Leaving Jordan

Some parting observations of Jordan.

In Amman there are these trucks that drive around the streets playing twinkly fairy tunes like Ice Cream trucks in Oz except that they sell large gas bottles.

I stayed out in the Wadi Rum desert for a night with a local Bedouin family. If it wasn't blisteringly hot I would have been hyperactive from all of the sugar laced tea I drank. Walking about the desert at night is spooky and surreal and highly recommended. We watched the sun rise in the morning over the mountains and sand and helped put a large tent up for a wedding while camels verbally abused us.

In a huge word-up to Indiana Jones I ventured out to Petra to suss out the whole eternal life from the Holy Grail thing. The place is huge and superb. I tell you, those Nabataeans loved to carve rock. Be ready to do some serious walking if you go there and definitely climb the eight-hundred stairs to the monastery Ed Deir and the lookout beyond. Ride a donkey too.

I visited Aqaba and had a dip in the Red Sea. While in the water two local boys asked if I had swum across from Israel. They were disappointed to hear that I hadn't.

This one time, in Amman, I got into a cab and the driver was playing a cassette of a guy pontificating in Arabic. After we got out my friends informed me that the tape was calling all Muslims to Jihad in the name of their persecuted Chechnyan brothers. Nothing like spreading the word I say.

The Dead Sea is awesome. You can float around like a little message in a bottle without trying (instead you actually have to work at keeping your legs under the water). Rub the therapeutic mud on yourself and the sea water in your eyes and you'll quickly be screaming and staggering blindly about the place like some crazed African bushman.

I have mentioned the Amman traffic already but yesterday I saw something that took the cake. I saw a car on top of a metre-high retaining wall with a telephone box wedged underneath it. There were a few guys standing around scratching their heads and I bet they were thinking about how they weren't sure how the car got up there but how impressive the KITT turbo-boost impersonation was anyway.

I saw three Albinos in twenty-four hours. They were all male and sporting bad haircuts.