Sojourn a journey through life

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum is a protected desert mountain area in southern Jordan. A great place to hang out with Bedouin people, do some rock climbing, scrambling, hiking and 4×4ing out in the desert. The sand changes color with the reflection of the sun, and we had an absolutely fantastic and amazing time here. Arriving after a short bus ride (1 hour or so) from Petra, we met the Bedouin guy who I booked the trip with – Attayak Aouda. After discussing our itinerary with him, he sent for our guide, Mohammed – and we were off for a day and night in the desert.

Our first stop of the day (around 9am) was at the base of Jebel Burdah, one of the larger mountains in the area. Carly and I wanted to scramble up to Burdah Arch which was a fantastic 3 hour scramble up and down, with some great photos at the top. It is amazingly high once you reach the arch, and was a really fun climb up the mountain.

Following our hike, Mohammed (who was driving an absolutely ancient, but awesome, Toyota Land Cruiser) found us a place in the shade and cooked us some yummy lunch and sweet, delicious Bedouin tea over an open fire. After that it was an afternoon siesta in the shade for a few hours. Afternoon naps are awesome. After the nap we had more tea. Tea was a regular occurrence in the desert, and we drank our fair share (Dan might’ve drank 2-3 times his fair share).

Following our afternoon siesta, our afternoon adventure began with a flat tire! Mohammed muttered something about 90 jeeps in the desert and no one having a jack. He didn’t seem bothered, and I grew more impressed by the minute. He stacked up some rocks and drove the flat tire up onto the pile. Then he created a second pile of rocks near to the front suspension, and drove the jeep right up onto the pile of rocks, where he happily changed the tire in a flash, and we were off.

We gathered some firewood to use for the evening fire.

After a bit of touring around the desert, we stopped at a Bedouin tent for more tea in the desert. Carly and the boys (there were 4 Bedouin men and myself). The tea was fantastic, again.

After our visit here, we drove off to where we would be setting up camp for the night. Mohammed began to prepare dinner and sent us off up the hill to watch the sunset.

After sunset it was time for us to start messing with the tripod and some long exposure shots with the new camera. Some of these turned out not too shabby at all. Neither of us had ever seen a night sky as bright or starlit as the sky in Wadi Rum – it was completely amazing.

Mohammed prepared more tea and an absolutely amazing dinner of pita, chicken, tomatoes, potatoes, onion, garlic all fantastically cooked. We opted to sleep in the tent instead of under the stars as it was quite cool and windy at night.

We absolutely loved our time in Wadi Rum, and highly recommend it to anyone who might be traveling to Jordan.

The next morning, we were off again and caught a cab ride with Omar the Taxi Driver down to Aqaba where he brought us to the Jordan-Israel border. Carly and I crossed into Eilat where we crashed for one night before heading up to Jerusalem.

But I’ll leave the Israel entries for themselves. We’re already working on some blog entry titles, probably starting with something like “Miserable Israel” (in English 12 class, they’d call that foreshadowing).

Send Money!

We are true budget backpackers now! Still many weeks left to survive and sustain. Here is the inside scoop (or half scoop) into our meals for a day.

lunch – or afternoon tea if you will

dinner with dessert even! Whoot – a treat!

Of course this is all just a Wintschel Wisecrack! Even within our budget we are of course, enjoying some delicious cuisine! Please don’t send money. Direct deposits are more practical.

Dead Sea

Yesterday, we took a day trip from Jerusalem that hit up a bunch of sites in the vicinity including Qumran (where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls), Masada, Jericho and the Dead Sea itself. Temperature soared to 50 degrees Celsius – and was a heat quite unlike anything we’ve experienced. It felt like your skin was being melted off – not unlike being in an oven, I suppose.

Floating on the Dead Sea was a fantastic experience. I don’t think that we could quite describe how bizarre the feeling is – you need to experience it for yourself. It’s actually impossible to sink yourself. Once you reach a deep enough point, and try to stand up, you can’t. The water just lifts you up off the bottom and you’re floating. Carly was cursing that she’d just shaved her legs the night before. Ouch.

Common practice is to cover your body with the mud from the sea, apparently it has Wonderful Healing Powers™. Our guide told us that we’re not supposed to be in the water for any more than 30 minutes, and you need to rinse off as soon as possible once you get out. If you start to dry off, you can actually see the salt begin to crystalize on your skin.

View of the Dead Sea from the top of Masada

Carly doing her float thing

Dan takin’ it easy

Strange muddy people

These entries are going to be out of order, but we want to start putting these things up. We still need to blog about our night in the Desert in Wadi Rum in Jordan. It’s coming soon, we promise. We’re off to Tel Aviv today, with any luck we’ll be there in a couple hours.

Petra, Jordan

Following our run down the King’s Highway, we spent three nights in Petra at the Petra Gate Hotel. This place is run by a man named Naser – and in my opinion, you’d spend your money well to come to Jordan just to hang out with him at his hotel. We arrived in Petra on a Thursday evening around 5pm, which meant we were lucky enough to be there one of the two days of the week when they run a “Petra By Night” tour that runs 12JD per person (about $18CAD). We hadn’t been to Petra in the day time yet, so we started our experience in the evening.

Naser drove us to the Visitor Center where we waited for the tour to begin. There were too many people (in my opinion) unfortunately, but it was still a fantastic experience. From the visitor center, there is a walk down a road for about 15 minutes or so before you arrive at the entrance of the Siq (the Siq is the narrow canyon walkway that you walk down in order to arrive at the Treasury – which is the building that was made famous in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). I don’t recall the exact distance from the Visitor Center to the Treasury, but I’m guessing it’s a solid 2Km or so.

Coming out of the Siq for the first time, in the dark – arriving at the Treasury is an experience in itself. For the night tour they basically light about 1500 candles which run the length of the Siq and the entire walkway to the Treasury, and also hundreds of candles out in front of the treasury. A bedouin flute player plays a flute from within the Treasury – with amazing echoes throughout the canyon – and we’re served tea.

The site of the Treasury is amazing. It is comparable in it’s sheer size and grandeur to something you’d expect to see at Angkor Wat. It is so grand, that as I stared at it, I almost couldn’t believe it was real – even as I brushed my hands on the pillars, and stared at it with my own eyes. To believe that that Nabataeans had hewn this structure out of the solid rock into the side of the mountain is amazingly unbelievable – even as you stand in front of it. For the uninformed, Petra was the capital city of the Nabataeans (again – for your history lesson, please refer to Wikipedia).

I lugged the tripod along in order to attempt some 1/2 decent long exposure shots, but it was tough with all the people using flashes. Unfortunately, I don’t have those shots on the computer right now, and I’m too lazy to go upstairs to get them off an external drive, so you’re going to be stuck with the daytime shots.

On our first “day” in Petra – Carly and I walked the Siq and ate lunch at the Treasury, it was a yummy packed lunch that we got from the hotel. After that we made a hike up to the High Place of Sacrifice which was amazing and a wee bit creepy at the same time. The views from the top of the mountain are stunning. I have no idea how it’s possible, but at the top on the High Place we met a Bedouin boy (about 6 years old) who rode his donkey all the way to the top. Now, you’d have to actually see this to believe it, because I still have no idea how in the name of all things Holy a donkey made it up there, but I watched him ride down, and I was thankful that we declined his offer for a ride down on the donkey (who, incidentally, was named “Michael Jackson”). At one point the boy asked Carly if we were “together” or “married”… she told him we were, and he said “Oh. You have nice husband.”.

Heading down the back of the mountain we bumped into a Bedouin lady who was almost as old as time itself. She stopped us as she fumbled to pull a money pouch from her clothing, and kept trying to hand me a US$5 bill. It took me a while to figure out that she was trying to get me to convert it for her into Jordanian Dinar, but I played my role as the money changer, and we swapped some cash.

Ok – enough talking, time for some pictures. I’ll annotate them minimally as we go through them.

The end of the Siq, right before you come into full view of the Treasury.

The Treasury.

The Treasury.

Dumb tourists standing in front of the Treasury.

Me, a Bedouin boy and a donkey named Michael Jackson at the High Place of Sacrifice.

Our second day in Petra we followed more of Naser’s great advice, and just before entering the Siq, we veered off to the right, where there is a narrower Siq that very few tourists enter. I’m pretty sure this is aided by the large sign that said something like: “Warning, venturing past this point without a guide is very dangerous”. He told us to ignore the sign and go anyways. We were glad we did. It took us about an hour or so to walk through this narrow tunnel, with stunning sites along the way. The whole time we ran into only one other person. During the rainy season we were told that this whole area floods, diverting water away from the main Siq, but we were there in dry season.

Once we were through this Siq, we ventured off to the left where we made our way to the Monastery. The Monastery is of similar design to the Treasury, except MUCH larger. It’s also at the top of a huge climb of around 800 steps up the side of a mountain. Carly and I did so much walking in the course of our three days in Petra that our legs were completely exhausted. After our climb down from the monastery, Carly and I opted to pay for a camel ride back to the Treasury. We wanted to try a camel ride at some point, and we were exhausted, so this seemed a good of time as any. For the record – camel rides suck. If you’re male, and you ever wish to have children, I highly recommend NEVER getting on a camel. Ever.

A random camel.

Part of the stairway up to the Monastery.

The Monastery (note the size of the people in the doorway).

Carly on a camel.

A random tree.

The theater.

At the place we were staying we met a couple of great guys (one from New York and one from Pennsylvania). The guy from New York’s parents were American diplomats who had been living in Jerusalem for three years, so we ended up meeting up with them in Jerusalem (yesterday and earlier today, actually) to hang out and see some sites.

We enjoyed our afternoons and evenings at the Petra Gate Hotel thoroughly. Smoking a water pipe with Eric and Michael, playing backgammon with Naser and random taxi drivers who would stop by, getting Arabic number lessons playing with dice from said taxi drivers, and just chilling out with the local folks who were thrilled to sit down outside Naser’s hotel and hang out to have a conversation. This was an absolutely amazing time – I’d go back to Jordan in a heartbeat.

Oh! Time for me to run. Shabbat (Sabbath) is beginning and Carly and I need to run down to the Western Wall!

The King’s Highway

I don’t really have time to write about the King’s Highway – but you can read about it here. It was basically a vitally important ancient trade route stretching through modern-day Jordan from Egypt to around Damascus. Along the route are all sorts of famous sites, notably Mount Nebo (where Moses saw the promised land before dying), Madaba, Karak and Shobak Castles and Petra. The desert scenery, winding roads and huge gorges are all a part of the amazing ride down to Petra where we spent our next three nights.

The ride down from Amman to Petra with all the stops was about 9 hours or so. We left Amman around 8am and arrived in Petra around 5pm. Petra – now that’s a story!

Amman, Jordan

Our first stop on our Journey Home was Amman, Jordan’s capital. Arriving here after a 7 hour stopover in Doha, Qatar was a great experience. Amman is a city that looks like it grew out of the rock of the desert as it sprawls from hill to rolling hill. Friendly Jordanians and Palestinians on every street, some shaking hands, almost all with a greeting of “Welcome! You are welcome to Jordan any time!”. Carly and I wandered the streets here for the afternoon, and found ourselves attached to one of the many fresh juice stalls where they will squeeze fresh orange, carrot, banana, lemon or random other juices for you on the spot for a meager 750 fils (around $1.10 CAD).

The fresh spices and coffee shops are equally amazing in their site and scent. If we weren’t traveling for another 2 months I would’ve piled the fresh spices into the suitcase for a ride back to Canada.

The Roman Theater was the neatest piece of architecture (in my opinion) that the city had to offer. Carly and I climbed up to the area of the city known as the Citadel, but I didn’t find it nearly as interesting. That said, everything I see these days has to be compared to Angkor Wat – and not much can compare.

Carly had her eyes open for flowers – she always finds great macro shots.

We tried our luck for the first time with a nargileh (AKA: argile, sheesha, hookah, water pipe and hubbly-bubbly). It’s filled with a flavored tobacco (apple flavor being the de-facto standard) and filters through the water at the bottom of the pipe. Not sure if it was really our thing, but I managed to share another one with a few guys in Petra while we were jabbering about random whatevers sitting outside Naser’s hotel (I know – I’m getting ahead of myself here).

Amman – the city that grows up out of the desert.

We also managed to get ourselves a plateful of yummy Arabic sweets which were absolutely delicious.

The city is somehow exquisite and captivating in its drabness – with every building the same color as the sand of the rolling desert surrounding it.

Carly and I had dinner at the same restaurant on both nights. Cairo restaurant as recommended in the Lonely Planet (which we never leave home without) had absolutely fantastic Arabic food – Kofta, Moutabaal, etc. Yum!

For lunch on our second day we stopped at a place called Hashem Restaurant which provided Carly and I with the best hummus we’ve ever had. Everyone is interested in talking to you, saying hello and making very certain that you know you are welcome back to Jordan any time you like.

We stayed at the Palace Hotel where staff were all exceptionally friendly, and the facilities were adequate. The location was absolutely terrific. Following our stint in Amman we hired a driver to take us down to Petra via the Kings Highway. Stay tuned…

In Jerusalem

So, it’s true. Carly and I are in Jerusalem. We’ve survived our Tour of Duty in Jordan (which was fantastic… blogs and photos pending). Currently I’m typing this up on my laptop a few hundred meters from the Temple Mount in the Old City in a 500 year old building. Can’t wait to put up some photos. It’ll come as soon as we have some time, but in the mean time, we need to sleep. So sit tight!

Dining in a Cable Car

Carly received as a gift from the parents of the students in her class a gift certificate for Sky Dining – which is basically a three course meal served to you in a cable car as you make a few passes between Mount Faber and Sentosa.

The food was nothing to write home about, and the people trying to sell you photographs and make you fill out surveys while you’re trying to enjoy your dessert were a bit obnoxious, but the views at sunset were spectacular.

(I shot these images in RAW and exported them from iPhoto as JPEG – and now they look GROSS compared to the originals… I’ll have to figure this out later).

Emerald Hill

Tucked away, right beside Centrepoint Shopping Centre on Orchard Road is Emerald Hill. It’s a really neat hill / alley way with all sorts of wonderful restaurants and shop fronts that really comes alive at night.

I was down there the other day with the new camera snapping a few shots. Carly took me for a great dinner here a couple weeks back to a place serving up Spanish tapas. I can’t remember the name of the place but it was yum.

We Hate Phuket

This is a long time coming, but about 3 weeks ago (May 11 to be precise), Carly and I celebrated our 5-year anniversary. As such, I spoke to the principal of the school and got Carly a day of leave, so we flew off Thursday night for a long weekend away in Phuket.

After arriving at our accommodation (which indeed – looked nothing like the pictures on the web site) we figured we were in for a rough weekend, but thought we’d try to make the best of it.

The next morning, our accommodation wasn’t looking any better, but we headed down to the beach, which wasn’t looking too bad at the time. We paid a nice Thai lady for the use of some great lawn chairs, and settled in under some umbrellas for some snoozing and sun (as you can see below):

As I lay on my beach chair, I didn’t seen any insects, but it was clear after about 30 minutes that I was being eaten alive and or destroyed by something. Turns out it was likely sand flies, and within another 30 minutes, I had bites that were swelling up all over my body. Carly received a few herself, and by this time both of us were pretty miserable.

To cut a long story short, we bailed on our accommodation, headed to the airport and paid Tiger $190 to change our flights and we were out of Phuket on our way back to Singapore that day. I had to head to the doctor for some Turbo Powered™ antihistamines the next day because my arm and leg had swollen enough that my hand was starting to go numb (pretty sure the swelling was preventing proper blood circulation).

Once we arrived at the airport in Singapore we grabbed ourselves a bottle of champagne from duty-free and the next morning had champagne and orange juice brunch by the pool, quite happy to be bloody far away from Phuket. We also managed to sneak into a reservation last minute at our favorite fine-dining restaurant here: Ember. They serve an Apple Tartin for dessert that will make you believe you’ve died and gone to heaven.

Can’t remember if we blogged about all this already or not, but my brain is mostly mush these days anyways.