for a cake, chips, pastry and a coke. Instantly I feel like a complete fool because I have seen the ‘give the stupid tourist something and then charge him a fortune once it’s eaten’ scam sooo many times. I mean what was I thinking free food on a seven-hour bus ride in Egypt? The price is extortionately high and worst of all the Romanians have already folded and paid twenty EP each so I am all alone. Now I’m not the sort of person who lets being in the wrong deter me so I asked the Waiter what everything costs. I started to smell a scam when he was unable to put together four prices that even came close to twenty EP and his standard of English dropped dramatically (a common scammers ploy). So much so that he is now only able to say “one cake, one pastry, one chip, one coke, twenty pounds!” I asked him repeatedly for a price list (fair enough). I also told him that I never ordered the food and that he just presented me with it so why should I pay (a much more dubious claim). My final line is that I am happy to go to the tourist police with him in Nueiba with him if he wants. He keeps repeating his lines and I keep repeating “tourist police Nueiba”. The Romanians offer sympathetic looks but I am beginning to feel really alone at this stage. Our respective volumes gradually increase and it ends with him speaking in Arabic in a loud voice (saying god knows what) for everyone to hear and with me telling him that he is a thieving bastard (I’m angry now and I figure it’s ok to swear since I an the only English speaker on the bus) and that he can go and stuff himself if he thinks I’m paying twenty EP for shit food that was forced on me. By now only my anger is keeping my resolve up as I am starting to feel kind of in the wrong. I mean what if there is no price list? What if it really does cost this much because we are on a bus? I did eat the food after all. Then the guy in front of me who had been bashing my knees got up and started a loud Arabic crusade up and down the bus. It’s pretty obvious from the Crusader’s angry tone that he is giving a huge spiel about rich foreigners coming to Egypt and treating the locals like shit. There is a lot of tension on the bus and I feel like an absolute bastard since he kind of has a point. After two minutes of this verbal barrage I crack and hold up twenty EP for the food (there’s no bloody way I am walking down the bus to deliver it). I held it in the air but the Crusader just keeps ranting up and down the bus. If I felt alone before I feet REALLY alone now and after another five minutes (it feels like an eternity) of the crusade I am ready to get up and smack the bloody Crusader’s bloody lights out. Then a boy comes up to me and asks me if I know what the Crusader is saying. I said, “Of course I don’t. I don’t speak Arabic”. The Boy goes on to tell me that the Crusader is explaining that the Waiter is ripping everybody off (although the Romanians and I are getting the worst of it by far) and that nobody should pay the Waiter anything without getting an official bus company receipt with the prices listed on it. All along I had thought that the general feeling of tension on the bus was totally focused on me and it turns out that people were mad at the Waiter. By now another Egyptian guy is having a yelling match with the Waiter and the relief I feel is enormous. As the tension lifts I realise that I am shaking and covered in sweat. About thirty minutes later the Waiter finally returns (he’s been having a few problems with the other passengers) with little white bits of paper with all of the possible food items listed next to their prices. We work out the bill for the Romanians and myself and the total is only eight pounds fifty. They get a huge refund and I finally pay up.
The next day the Crusader and the Boy keep me company through the bureaucratic ferry crossing into Jordan. When the Crusader realises that I am godless, wifeless, childless and 29 he decides that I am going to hell. Fair enough.
Egypt is an amazing country but as a tourist you will meet loads of scammers everywhere you go. Not all the locals are crooked but the small fortunes that can be made by scamming tourist attracts all of the dodgy Egyptians or Gypos as I have come to know them.
Woke late and nearly missed the finale of the tri-nations. Great game, pity about the bloody result. Still, there’s always next year.
Spent the rest of the day sorting visas (failed again) and buying two very large books for seventy English pounds. The books contain the works of Scottish artist called David Roberts who visited Egypt over 160 years ago. I know it wounds really nerdy to purchase expensive coffee table books whilst backpacking around Egypt but you have to see these books, they are amazing. The sketches are superb and they offer a window into the past so you can see what things looked like before the destructive onslaught of mass tourism. The books also have photos of the sites today as well as a description of Roberts’ journey and his diary entries. Tomorrow I have to post them to my parents in New Zealand. I hate to think what it will cost.
Spent the late hours of the day chatting with other backpackers on the rooftop of hotel Dahab. The craziest of these are three poles. They spend their time drinking Egyptian vodka like forty year old alcoholics and giggling like teenagers getting pissed for the first time. Their best story involves one of them getting arrested in Dahab for drug possession.
They had been to Dahab last year and apparently it was okay to smoke dope in the cafes. Shortly after arriving this year they spent one day knocking back a bottle of brandy between them. Then they decided to light up. As you do. Five minutes into the session the local police arrived and they were busted. One of them had the guts to take the blame for the whole mess and he was arrested. After they handcuffed him they made him pay for the taxi to the police station. At the station he was processed. Which involved finger printing him and taking a taxi to the local Kodak shop where they made him pay for the taxi and some passport photos for his arrest record. Then he was locked up without food or water, which was a bitch because he was dehydrated as hell from the brandy. He ended up drinking some red water from a disused sink to stave off the dry horrors. The next day they took him to court (and charged him for another taxi) and he got a lawyer for 200 Egyptian Pounds. The lawyer said he should say he was sick and a guy on the street sold him the drugs as medicine. He didn’t like this so the lawyer said, “Just say they weren’t your drugs.” Great advice for 200 Egyptian Pounds. At the trial the judge says to him “Are these your drugs?” After inspecting the dope he said “No.” Then he is escorted from the court so that the establishment can discuss the case. Back in his cell he asks on of the guards if he can just pay a fine or something and the guard says “Why? They are not your drugs.” This basically meant that he was free but first he had talk to a couple of other cops about the charges in Nuaeba (more taxis to pay for). Once the whole ordeal was over the poles celebrated by putting some deck chairs in the Dahab surf, drinking vodka and, you guessed it, and smoking dope.
This blog has 112,799 words in 416 posts with 397 comments with 30,995 words.
You are currently browsing the HUBBERS DOT COM BLOG weblog archives for September, 2001.
