Jordan – a gem in the Middle East. Also Jordan pics.
Jordan pics are up.
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After a dispirited stay in Egypt, we pronounced the country a lost cause and decided to cut our losses and leave earlier than planned. Our stay in Egypt ended up being just 8 days instead of 12-14 that was planned. As I have “passionately” written before, even the airport people in Cairo annoyed us. So it was with much skepticism that we arrived in Amman, the capital of Jordan. After all, it’s just the next country over. We were already contemplating our next destination should we also dislike Jordan. Greece was at the top of the list.
We let out a big sigh of relief when we saw not one taxi tout at the arrival terminal. Rather, a cheerful man holding a smart-looking sign with my name printed on it was looking straight at me. He was the car rental agent. We quickly handled the paperwork, I bought a Jordan SIM card for my phone, and Angela and I were on our way. Not a bad first impression.
Over the next 9 days, we grew to like Jordan more and more. Unlike Egypt, the Jordanian people are nice, friendly, and understand that their country needs tourism revenue and so they treat visitors well. The culture to be kind to visitors must have initiated and enforced from the top, evidenced by the politeness of the soldiers at every military checkpoint (and there are many all over the country). Upon examining our passports, the machine-gun-carrying soldier always says “Welcome to Jordan” with a smile. The municipal police officers may not speak much English, but all were eager to help. On one late rainy night, Angela and I were about to jay-walk a street to find dinner. An oncoming police car stopped, flashed its lights, and signaled us to cross. After practicing advanced frogging and “every one for themselves” for 8 days in Egypt, we were so taken aback at that instant that we failed to react for a few seconds.
Odeh, the animated and funny hotel owner in Madaba, where we spent 4 nights, assured us that the police take every criminal offense committed on foreigners very seriously. He told us that the police chief of Madaba once showed up at his hotel to apologize to a guest after her purse was snatched by a teenager whom Odeh caught after chasing him down the block. He said 5 police cars showed up and as each officer arrived at the scene, they smacked the teenager senseless once they found out what he did.
Driving is a breeze in Jordan. Road signs are in both Arabic and English. Radar enforcements are seen almost every 10 or so miles. That means crazy drivers are rare. With a rental car, we were able to come and go as we please. And we could stock up on water and snacks in the trunk. Life is good again.
We visited a few remote biblical sites that were quite fascinating for me as a Christian. Mount Nebo – where Moses first saw Canaan (he never set foot in it, however) after wandering in the desert for 40 years with the Israeli. The Jordan River – where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. Machearus – where the same John the Baptist was imprisoned and beheaded by King Herod, who, upon seeing Salome’s seductive dance, granted her wish to have John’s head served on a platter.
It was sunset time when we got to Machearus, and we were the only 2 people there. After walking uphill on a path that winds its way to the top, where King Herod’s hilltop palace once stood, and seeing the bone-dry landscape from horizon to horizon, it was apparent that country lines in this region are just a recent human invention that don’t mean much in the context of history.
One of the highlights of visiting this area was swimming in the Dead Sea, if you can call that swimming. Normal sea water has a 3% salt content but Dead Sea water has a whopping 30%. With such high buoyancy, not only is it impossible to sink, it is impossible to swim, because you float so high on the water that most of your legs are above water. You can try swimming but you will just end up splashing a lot of water on the surface and eventually some will get into your eyes and burn them like hell. It was a little colder than we’d like when we were there, but that didn’t stop Angela from having a grand time flipping around. As for me, I couldn’t resist but pose a cliché photo of me pretending to read a book while floating on the water.
After a few days in central Jordan, we made our way south to Petra, the no.1 attraction of Jordan. Petra was a bustling town around the time of Christ and the people of Petra were apparently filthy rich and influential. But mysteriously, they disappeared around the 2nd century AD. According to archaeologists, what you see in Petra today may very well be just a scratch on the surface. Some say 90% of the city may still be lying underground.
We arrived at the gate by 7AM to avoid the crowd, and spent the day hiking all over the hills of Petra until we were hopelessly exhausted. From the center of Petra to the entrance gate was 1 km long, with a slight incline. According to our guide book, it is equivalent to a 43-storey climb. You don’t feel it coming down, but going up is brutal, especially after a full day visit. In the end, we hired a horse carriage to take us up.
After Petra, we spent 3 days and 2 nights in the Wadi Rum desert, where Lawrence of Arabia once lived. Wadi Rum lies in southern Jordan, bordering Saudi Arabia. It is not a sea of sand dunes like what one would imagine about a desert. Rather, it has plenty of rocky and colorful hills all around, providing endless opportunities for the child-at-heart Angela and me to climb, leap, and bounce around. We signed up for a private excursion with a desert safari company, which provided us with a guide who took us around on a beat-up but charismatic Toyota Landcruiser. We drove around the desert and hiked plenty each day. At night we sat around a fire, drinking Bedouin tea (which is just tea boiled with A LOT of sugar) and eating the sumptuous meal prepared by the Bedouin cook. Before going to bed, Angela and I liked to walk away from the tent into pitch darkness with our cheap little flashlights and a blanket. From there we would lie down on the sand and admire the amazingly starry sky. In the morning, we would wake up early to catch the sunrise. With the guide still sleeping and no Bedouin music playing, it gets so absolutely quiet that your ears start hearing a high pitch buzzing sound.
On day 3, we finished our visit to the desert with a 4-hour camel ride. Camels are funny animals. They fart a lot, but they are tough and obedient until they see something green, in which case they would steer themselves uncontrollably towards it. Camel riding is fun, but probably more suited for female, who lacks a certain body part that will most likely disagree with the saddle after a while.
The desert safari ended our Jordan visit on a high note. After that, we drove back to Amman, where we watched Avatar on its opening day and ate at Applebee’s. From Amman, we flew back to Hong Kong to spend the holidays with my family.
