Damascus Hostel

... can see her face, and yet can pass a morsel of food up into the mouth.

A sidebar to this custom rears an uncomfortable little head.

"The niqab (full face veil) is a tradition, it has no connection with religion," says Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi, an Egyptian Sunni Muslim spiritual authority, on seeing a young girl wearing the drape at a Cairo school. After his comments recently, Egypt moved to ban the veil from public universities.

I inquire with a few Syrians ...

... I wanted to get one that would cover the living room but it turned out to be very expensive. One would at least cost 30,000 SYP. Instead I settled for a smaller one which I bargained down to 2400 SYP, enough to just to place my feet on it in front of my lazy chair. The seller claimed it was Iranian made and it felt similar to the ones we used to have back in the Singapore flat. Also bought a throw for the lazy chair as well, again Iranian made for 1000 SYP.

It ...

in damascus for one more night and will be heading for Amman, Jordan tomorrow sometime. it's HOT here so we are hiding in an internet care until it cools down a bit. hardly any wireless to speak of, facebook is blocked, and did i say it's HOT! the city is neat though. a lot less conservative than the rest of the country we've seen. again sleeping on roof top of Al Rabie hotel with like 30 other people and it's not cheap either. last night, was ...

... Huge Lebanese communities in Montreal and Toronto have developed and many people back in the homeland have immediate family in Canada. Plus, they think that Americans are giant ATMs with freeflowing cash. You've read about my travels...I am not an ATM packed with a ton of greenbacks so they had the wrong stereotype about me. It's not that they don't like Americans...quite the contrary...they just want our $$$.

French people seem to be the biggest group of ...

... we got out of that souk, we went to a small coffee shop which we sat at, since my dad wanted to go to the mosque to pray and see the things we didn't see yesterday. We sat there for about thirty minutes. When he finally came back we set off to Straight Street to buy nuts. We bought so much of them that they almost filled our suitcase.

We then bought hand-crafted cooking tools, and went back to the hotel to check out. After that we left ...

... followed by an evening meal that was to set the standard for the rest of the trip. Not a standard of excellence, just a standard menu. Mezze, salad and grilled lamb or chicken seemed to make up every meal to follow. Still, compared to Egypt this was a culinary palace and no one was sick.

... una jornada doblement esgotadora. Fa un temps rúfol a Damasc, les nits son fredes i amb vent, i de dia sovintegen els núvols i de manera intermitent la pluja. En el pati interior de l'hotel on m'allotjo no es estrany escoltar el tossir del sofert turista després d'anar amunt i avall tot el dia sotmès a unes condicions atmosfèriques adverses. Malgrat tot, això no es una excusa per quedar-se reclòs a l'alberg, perquè Damasc es una ciutat ...

... an frýend who plýed me wýth all dýfferent kýnds of alcohol, I ended up behýnd the bar helpýnghangýng outeýng the pretty bar gýrl (a great load of fun!), whých ended up wýth more drýnkýng, and then ý somehow managed to cause a fýght between two guys at the after hours bar - both of whom ý had absolutely no ýnterest ýn AND to make matter worse, ý mýssed the whole thýng ...

We woke in the morning and headed into town for a tour of Damascus which is the oldest inhabited city in the world. Unfortunately Pam was still battling the bug so decided to spend the day sleeping in the truck. The tour was a bit of a let down as the city tends to close many of its main sites on a Tuesday. However we managed to walk through the old city before getting lost in the local souks. We then wandered down "Straight" which is a road ...