Bananas Don't Travel Well

sweet shopAmman, Jordan, turned out to be a longer stay for us than we'd anticipated. It is one of those cities without a lot of sights, but with a really laid back atmosphere making it easy to stick around. In this sense, it reminded us of Taipei: good food, nice people, easy life. We ended up staying a whole week.

On the surface, Amman is sort of dull. Though it occupies the site of ancient Philadelphia, only the Roman theatre, a few relics of the forum, and a few ruins on a hilltop (including a temple dedicated to Hercules) remain, and the city was all but abandoned for centuries until the Circassians settled in the 1800's on fleeing Russian military advances on their homeland in the Causasus (i.e., Chechnya). Today, Amman is a throroughly modern creation, a car-centric city of Western-style shopping malls, complete with Western brands, from Starbucks to Benetton to Safeway. But it is far from soulless. We found the people of Amman (and Jordan) to be very warm, and as foreigners we were treated (mostly) with a genuine respect (and none of the hard sell of Egypt).

We spent the week doing some provisioning for our trip and enjoying being in probably the last really Western city for a long time. We saw a movie, Shrek III, shopped for clothing, and even looked around at computers. We have been toying with the idea of buying a micro laptop to make the blogging easier, but have now been through two failed attempts. Perhaps it's not in the cards; we had mixed feelings about it anyways.

map of the Middle EastWe spent some time with Ed, a British expat who'd been teaching English in Amman for a year. He introduced us to a yummy shish taouk joint, and had some interesting insights into Jordan. He confirmed what we'd already noticed: that a large portion (he thought even a majority) of the population are Palestinian. Jordan has a policy whereby any Palestinian that wants can obtain Jordanian citizenship. (Many don't, however, as it could be seen as relinquishing their claim on Palestine.) As a result, despite the country's official settlement with and recognition of Isreal, most Jordanians maintain strong feelings against Isreal. A map painted in our hotel foyer illustrates this view.

Ed also pointed out an implication of the Iraq war that we hadn't considered before. Apparently, many of the rich Ba'thists saw the writing on the wall and left before the bombs started falling, bringing their money to other countries in the Middle East. In Jordan (and presumably elsewhere) this resulted in significant price inflation, particularly for real estate. There is, a result, a fair amount of resentment brewing. Having learned this, we did start noticing the large number of expensive cars with Iraqi license plates around Amman (and also Damascus).

8500-year-old statueOur last morning, before leaving for Syria, we finally made it up to the Roman ruins and the Amman National Museum. The museum was small but very interesting, with some Dead Sea scrolls and art and artefacts from all periods of Jordan's history. They had several statues that are among the earliest known anywhere: from about 6500 BC! They kind of creeped us out.

We took a deluxe bus to Damascus last Sunday. For about $4 US, we had plush seats, air conditioning that worked, and the conductor brought candies and cookies around. At the border, we had to elbow our way to the immigration window, where the officer stamped our passports without once looking at us. With that, we were on the next leg of our trip: three weeks in Syria.