From Annan to Amman

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  Amman, Jordan
Friday, June 20, 2008

Amman was another place I'd no real intention of coming to at the outset. The original plan was to travel overland from Shanghai to Newcastle: from Helsinki to Stockholm by ferry, a train via Oslo to Bergen, and a ferry from Bergen to Newcastle. Two things screwed this up: firstly the Bergen-Newcastle ferry only runs a couple of times a week so timing became an issue, and more importantly, I noticed that I had a flight left over on my Round the World ticket - I've come here because I can. 
In terms of air routes there were echoes of Rio/Sao Paulo though, which is how I ended up here in the first place. I  wanted to go to Syria and not to Jordan at all, but Syrian Airways isn't part of the OneWorld Alliance, Royal Jordanian is. So Finnair flew me from a rainy Helsinki down to Geneva, and Royal Jordanian took me on to Amman - via Zurich for God's sake (not mentioned anywhere until I got to the departure gate). This meant 14 hours travelling to cover the distance of what is essentially a 5 hour flight, ending up in a country I didn't really want to be in to begin with.
It wasn't really a great start, and my hotel didn't improve matters much (my fault, I was the one who booked the place). The Amman Regency Palace is one of those hotels that isn't content with the money that you've spent on the room, but would like to crowbar as much extra dosh out of you as possible while you are there.

View from my room, Amman

For example, many hotels (even the Lenin Hostel in Moscow) give free Internet access as a service to guests, but here they would like you to rent a laptop for around 50 Euros a day. Yeah, right - that's more money than the average Jordanian earns in a week. I also brought plenty of dirty laundry with me, hoping to get my washing done here but the price to wash just one shirt was was around 5 Euros. It isn't as though I don't have the money, but on principle I'm taking my laundry to Syria - they can bugger off.
Mary and I visited Southern Jordan last year, and I was quite taken with the country, so it wasn't too much of a hardship coming here again. There's plenty to see in the North of the country as well, including the Dead Sea, the Dana Nature Reserve and the Roman ruins at Jerash, but somehow I never quite got round to doing any of this at all. I've been travelling for a long time now, I'm tired, it's too hot, and frankly I just can't be arsed - cue three days sitting around the pool with the occasional foray into central Amman. Apart from a couple of fairly uninspiring Roman ruins, there's not much to see here at all. It's modern and bland.......but it could be the answer to an excellent quiz question.
The hotel continued to bug my for the whole of my stay. There are between 10 and 12 staff running the bar for instance, the majority of whose function I can only guess at as they spend all their time either talking to each other or staring into space. One character who I think may have been the bar manager paced continuously up and down shouting into his mobile phone (about the football I think).

Amman 1

So with a dozen staff to only four customers, why does it take over a quarter of a hour to get an overpriced beer? I tried spinning the situation with a) none of this really matters, b) it's a cultural thing c) I'm the one with the problem, etc. No matter what I tried, it didn't stop me growling.     
In another hotel down the road, I was privileged enough to see a couple of Jordanian wedding receptions whilst I was here. The formula seems to be the same each time, culminating in a parade into the dining room by the happy couple and their guests, which lasts for about 20 minutes. They are accompanied by an Arab band who dress identically, sing, bang their drums, and er......play the bagpipes. The first night it was charming, but by the second it was a bloody racket. And the definition of a gentleman? Someone who knows how to play the bagpipes, but doesn't......
When I said it was hot here, I wasn't joking. The temperature has been in the high 30 degrees C (about 100F) and even the Jordanians are starting to complain. It was nearly 30C at 07:30 on Friday morning, when I set off to buy my bus ticket to Damascus. At the bus station, 2 places were selling tickets (but not for the day I wanted), the other was closed. I did something I never do, which was get into a taxi with a guy who offered to help.
It was fine. He took me to a kosher place about 1km away, where I was sold a ticket for a very reasonable 7.5 Dinar. I gave Khaled (for that was his name) the change to share with the driver and we all went away delighted. It restored my faith in human nature a bit, and I started to remember why I liked the Jordanians so much the last time I was here. Unfortunately when I turned up for the coach at 6:30 on Saturday morning (as instructed), only to find that it didn't leave until 7:30......well I'm afraid I started to growl again.
.........and the quiz question? You can make it up yourself, but basically Amman is the original city of Philadelphia.

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Amman 2	Amman 3	Roman Amphitheatre, Amman	Downtown Amman
Downtown Amman 2	Downtown Amman 3	Mosque, downtown Amman

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