barfing in Dubai, lost luggage in Jordan

Hard day.
We checked out of the hotel at 8:45, took a cab to the airport and then had a really great flight rep help us with our check-in. I was really worried that since we we flying back to Beirut to complete our roundtrip (cheaper to buy) and then tacked on a one-way to our final destination – Amman, Jordan – on a different airline, that we would encounter problems with luggage in Beirut. And if we had to go through customs to retrieve our backpacks from baggage claim, then we’d have to wait in numerous lines and pay to “enter” Lebanon again when we weren’t even leaving the airport, all this on a 2 hour layover. I didn’t think that we’d be able to handle it. But the nice lady at Qatar Airlines in Dubai reassured us that she’d add the final leg of our trip to our baggage claim check and that the bags should check all the way through to Amman – Thank Goodness!! Our flight from Dubai to Doha, Qatar is only 40 minutes, but we have a hideous 5 hour layover. The airport is nice, but not that nice… especially when you are sick. So we alternately sat and walked for 5 hours, boarded the next flight (3 hours) to Beirut and were able to transfer within the customs without having to enter the country. Other than a 30 minute wait to get someone to the transfer desk to get us our boarding passes, the trick worked nicely. Then our 10pm flight to Amman, almost there. The flight ran late, lots of people, it’s only a 45 minute flight and we get off proceed through visa and customs, our 2nd entry visa to Jordan and go to baggage claim, and wait, and wait and wait. They lost our luggage!!! We have to report it and fill out the forms, but it’s a sticky situation since we do not have a home address. It’s after midnight, we have a brief night in a hotel in Madaba, then we get a rental car in the morning and drive 4 hours south to the desert where we have a jeep tour and overnight stay in Wadi Rum (going to be excellent!). So, a half night in a hotel, then one night in a tent in the desert, not conducive for luggage delivery, and then 3 nights down on the Red Sea in Aqaba, Jordan. Please, dear God let them be able to catch us with our bags, we only have 5 more days, but 5 days in the same clothes without shampoo and a change of underwear is going to totally suck.

We got our luggage today, in Aqaba. The desert trip was wonderful - unfortunately, no camel ride, but we saw lots of camels - they make me smile. We arrived later than we thought, we are driving and rented a car and we took a wrong turn, but nothing bad. So our host and Bedouin guide greeted us at his home, and drove to the "Meditation Camp" It's 4 bedouin tents up against a rock formation, beautiful. Lex and I were assigned our own tent, but it's encouraged that you carry your bed frame and mattress out and sleep outside, which we did and loved it. They make a traditional dinner in a firepit for several hours, we shared the experience with a couple from Chile, a gentleman from Jordan somewhere and this enormous family of 13 showed up just for dinner and we got to have some great conversations. Zidane (our guide, about 45-50 with dozens of children and at least 2 wives), called the airline and reamed them out huge in Arabic for us about our lack of luggage, he was shocked that they wouldn't immediately deliver it to the desert camp and asked to talk to a manager, and then screamed at him to get our luggage to us TODAY!! Anyway, they sent it special on a bus to Aqaba, so that when we drove through town on Friday, we stopped at the bus station and claimed our backpacks. YAY toast! We have a change of underwear now! 3 days in the same clothes is plenty. But it kinda brought us closer, we shared my deoderant and toothbrush and toothpaste, a couple of pantiliners and water bottles. But the desert was really cool, I kept on thinking that this is a Randy Place. Then this morning we rode through sanddunes at full speed crashing around on the benches in an old Toyota truck bed. I'll send pictures.

Well, the stress is off, we have 3 nights here on the Red Sea in Aqaba, all paid for, and we have a car, all paid for. And then on Monday we just drive back to Amman, pay for a cheap hotel and turn the car in. Then in the morning, we take a taxi to the airport and we fly forever and get home. I cannot wait!

The Beirut days, onto Dubai

Saturday in Beirut
We went to this resort-y, swimming pool-y, sunshine place yesterday, I'll send photos. It's really the perfect place, all about tourists, but that's not always bad. It's on the ocean, but they've built this gigantic "Water World" out into the ocean, lots of cement, but in a good way. I'll send photos.
We found it yesterday morning while trying to find a beach. We still haven't found a real beach. There's a place next to the resort thingy that the locals use, but it's tiny, really rocky and there's no sand. The beach would be fun for families with children since there's alot of flat rocks that come out of the water, but you definitely need water shoes, or you'd cut your feet up. I have my Tevas cuz I'm not some dummy that only packs flipflops and high heels.... gosh wonder who I'd be talking about?? But because I am so completely retarded fashion-wise, I get brownie points taken away too. Anyway, WaterWorld is not at all like our WaterWorld, but it's the easiest thing to call it. I think that the real name is Sadeer. It's got concrete terraces at different heights, each one has some sort of swimming pool, none are deep, they are made for hanging out and getting sunshine. There's a swim-up bar, and then other bars strategically placed on the different areas. They have little pavilion things where you could bring your group of 5-15 and have cushion areas to lounge. There are cushioned single lounge chairs by the thousands in rows, they have fantastic terry cloth covers so that you don't necessarily have to dry off before sitting down. At the last end is the section for families, this is the only pool that children are allowed. There's a couple of flowing, large hot tubs, but who's cold?? Not in this heat and humidity. We saw it from the sidewalk on our exploration but it has barriers so that outsiders cannot see in, so we didn't know what it was, just looked like it had a bar and outside seating. It turns out that you have to cross the 4-lane road that goes along the ocean and then come in through the hotel on the other side, underneath the road in the passage and it opens up. US$20 per day/ per person. Which is LP30,000, Lebanese pounds. We found it on Saturday morning, we both had swimming suits on but Lexie decided that we should come back in the evening and hang out when it was cooler and maybe eat dinner and then go to the nightclub - I was hoping for a little sunshine and I desperately wanted to get in some water cuz I'm melting, but she had her say. We dinked away the afternoon shopping, had a quick University tour and hung out at the internet café.
We went back to Sadeer at 5pm, Lexie bought a new dress that is fantastic on her, and these roman strappy gold sandals and she's all decked out for the nightclub, so she doesn't want to get her hair wet, so she daintily dips, all posed, draped across the edge of the pool.

Good Lord, it's exhausting being around her. The men are instantly drawn and gawking and trying to figure out how to get me out of the way. I wanted to swim in the ocean, and they have this interior water way that is the ocean and has an deep ocean bottom, I jump in and THANK goodness!!! It was heaven, not too cold, but blessedly cool, I swam laps for awhile, went all the way around the wierd little island thing and got out to find Lexie. She's already attracted some Arab guy who is sitting in my lounge chair, I stood standing above him with my intimidating stance until he moves and she introduces me. He tries to be charming to me, but I don't care, I don't want to talk. Lexie shooes him away and we sit in the afternoon sunshine for a couple of hours. It was too late to get a tan, but it was a terrific way to keep cool in comfort.
We go to the seafood restaurant and sit out on the patio and watch the fishermen and the waves. It juts out into the ocean and is by the light house and they have cases of fresh fish, and actually the fishermen are out there fishing with these really long poles, like 20 feet long, and they don't really cast, they stand on the pylons in the ocean and swing the hook out and stand there for awhile.And it seems that Beirut International Airport is just up the coast, cuz about every 30 minutes a big airliner, usually Emirates Airline, sweeps down awfully close. Lexie orders the fresh Barracuda, I order fried Eggplant. We watch the sun set, and the people at the restaurant do their icky Shisha thing – the water pipe smoking is EVERYWHERE. I guess that it’s better than having someone blow cigarette smoke in your face, but not much. The guest picks some flavor for their water pipe, things like strawberry or mint or banana flavors – odd. And then they puff on the mouthpiece, a lot of women, even the fully burka’d women are smoking Shishas. Smoking is very prevalent here, it’s hard to remember a time in Colorado when there were smokers in restaurants and cars and stuff. Even in the airports, they are smoking at the gates, but not on the airplane itself.

Another tidbit, soda cans, aluminum cans have the full pull tab, like we used to have as children. I had to show Lexie how to do it. It’s the one piece thing that comes all of the way off and you set it on the table until you finish your can and then put it in the empty can. Not sure why.

Sunday, Beirut
Lexie is going to the mountains and Byblos with a girl that she met at Starbucks, I’m trying not to be overprotective, but I went to introduce myself and made sure that I had contact information. I’m spending the morning at Sadeer getting a suntan, yay. Nothing major planned until tomorrow, we fly to Dubai, via Doha, Qatar…. Just a layover.

Monday
Fairly uneventful, except that Lexie drank water from the tap at her house party and is barfing all day through 2 airports. Not so much fun. We are in Dubai now, it’s absolutely fantastic. It’s almost like Vegas in that things are organized around having fun. I booked our hotel through hotels.com and actually cheaped out a little bit, but OMG, the hotel is totally premium!! We were greeted at the cab from the airport by 2 bellboys, they whisked our backpacks away and they were already in our room when we walked up. While we were standing at the counter with our passports, another guy brought us each a glass of fresh squeezed watermelon juice to enjoy. We got upgraded from a plain old room to a room with an ocean view, 2 double beds with tons of bedding and 4 pillows each!! We feel like royalty, especially after a week in hostels. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of our hostels, but they certainly did not have Crabtree & Evelyn products for free, in fact just having a washcloth seems like the height of luxury.

YAY, tomorrow the beach, (our hotel is right on the beach), and directly opposite the first of the cool man-made islands that look like palm trees from space. We can see the Atlantis from our balcony. Flying in we see this crazy haze, you cannot see the ground even though we are close to landing. The gentleman next to me on the plane explains that it’s a fine sand that kicks up in a rare way only a couple times per year, they call it “Toze” (don’t know the spelling, but “toes” looks weird). I've stuck in a picture of the Toze, it's one of the sun, but you can look right at it, kinda looks like the moon should, but it's the sun. But it’s still 110` F out there, imagine how hot it’ll be tomorrow without haze?

So we’ll get some sand and sun time and then spend the rest of the day in the airconditioned mega-mall.
Forgive me, I totally sold out. Lexie is getting some much needed sleep at the hotel, so I’m on my own for dinner and there is every American chain restaurant along the strip by the hotel. I don’t submit to Starbucks, I don’t submit to Ruby Tuesday, but I’m in On the Border cuz I’ve been craving tacos for months. They didn’t have Mexican in Brazil either and I just need some. It’s yummy.
Oh, and $US1 = 3.67 AED (dinhars). Keeps me on my calculating toes.

It's Beirut, yay Krispy Kreme

Friday, going to Beirut
So, we get up bright and early and get ready. We are a little apprehensive because we have to enter Lebanon, and unlike our land crossing from Jordan to Syria, we don’t have our visa for Lebanon. Unlike Syria, it’s supposed to be easily available from the border (Syria’s is not, therefore we applied back in May through their embassy in Washington DC). And since we’ll be on a bus with the locals, we don’t want to tick them off by forcing the whole bus to wait through our ordeal. We grab our packs and walk to the main road and try to hail a cab, but there’s not a lot of traffic and it seems that the cabs all already have passengers. Eventually we get one and we are on our way. When we pull into the parking lot of the bus/service taxi station, literally 10 guys run up to the doors and we are surprised. We get out and they want to know where we are going, we say, “Beirut” and they all say that they’ll take us. They are service taxi drivers or the people who hustle for them. We say that we want to take a bus, they lie and say, “all of the busses have left”, but we can see a handful of busses behind them. Then one honest guy says, “the busses are over there, just go find one.” SO we walk over and a nicer young guy asks where we are going, and points to the first bus in line, and says 10 o’clock. That’s perfect, 20 minutes away, we ask where to get tickets and he walks us up to the window and talks to the guy. It’s really cheap, just S400 each, so we paid for 2 on a bus the same amount as we’d pay for one in a service taxi. We drop off the packs and go to load on the bus, it’s almost the same as the others that we have been on, but at least not at this moment, there is no air conditioning, we hope that when they get rolling is when they’ll turn it on. We watch a little kid lick his way across a plastic sign, gross. Then we load up and hmmm, no air conditioning. Darn it!! It’s not so bad once the bus is moving, they leave the front door wide open while driving and there’s a vent in the middle of the bus roof, just above us and it’s pleasant as long as everyone keeps their curtains closed. The family with the little boy who was licking the billboard is sitting in front of us. I feel sorry for the mom, there are 3 little boys under 4, and the toddler isn’t 2 yet. She has a slightly older boy, 6/7 that seems self sufficient and then a much older boy (17?), not sure how he is related, but she won’t speak to any man, so the older boy does all of her bidding and communicating. She’s in full burka, even the veil thing that ties around your head and covers the eye opening, and black gloves. She focuses her attention on the toddler and the older boy sorta monitors the other three that are shoved into the 2 seats across the aisle, but they are kinda on their own. And OMG, these boys are filthy!! Dirty faces, black, grimy hands, it makes me cringe as a mom. And I’ll cut them some slack. With 4 boys under 8 years old, it must be murder to keep them clean, but at no time during the trip did anyone make any attempt to wash faces or pull out a Kleenex and do the spit thing. And the toddler was obviously the favorite and his face was disgusting. The youngest of the group of 3 on the other side of the aisle has a huge personality, but after spending a day observing, it seems like he’s also the one that takes the most abuse, so maybe his personality is directly reflected by being a little neglected? I’ll call him Badger since I have a lot to say and it makes more sense with a name. The boy slightly older than Badger sits and bites him for a good 10 minutes, up the arms and on the neck, and Badger is being tough and just laughing for most of it until it hurts and he squawks. The oldest boy and mom don’t give a darn. Then the 3rd boy on that side of the aisle, not really involved in the wrestling, gets comfortable against the window and falls asleep, and the biting boy wants to get comfortable so he shoves badger onto the floor between seats, and then the oldest boy (with mom) grabs Badger up off of the floor and shoves him into the seat behind his brothers, which wouldn’t normally be a problem, but there’s someone sitting there. It’s a nice looking 20-ish man, but it’s not fair for him to have to now babysit someone else’s child. Luckily Badger is tired too and curls up awkwardly on the seat and falls asleep. His upper leg kept slipping off of his lower leg and his head was at a strange angle with no real support, so the nice gentleman eventually straightens him out and rest his little head against the stranger’s side. What a nice man, I think that I’ll take him home. I smile to show him that I noticed his generosity.
There’s another westerner on the bus, which is a relief, cuz we have one more person to be hissed at if our visas take forever at the border. He’s tall and attractive and has a yellow shirt. He’s sitting 3 rows in front of us and reading a Lonely Planet Syria/Lebanon books, that’s encouraging.
We are at the Syrian border in a heartbeat, even though the bus is really bad about pulling up the hills and mountains, slow as molasses. The first stop is to pay our exit tax SYP500 apiece, fill out the paper, then pull forward and disembark again to stand in lines. Holy cow these people are horrible at lines. There’s even fixed posts in the ground and they are right up against our backs, with their hands coming up over our shoulders, trying to muscle their way before us or at least hand their passports and paperwork before we get to. Lexie complains that the little woman behind her was so close that they were spooning. We have the extraordinary bus attendant with the puppy eyes taking care of us, he shoves UK boy- I’m really sorry that I wasn’t listening when I asked his name- into one line and then me and Lexie into the next one, so we are encompassing both of the foreigner-only lines. UK-boy knows to push forward, and he’s tall enough to fend off the crush behind him. And I’m trying to be a fullback in my line with Lexie, I’m tall enough that they aren’t getting anything over my shoulder or head, but Lexie is more susceptible to the pushing. The two women in front of us take decades to process, they each have a handful of papers with children’s photos stapled to them, so I guess that they are processing multiple kiddos. The bus attendant appears again and hands our passports to UK-boy, cuz it looks like he may get to the head of the line faster because he doesn’t have the slow women in front of him, he’s trying, but his window isn’t grabbing new passports at all. Then finally our line clears, 4 sets of hands shoot forward between me and Lexie and over our shoulders, I nudge them aside and tell UK-boy, “over here!!” and he hands back the set of 3 passports and we get them in the window before anyone else. YAY for teamwork!!!!! They process fairly fast, due to the crazy currency exchange, we have to pay LB25,000 to enter Lebanon, US$1=LB1500. It’s done, we get our passports stamped and it didn’t take too long. Our bus attendant, he is so sweet, is there to escort us back to the bus. All of the locals processed faster, wouldn’t you know it, but they aren’t angry. All in all, it took about 20 minutes to get it done. And we are off.
Oh, back to Badger stories. So, little guys have to wake up when we exit Syria and they have a passenger change, the dad was waiting at the border and the oldest boy disappears. The parents buy snacks and sodas for the kids and they enjoy them, but the wrestling and smacking starts again and the parents ignore it. At one point the next oldest boy tries to tear off Badgers ear and he cries silently for 10 minutes and then falls asleep again.
Again, this part of Syria/Lebanon is really mountainous. They have ski resorts and are known for their beauty. So we climb mountains, go through some towns and then clear the last mountains and see the Mediterranean Sea. Cool! It’s like coming back into Denver from the mountains and coming down Genessee, only it’s not a freeway, it’s a 2 lane road, and there are homes and businesses on either side of it and we zigzag all of the way down.

We are in Beirut. It’s really hot and incredibly humid, but beautiful and it’s great to be back in a “westernized” city. We see women dressed in dresses and shorts and tanktops, hollah. Our hotel is near the water, right across from this beautiful college campus, the American University of Beirut, created by missionaries in 1867 (?) to train Doctors for the hospital. Lebanon used to be part of Syria and they both used to be French colonies, so Arabic is the first language, most people speak French and then most people also speak at least some English. It’s very cosmopolitan.

Thursday in Damascus

We woke up on the roof, it was quite pleasant.
We missed the mosque last night because we ran so late and got caught up with all of the men dragging us into their stores, “just to look”. Uck. So, we are going to head over to the Old City again and go directly to the mosque.

So we walk over, it’s already hot (of course) and melty, we walk through the whole souk, it goes on and on. And we come out in the screaming sun in front of the gates of the mosque, which is huge. We watch for a few minutes to see what the etiquette is, Lexie has been wearing her headscarf all morning, and I have to remedially put mine on just wrapped like crazy. And we have to take off our shoes before stepping over the entrance, so we do AND… get turned away. The guy says that we have to buy a ticket to get in. That’s kinda odd, just us have to buy a ticket?? There are thousands of people walking in the gate without a ticket. I think that they are profiling. So we walk down the wall until we see the sign that says something to the effect of “clothes changing room” and we walk in to buy our tickets to the mosque. There is a man behind the desk, he says that it’s 50 pounds per person, so Lexie (our money person in Damascus) blesses this outlay. When we pay, he gives us a ticket and then tells us to get 2 burkas, one off of the #1 rack for Lexie and one off of the #4 rack for me. Interesting. We pull these hideous robes with Velcro and hoods off of the racks as we are told and put them over our clothing. They are an ugly greige color (combo of gray and beige). And then we walk back to the gate looking totally stupid. They may as well as had us wear blinking signs on our heads that say, “Caution tourist, not muslim!!” We take off of our shoes and enter and show our tickets. The inside court is entirely outside with a cover porch around the entire outside. It looks like the faithful come and sit with their favorite Imam teacher. There are muslim holy men stationed around with groups of people sitting on the marble at their feet listening, both men and women. They are on the shaded side of the courtyard. Even in the center, which is under complete sun, the white marble floor keeps it cooler on your feet. There’s an elevated room on stilts, towards one end, I don’t know the purpose, and in the center is a pavilion with water spigots and people washing their feet and hands. We walk a little outside and then go back to the gate to go inside the mosque itself to one side. We walk in, and there’s a sort of “coat check” where you can leave your shoes and belongings, we choose to hang onto ours, and we swing wide around a barrier of posts and chain draped between 4’ high movable posts. The kind that you see to form lines at a bank. And then we realize that only women are on one side and men on the other. And then in a little slice down the center are more muslim teachers and singers, so that they can speak to both the women and men at the same time. They each have a gathering at their feet. Down at the end is a ornate little room completely inside the bigger building with green windows – the women’s chain barrier jigs away from the center to allow the women to get near this building and touch it, which they are doing. We took a photo (photos are completely allowed) and asked our hotel guy what that building is and he said that’s where the prophets are. I’m not entirely sure what that means. We want a photo with both me and Lex is our hideous outfits, but don’t want to bother the faithful, so we walk up to a single woman in the same get-up. She gladly takes our pic and then asks if we would take hers too, she’s alone and wants a photo. We head out, and are able to remove our robes at the gate and put them in the dirty clothes basket (??). Then we dink around the enormous souk, re-visit Lexie’s carpet friend, Noor, and I buy another wrap. Yesterday he wanted to give Lexie a free rug, but not so me. I should have had her bargain, he wants to rip me off. We get back and our room STILL is not ready, they tell us to wait for cleaning, even though it’s been a couple of hours. I glance in and it’s a HUGE room, 4 beds and our own bathroom – gawl.


Lexie wanted to go back to the Art Café that we’d found that first night after ditching Sam. We were going to have a little lunch and read/type. We LOVE the art café and they love us. I ordered the most fantastic Lentil soup, and Lexie had the Art Soup, which was a lamb, tomato and veggie soup. Fantastic! And she drank Turkish coffee her fave. My tummy is pretty woozy, so soup and 7-up are good enough for me. Then I plug in the computer and type for awhile. The owner notices us and wants to buy our drinks and we insist on paying, so later he sends over a sensational nutella and chocolate crepe – it’s beautiful and decadently yummy. Like pick up the plate and lick it yummy! We stay for a couple of hours and then tip big and head out.
It's a slow day, with no travel, so I won't bore you with insignificant stuff. We are in Beirut now, and it's fantastic!!!! Most of Lebanon is mountainous and they go right down to the Mediterranean Sea and there's Beirut, I'll tell you more tomorrow. But I might be able to upload some photos and we'll be able to see Facebook.