In retrospect
Trip Start
Oct 27, 2006
1
8
9
Trip End
Nov 11, 2006
Kaohsiung,
Taiwan
Thursday, November 16, 2006
5 countries in 16 days (Singapore, Egypt, Israel...twice, Jordan and Turkey). About 2 days were spent on planes. 15 hours on buses. Close to 6 hours in taxis. Approximately 10 and a half bottles of white wine were consumed while washing down a disgustingly large mound of sinfully yummy food. One car accident. One arranged marriage proposal. Two cases of butt-groping carried out by minors next to a religious institution. One case of being hit by a bottle thrown by hostile locals (Mum says it was probably not meant to hit us, just fly in our general direction... I can't comment because I was too busy pretending to mind my own business). 18 stamps and three stickers in passport. Number of times asked to take a camel ride... stopped counting on first day because it was so many!
And one big wish granted. Ever since I got my passport 9 years ago, I have been plotting to fill all 31 pages. My passport is now so full that the Turk who stuck in my visa for Turkey blotted out half an Australian stamp and a Jordanian who was trying to save me some space (might be being charitable here) rammed his stamp down on top of an Israeli stamp. It's packed. I'm feeling smug.
We had a fabulous time. I love to travel. Even shitty travel experiences invariably turn out to be good anecdotes to laugh over with friends later. The good experiences are priceless. Traveling has taught me 100 times more than my degree or any book ever could, not just about other countries and people, but also about myself. It is hard for me to write this because all my trips have been unique and all those memories, even the unpleasant ones, are valuable to me and I don't like to rank them. But this trip is undoubtedly the best I've been on to date. The scenery was mind-blowing, the food was gastronomic bliss, the people were friendly (except in Egypt where at least 50% we came across were either plain hostile or creepy and another 40% were just annoying...fortunately the other 10% and the astounding scenery made up for it and left a good impression) and of course the company was first class.
I hadn't seen Mum since last Christmas in Korea and missed her terribly. So getting to spend 2 weeks with her was the best birthday gift I could have had. We both prefer to travel alone. We've traveled together before without any problems but generally spend a couple of days doing our own things, so that we can get some alone time. But this time, other than 30 minutes I spent in an internet café trying to contact a hotel, we spent all of our time together. Mum and I are both opinionated and stubborn with a tendency to bluntness, yet despite some stressful situations, we got along famously. No tetchiness, no arguments. Instead, we laughed our way across a good stretch of the Middle East.
I'll write about places we went to when I get the time, but for the moment here are some things that made me laugh till I wanted to cry -
Mum yelping and bouncing about our room in Singapore shaking her head wildly to get a headband off, which reminded me a lot of Indy after he'd been sprayed for fleas. It was my headband and she'd been eyeing it acquisitively. Most undignified.
Then me walking around half of Singapore with my shirt inside out (it was an embroidered shirt so it was actually really obvious) and not noticing until we'd been sitting at a tapas restaurant for hours and had already consumed a jug of sangria.
Mum having her photo taken. She often smiles half-heartedly for cameras, so to get real smiles out of her I'd try and make her laugh and the difference was always so stark it sent me into hysterics. In Singapore it was over the headband incident. At the Giza pyramids it was by telling her to imagine the tourist police officer (who'd just been harassing us) with a camel prod stuck up his arse.
Mum chasing after a 12 year old (possibly younger) shoe shine boy, swearing like a banshee, trying to hit him after he'd just had the audacity to grope me outside the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. Mum chasing after an Egyptian hawker at Giza, swearing and hand raised, because he'd just put his hand on my arm. Mum having a nightmare in Istanbul about trying to protect me from seedy men. Poor Mum.
Me jumping from bed to bed in the monastery at St Catherine's trying to slaughter mosquitoes, swearing at them in Chinese and swatting them with a Korean entertainment magazine, while Mum looked on slightly disturbed, probably wondering if Cairo and the 8 hour bus trip we'd just taken (which included at least 2 hours of being stared at unabashedly by a soldier sitting across the aisle from me) had finally taken its toll and sent me mad.
Later, I had a giggling fit because I turned the lights off while Mum was in the bathroom. I was giggling so loudly before Mum had even come out of the bathroom that she heard and asked me what I was up to. By the time she actually came back to the bedroom several minutes later to discover I'd turned the lights off on her, she was exasperated because I'd giggled myself silly to the point where I couldn't actually breathe.
I can't remember if this was before or after we'd gone up Mount Sinai. But that was funny in itself because when we set out for the hike, we went up the wrong trail and hiked a much smaller mountain across the valley from Mount Sinai. So after we returned to the monastery an hour or so later, we had to start all over again. Needless to say we were buggered by the end. Punishment doled out to recalcitrant atheists with enough gall to climb a mountain holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews.
Being stickered to within an inch of our lives passing through El Al security trying to take a plane from Tel Aviv to Istanbul. A day later we were still finding little Hebrew stickers in the oddest places (eg, on the soles of boots).
An old French Israeli guy taking the piss out of Mum by convincing her that the border crossing with Jordan was closed. We were in Eilat (Israel) heading for Petra (Jordan) that morning.
The horny donkeys at Petra that got shockingly enormous erections every time they were photographed. Gigantic! Really!
Finally, laughs aside, I can do nothing but rave about the South of Jordan. It is not just because the place is stunningly beautiful and the food is to die for. It is the people. I'm sure every place has its jerks, but Mum and I both found Jordanians to be super friendly, polite, quietly proud but with a great sense of humor. Even the hawkers are funny (and backed off quickly, which is a definite plus). I felt perfectly safe and perceived none of the animosity I felt from a lot of locals in Egypt. The exact opposite. They were happy we'd come in spite of the spectre of terrorism that now hangs over travel anywhere, but particularly the Middle East (not to mention the recent Lebanon War and abductions that have occurred recently in neighboring countries). Jordanians are really nice, genuine, down to earth people and (although St Catherine's and Mt Sinai are really hard to beat), probably my favorite part of the best of all trips.
Written November 16, 2006
