Middle East 2009

We just crossed the border to Israel and are now in Eilat. The border crossing wasn't that bad after all, although it took around 2.5 hours and was the most detailed process I have seen so far.

Here's a quick description of the border process: First, we exited the Jordanian side normally, paying the 5EUR (5 Jordanian Dinars, which are equal to Euro) exit tax and getting our passports stamped. Upon entering the Israeli side, our passports were quickly checked and we entered the security check room where all our luggage was carefully inspected and we were interrogated about our passport stamps and travel route like we had guessed. They were extremely interested in my camera also, just playing with it and x-raying it for dozen of times... :p

All that took maybe an hour, and all the time the border guards were really polite and nice, smiling and joking so that really didn't feel like a problem. After the check we were free to continue to the passport check, while a border officer girl was suggesting some good Israeli wines to taste:)

On the passport check counter an another short interrogation of our plans and previous destinations followed, and after that we were told to sit down and wait for a while. I guess they were checking our story and googling the email addresses etc, which they asked for. That took maybe an hour, and then we got through the border. So, nothing that bad.

We jumped into a taxi, which took us to the bus station where we barely caught a bus to Jerusalem.

At 6am we jumped onto a bus, that took us down to the southern coast, to Aqaba. I guess I ended up sleeping most of the bus trip, after sleeping again for less than 4 hours during the night. The bus driver was trying to sabotage my sleep though, playing some religious speech really loudly. Morning prayer or something..

Now we finally are located next to the Red Sea, it's only 30 meters to the beach from the balcony of our hotel, so you can guess what we have been doing during the day. Snorkeling in the sea, sleeping the hottest hours of the day and then continuing snorkeling. I burnt my back slightly, but it was worth it. The coral reefs and the fishes were cool, in the totally clear and water.

This is a also the first time I have ever seen four countries from a single spot. While we are in Jordan, Egypt is only a few kilometers away on the other side of the sea, and Eilat of Israel can also be seen easily. And, just 2 kilometers from us on the same beach is the border of Saudi Arabia.

A friend of Don actually was picked up by the Saudi coast guards, while he was snorkeling in here and entered too deeply into the Saudi waters. That got him a few hours of nice interrogation. "Do you have your passport?" "I was snorkeling, does it look like I have a passport somewhere". Finally they just returned him back to the pickup point and let him swim back home..

Too bad we are still running low on time, tomorrow we will be crossing the border to Israel and move up to Jerusalem. Crossing the border might turn out to be interesting, as my passport is basically a collection of stamps of troublemaker countries, and the Israeli border officials might have a few questions about it.. Russia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, UN Mission in Kosovo, Serbia & other Balkan countries.. :P

I will add a few underwater pictures of the coral reefs and fish later btw, I have to develop the film first. Probably I'll do that when we are back in Finland.

This has been a long and exhausting day for us. We woke up early, having slept a second really short night on a row and headed to the bus station, to catch a ride to Petra in southern Jordan. The bus was one of those typical to this area, which just wait on the bus station until they get full and leave then, without any strict schedules. The bus drivers were yelling loudly on the station, advertising the bus destination while we waited half asleep on the bus for an hour or two.

The bus ride through the moonscape looking country took four hours, after which we we dropped to Wadi Musa, the small town near the historical site of Petra, one of the new seven wonders of the world. We had our heavy backpacks and we were planning of leaving Petra later in the evening towards the Red Sea beach resort of Aqaba. Don had heard a lot of good words about one of the hostels in the city, Valentine Inn. We walked up the hill to the hostel, and asked if we could leave our bags in there for a while, which they accepted. The hostel turned out to be one of the nicest looking hostels I have seen, with a nice outside terrace and really helpful staff. They were kinda sad for us being so short on time, we would only get to see Petra for a few hours, and the area was huge.

Well, there was nothing we could do about that, we are really running short of time, and would need at least a few extra days to do justice to all of the places left. So, we pretty literally ran down to the Petra visitors center, bought our tickets and took a horse carriage ride on the gate figuring it would be the fastest way to get into the actual city through the two kilometers long stone-carved pathway leading there. It was, in just 5 minutes we were standing in front of the Petra Treasury, the first actual building of the area.

From there we started walking through the site, admiring the huge buildings once carved into the mountains. Petra is an entire ancient city, spreaded on a wide area and having hundreds if not thousands of buildings and caves carved in the stone. It's impossible to describe the place in words, just go through the pictures below to get an idea how unbelievable the place is.

There was also a geocache in Petra, located on the top of a high hill which we of course wanted to check out. It was quite a climb up the steep hill and some ancient stairs, but eventually we got to the top and found the cache quite easily in one of the caves there. The view from the top was breathtaking, as we could literally see all of the city around and below us.

After walking back to the Treasury and up the pathway back to the city, we felt that we actually ended up having enough time to go through most of the site. Having more time to pay attention on details and explore the caves would have been lovely, but there was not much we could have done about. The entire walk was probably around ten kilometers in just two or three hours including the mountain climbing, so now we are slightly exhausted, totally covered by dust and just laying on the terrace of the hostel enjoying a beer or two.

Yes, we finally stayed in the hostel then, as they would have a bus leaving to Aqaba in the early morning and nothing going there in the evening except expensive taxis. We got lucky, and they had just two free beds for us, for mere 5 euros per person.

Tomorrow we will depart towards Aqaba around 6.30 in the morning, and will be spending the entire day just snorkling in the Red Sea, enjoying the beatiful coral reefs and one of our last days in here.

It's funny how everyone around us seems to think it is unhumanly hot in Petra. We are actually finding the 35-40C daytime weather perfect, and now during the evening the temperature is probably around 26-28C, being as good as weather can get. After the scorching 48C temperature of Iraq and a few other really hot places we have been in, we have got used to the heat and returning back to the northern Europe will be a nightmare. We will probably be wearing sweaters in the "heat" of Finland and shivering :)

As a side note, it has been an interesting cultural shock returning to Jordan from the party city Beirut. Jordan is once again much closer to the normal Middle Eastern culture and look, with no much skyscrapers, beer drinking and multi-million cars. It's too bad we are really cutting our visit in Jordan short, as there probably would be a million things to see. Of Amman I couldn't even get a lot of good pictures as we had no time to wander around the city. To put it in words, Amman is a way more modern looking city than for example Damascus, but it still clearly is a desert city in the Middle East style, not a Mediterranean place like Beirut which resembled more for example Greek cities and lifestyle.

Sometimes it's funny how small the world can be. We met the British guy Abdul in Palmyra, then again randomly in a netcafe in Damascus and when I walked to the lobby of our hotel in Beirut, guess who was sitting there.. Middle East isn't a THAT small place.

Well, we also kept randomly meeting the Danish people, Cecilia and Magnus in random places in Damascus, and today when we entered our hotel in Amman Cecilia was there sitting in the lobby and Magnus was on the way to Amman also.. Sometimes the world just is a small place :P

We went to have a dinner with them on a roof restaurant a few minutes walk away from our hotel.. Seems like our pick of restaurant wasn't exactly a perfect one. The place itself was nice, with great views over Amman, but the service was unbelievably slow and unreliable. I think I ordered a coke 5 times before I finally got it, and Magnus waited for his "coming in 5 minutes" pizza for over an hour.. Well, can't always win :)

Back in the hotel again after having a beer or two in another roof bar, and tomorrow we should be leaving Amman quite early for Petra and Aqaba. In Aqaba we will probably finally get to swim in a proper sea, as the hotel we will be using will have their own beach. It's on Red Sea, so there are some cool coral reefs etc :)

Hmh. That was a disturbing experience. We took a taxi to the Dead Sea, into one of the spa resorts built on the shoreline of the sea, which is the lowest point on the earth at 400m below sea level. The water of the sea is extremely salty, basically making any life impossible.

The first thing we noticed going to swim was the temperature of the water, and how strange the water felt. It was probably well over 30 degrees, and not really feeling like water, more like liquid soap or something like that. The water was very thick and "slippery-feeling", also leaving your skin totally covered with salt. Just a few seconds more, and we found all the scratches and cuts in our bodies, even the small ones impossible to even see, as the salt made them hurt quite a bit. And, as the third thing we noticed diving there would be totally impossible. As the water is that salty, you just float without any chance of being able to dive.

We spent a hour or two floating around in the sea, rinsing the salt away in a shower and a swimming pool and returning to the sea again. The experience was.. a nice one to have. The behavior of the water felt totally unnatural and odd. By the way, the sea is surprisingly small. On a map it was looking like it would be way bigger, but Israel on the other side of the sea could easily be seen just a few kilometers away and even my cellphone roamed into the GSM network of an Israeli operator.

Back in the hotel now, going to have a dinner somewhere and maybe a beer, and then off to bed. Last night we didn't sleep that much anyway.. Note: Video clip coming later..

3 hours of sleep, and we crawled to the airport to catch our flight to Amman. We bought the tickets on the airport, as we didnt have booked them beforehand. There was plenty of free seats in the aircraft, so that didnt cause any problems except my new sepa-type credit card not working again.. That happens once in a while, and I had a working backup card. :p

Not much to complain about the flight or the airline, if not counting the 165 USD price. The flight time was only 45 minutes, and MEA was using a brand new Airbus 320 aircraft and even offered a breakfast on the flight.

The Amman airport was surprisingly far from the city, and it actually took longer to reach the hotel than to fly there from Beirut :)

The weather in Amman is really different from Beirut. The humidity is gone, and the air is really dry, temperature being around 30 degrees. Really nice.

Ok, this didn't go so well. Don wasn't feeling like heading towards Syria at the morning either, so we both just slept the entire day :P

Slightly hangoverish we really didn't want to start the long overland journey to Amman through Syria, so we called Middle East Airways. They had a flight to Amman in the afternoon today, which unfortunately was fully booked already. But, the flight at tomorrow morning would have plenty of free seats, so we depart towards Amman at 08.45 tomorrow :)

We slept for a while in the hotel, and headed out to the metal bar. They actually did have a quite of a party going there. A lot of local people partying, and they even seemed to like Fintroll and some other Finnish bands played from Don's mp3 player :)

The rock place closed at some point, and it was time to go to sleep. Don was a bit tired, and was actually feeling to go to bed. Well, our bartender gave us a ride towars the hotel, and Don hopped off for bed. I wasn't feeling like going to bed, I was more interested to see a legendary Beirut nightclub, the B0180, and J.P dropped me off the car near the place

Obviously the place was totally crowded, and I basically had no chance to get in. There were a few security guards, having assault rifles with them like the local habits seem to require, and they were telling me to try again tomorrow.

As we are leaving Beirut tomorrow, I was not able to do that. So, I just walked to the gate, gently touched the elbow of a security guard, carefully hiding a 20 dollar note in my hand and showing it to him. In a second, the note changed owner, and I was clear to go in to maybe one of the hottest night clubs in the world. That actually was the first time ever for me to have to bribe my way into a night club..

The B018 night club at that time was outdoors. They were playing pretty good techno music, with all the rich and famous people of Beirut dancing for it. I got to have a beer before the outdoor area of the night club closed, and at that point I decided I had nothing to lose as the time already was like 6am, so I just headed downstairs, to the indoor area of the night club.

A beer or two more, and when the night club started to close, I took a taxi home. Bedtime now :)

In a few hours we should be heading towards the Syrian border and Amman.. I guess I'll just let Don take off before me as he has to wait for his visa on the border, I'll follow after him when I wake up and we will meet in Amman, Jordan...

Didn't find a reasonably priced flight then, so we are going to Jordan overland tomorrow. The cheapest airline would have been MEA ( Middle East Airways ) at 165 USD per person, which we found a bit too high. Well, can't always win, we should have booked the flight beforehand. The bus ride to Amman tomorrow will be long and annoying, not to mention the borders, but maybe still not worth wasting additional 100 USD per person..

Otherwise we didn't do too much today. Just walked around the downtown a bit, searching for the airline offices.. It's Friday, so I guess we could go out a bit later, there should be a decent party in that metal bar today :)

Having rested in the hotel for a while, unfortunately without AC in our room anymore, we dragged our asses one floor down to the lobby room of the hotel, and met a Swiss guy in there. A few beers, and we were already heading out of the hotel to the city.. :)

We walked down to the metal bar we had been earlier, which not so surprisingly was totally empty once again. The bartender J.P was just about to finish his work, so together we left the place and took a ride on his car to a restaurant nearby for some food and chatting.

Back in the hotel now, this exactly wasn't a wild night but we didn't even expect it to be. In fact, we were both pretty tired and not really feeling like going partying or anything like that today. Tomorrow it is Friday, and that might be a different story..

Our next destination will be Jordan, and we are scheduled to leave there on Saturday. Going there overland would be a major pain in the ass, as Don would need to get an another Syrian visa on the border and wait for another 5-6 hours there, so we have been playing around with an idea of taking a flight to Amman, Jordan from here. It's only 40 minutes by plane.. Tomorrow we should get some more information on the flight prices etc, but if we get a flight for around $100 it is definitely worth doing as all the buses, taxis, border crossing etc would cost about the same, not to mention the time and annoyance..

I just have to write down a couple of quotes heard from the locals that really sum up pretty much everything about Lebanon:

"Talking Lebanese means mixing Arabic, French and English"

"We eat, we live politics in here. We still have fights, every day, everywhere"

"Welcome Lebanon"