Here is Syria

We are on the bus from Amman, Jordan to Damascus, Syria-
The countryside looks like we expected, hilly, browns and yellows and dry. Every once in awhile we see a green rectangle of orchards or some plants on the hills, but there’s not a lot of foliage. Lexie keeps seeing some sort of black dog, but I think that she’s making it up, I never saw one. We pass farms with lots of sheep and goats, and a camel here and there. After about 2 hours we pull into a convenience store in the middle of nowhere. This is good, cuz Lex has been dutifully drinking her liter of water that we bought last night and needs to use the facilities. When it looks like we are stopped so that the passengers can get off quickly and buy something or go to the bathroom, Lex walks up to make sure that there’s time to run to the bathroom and where it is. I can see her from the window and she goes around the building to a smaller walled building, and then a gentleman comes up behind her and points her another direction… ah, men’s room. She leaves my field of vision, and I see the Spanish woman waiting at the corner. Then Lexie comes back on the bus and says that it’s the most vile, filthy restroom that she’s ever seen. I asked if she’d taken a picture, she said no, but she wanted to, so she went back to get a picture. She said the floor was covered in “water”, that the door didn’t lock, so she had to have her hand bracing on the door while she was peeing, it’s a squatty of course and dirty, so there’s a lot of flies.
Just pullled into what I believe is Damascus. The border was interesting, first we had to get out of Jordan, which was a stop on the Jordan side, a payment of JOD5 for exit tax, which buys you a stamp and then a departure stamp. We were a little confused but the bus driver knew it, even though he speaks no english, he stopped us, pointed to the windows that we needed to go to and watched out for us. The tourist couple from Spain got caught up somehow at the window for their departure stamp, the guys kept asking them questions and moved them over to the side and it didn’t look good, but next thing we knew they were gone. We finished our two windows and looked around for the driver and he was gone, so we looked for someone else that we knew from the bus and couldn’t see the Spanish couple, and we found the lady in the burkha with the two little boys, but she was in an office with another guard, I wasn’t sure that we were supposed to backtrack to the bus, but we couldn’t figure out where else to go, so we walked through traffic, the large parking lot was FULL of cars and trucks with no rhyme or reason to parking, at times there was no way to pull forward with so many vehicles parked. And we got back on the bus, which I guess was the correct thing to do since there were other passengers on it. Most everyone drifted back to the bus and boarded, but there is no sign of the Spanish people, and it was worrying me. I didn’t want to forget them, in case the driver was going to leave, but I didn’t know how to speak about them. But the driver was counting heads, and he came up short. He honked the bus horn loudly, but there’s no sign of them. He sent someone back into the sheds, but that guys came back and shrugged his shoulders. So the driver went back out. We watched and watched, and eventually, they came around the corner looking all shook up. They boarded the bus, and one of the Arab guys said something rude to them, and they apologized in English to every passenger that they passed walking back to their seats. I guess that they got into Amman at the airport after midnight and when they went through to get their visas, that the man forgot the entry stamp. That’s a big no-no, so they got called into the police office for questioning and it took almost an hour to clear it up. Did not sound like fun. We started up the bus again and crossed the no-man’s land between borders and came up to the Syrian side with all of the happy photos of their leader, president, king??
My first time with a squatty AND an attendent, we had to pay her, not sure how much I only had Dinars and technically we were in Syria… but she smiled, had a big chat with Lexie about where we are from (Lexie’s arabic is getting a little better) and gave us change. Back on the bus after getting all of our stamps upon entering Syria. Darn, I made Lexie throw away all of her newspapers from Israel just in case we had our luggage searched and were questioned. They didn’t question us nor did they open our luggage. I guess that getting our Syrian visa from Washington was a really wise choice. After about another 2 hours, we arrive in Damascus and we got out because it was continuing on to Aleppo. Hmmmm, maybe we should have done the Aleppo trip all in one day? Oh well, it would be nice to get off of the bus even for just a few hours. We asked the bus driver how to catch a taxi to our hotel, and they actually found a guy that would give us Syrian pounds for American dollars, awesome. Now it’s 46 Pounds to the US dollar. Lexie was horrified when she thought that I agreed too fast to the taxi rate of SYP$300 to go to the hotel. That’s about $6 and she was sure that she could have negotiated down to less We arrived and met our hotel guy – Ahmed, he reminded me that I said that we’d be there around noon and it was after 3pm. I said that we’d just been delayed on the bus, but he was really nice and showed us to our room. It’s a hostel so we don’t have a bathroom, even though that’s what I’d asked for. The bath is down the hall and there’s several choices. Our room is a triple, which means that it has 3 twin beds, a ceiling fan and wardrobe, there’s a mirror on the wall, that’s about it. It reminds me of some of the Inns in Guatemala, with kind of an open courtyard and then rooms leading into it. The courtyard has a roof, but there’s a great fountain and several tables and chairs. That’s right outside our room and that’s where breakfast will be served. I asked Ahmed when the banks closed, and he said that they were closed right then for midday, but opened up again at 6pm. We need to figure out how to get cash, it was worrying me that we might not be able to find an ATM that takes Mastercard. We went to our room and right to sleep cuz we were tired. After waking up at 6pm, we get a map and the new guy at the counter Manfred marks where the hotel is and recommends a specific street for banks, so we walked around the corner to the next biggest street – Thalwah, and we found a street place to have a snack, since it was only 6:30 and we are trying to get into a schedule like the people here, nap, late dinner, early rise. We bought a falafel wrap, it was excellent, and we picked up a guide – he said that his name is Sam. He initially struck up a conversation with Lexie about how tall I am, he wanted to know if I played basketball, he’s early 20s, attractive, dark and brooding. He name drops Kobe Bryant in the conversation about basketball and marvels that Lexie is so short (HAHA, take that munchkin!) And I’m not sure how but he starts walking with us and asking where we want to go; and he stayed around for the next couple of hours. I thought that Lexie wanted him to stay, so I was nice and didn’t make a fuss, he took us to a bank, and YAY, Mastercard…. No problem. We are really being taken care of, just the right thing at the right time. God is faithful. We sort of stopped at a fruit and nut stand cuz Lex wanted a photo, but that meant that the guy running it started giving out tons of samples, which is impossible to say no to, and also makes us feel guilty that we are eating his food without buying it. After 4-5 almonds roasted in the shell, he gave me a purple fig and Lexie a yellow fig, almost overripe and really tasty. So I asked Sam to bargain for some almonds, ½ a kilo. And Lex paid for it and we paid WAY too much, SYP300, yikes, as much as a taxi, but still only about US$6.
It’s pretty hot here, I almost melted in the taxi to the hotel, and although we have a fan in our room, there’s no airconditioning. Luckily on this one pedestrian street with lots of shopping, there’s quite a strong breeze, so it’s comfortable. Also, we feel more at ease here in Damascus, there’s a lot of women who aren’t in full burkas, nor even the hajjab head scarf. Sam tells us it’s because they get a lot of tourists from Iran and some from eastern Europe. We see many women in what we are trying not to wear – tight shorts and tank tops. In Amman, for that little bit at night that we walked around, we saw no women in less than a hajjab, and most were in full burka. Except for younger girls, all women were completely covered. I had a moment with Lexie in a dress shop and she said that she was tired of Sam. As was I, but I thought that she wanted him around. So when we got back to the square where the banks were, I thanked him, offered him a soda and Lexie got his email address. We weren’t really hungry, but tried to find a place to have a simple meal, maybe to share. But Lexie has become something of a cheapskate after her time with the Israelis, so she’d ask the price and refuse to pay that much for a schwarma or a bottle of water. Bottled water here is really cheap, I bought 4 ½ liters of water and a coke for SYR84, so less than US$2. We walked back to the hotel, didn’t end up buying anything except for the drinks and almonds. Luckily for me, Lexie is just as tired as I am and wants an early evening. We take out showers down the hall, squeegie up the watery floors, cuz we are good hostel guests and turn in. Our room is an oven, but with the fan turned up to “helicopter”, we have a nice hot breeze. Unfortunately for me, my body has no idea what time it Is and I wake up for the second night in a row at 2am, disoriented, hot, uncomfortable and unable to fall back to sleep despite the Tylenol PM. Hoping to work out of that soon – please God. Monday, we find another bus to go to Aleppo in the north of Syria. We’ll be back in Damascus at the end of the week to more fully explore.