I'll go out on a limb and venture that, dare I say it, Jordan is more efficient than Egypt. After arriving in Aqaba at 8pm, exhausted but having made it across the sea, it only took us a half hour to find the customs office where we got our passports stamped. By chance we found Michelle's luggage lying with some other bags from the ferry, forgotten and derelict by the back wheel of a bus. (But it was no Luxor-Cairo train horror, alhamdulillah.)
One consequence of Jordan's higher standard of living is that its currency exchange rate is virtually identical to the Euro. At the exchange kiosk, I felt like all my money was disappearing into an empty void of nihilism and black holes, as I exchanged my Egyptian pounds (5 to a dollar) for Jordanian dinars (0.7 to a dollar) and my wallet became oddly light.
Getting a cab to Petra was probably one of the best things we could've done. I say this not because it helped us further hone our haggling skills and pouty faces when the drivers attempted to overcharge us (which it did), but because talking with cab drivers is really the absolute best way to pick up a dialect. Jordanians speak much slower and closer to Modern Standard Arabic than Egyptians. They say "Biddi" instead of "3ayiz" to say "I want," and they actually pronounce their j's instead of g's. I have to say I was relieved to finally be able to say "jayyid jiddan" (very good) instead of "kuwayyis awi" or "gayyid giddan."
Eating a late dinner at the delicious Arabiyya restaurant in the town of Petra, we crashed at our hostel.
PETRA
While definitely not as fascinating as the ancient ruins of the Pharaohs, Petra has its own unique character. The great poet John William Burgon once called it "a rose-red city half as old as time," and it really is.
Petra was once a thriving trade center of the Nabatean civilization, during the reign of the Roman Empire, and lasted until the 500s. Since they didn't leave a plethora of written inscriptions behind, we don't know much about the Nabateans, except that, as my friend Michelle pointed out, they must have been salad-lovers ("Nabati" in Arabic means vegetarian).
Aside from being vegetarians, the Nabateans seemed to value superficiality above all.
This is quite evident from their tombs.
Lavish and beautiful on the outside...
...Empty on the inside. (Maybe this explains their ultimate downfall.)
Jordan's efficiency isn't just what makes the country a bit easier to get around in as a tourist. Jordanian hasslers are of a weaker variety than their Egyptian counterparts in that they'll leave you alone if you say no once or twice.
That said, we opted to take a donkey ride up the mountain to the Monastery and save ourselves a great deal of time and energy. So we asked one of the guys in Arabic how much he wanted to charge us to go up. "6 JD each," he replied. This is the equivalent of about $8...stupid Euro conversion. We wanted 3, so we went to another guy. This guy reassured us about the climb up, telling us he'd get us to the top with the donkeys. But when he went to get them, a 7-year-old kid came up to us and told us not to trust this guy, he will cheat us. Just then the guy came back, saw this kid, and became furious. He tried beating the kid up but a few other donkey-people came up and intervened. During all the rumpus the kid picked up a rather large and sharp rock and raised up above his head. We quickly stopped him. "La, la, la! Mesh munasib," we said. Not appropriate! Fortunately he put it down. We walked away quickly, ashamed that we'd caused yet another fight in the hapless tourist business. (The other one, if you remember, was between two cab drivers in Dahab. And they actually resorted to blows.)
Tired of all this, we just took the next donkey-guy who offered us a ride.
Even though they looked relatively healthy, these poor donkeys must have been worn out. Every time mine went up a flight of steps it would either lurch to the side or stop for a second to catch a breath.
Up at the top was a great view of the mountains. Two of my friends decided to climb on the Monastery, which was not allowed, but if you only speak "Italian," who knows how far you can get?
This ended up being a poor decision, as they were yelled at quite sternly by a worker and forced down. I'll put what happened next in a game theory format.
Guy asks for our tickets.
We can't understand him since we speak Italian. He can't understand Italian. (Us +3)
We search for our tickets. (Guy +3)
My two friends pull out theirs. (Us +2)
I can't find mine. (Guy +50)
We look through Michelle's bag.
Guy says if I don't have a ticket I must have gotten in illegally and I'll either have to come back with him to the entrance and buy another 60 JD ticket or go to a Jordanian jail. (Guy +500)
I still can't find my ticket.
Michelle finds a random ticket lying on the ground nearby and shows it to the guy. (Michelle +1000)
Guy says ok, fine and leaves us alone. I walk away, humbled and grateful. (Us +600)
As you can see, it's really all about the power struggle. I don't know if he could've actually done all that, but you never know. This is why it's generally not a good idea to mess around at an archaeological site.
The irony: After we got back to our hotel, I found my ticket at the bottom of the bag.
Anyway, after Petra we gathered our things and took a bus to Amman, Jordan's capital. Amman's actually a pretty cool place that's relatively clean. In my opinion, being approximately the same distance from the Jordan River that Jerusalem is, the two are sort of mirror images of each other.
We spent most of the next morning trying to rent a car. After our hotel gave up trying to arrange us one, we finally found a place ourselves. Our first target: The Dead Sea.
There may not be a lot to do in Amman, but it does have some great bars (if you can find them amidst all the 1st, 2nd, 5th Circle roundabouts). Here having a car really helps, and it's even more fun with so many hills (Seven, to be exact).
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