I been unable to upload photos since I sent my laptop back to the states with my mom a couple weeks ago. They will come at some point, probably long after everyone has lost interest in my travels. In the mean time, I will retrace the many steps that make up the last 26 days. As a sidenote, I miss working on photos very much but it has definitely been a relief not to have it, less weight to carry and less worrying about theft, loss or damage. In the mean time I have this little Dell ‘hackintosh’, a 11 inch netbook which has a hacked version of Mac OSX installed on it. It has worked out very well for surfing the internet and archiving photos. It would be perfect if it had a great screen and trackpad, but what can you expect for less than $300? If only Apple saw potential in the demographic of hipster blogger backpackers.
May 1st - May 10th Egypt
I toured Egypt with my mom. We started in Luxor, then went to Edfu, Kom Ombo, Aswan, Abu Simbel, and Cairo. I finally saw the Giza Plateau, where the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx live, and went to the Egyptian Museum.
May 11th - May 14 Beirut, Lebanon.
I stayed one of the two budget options listed in the Lonely Planet. It was cheap and I met some nice people there. The rooms and bathrooms left much to be desires, but for $10/night in an expensive city I can’t really complain. While in Beirut I tried to ‘do’ as little as possible as I was exhausted from a whirlwind 9 day Egypt tour. The first day I walked the Corniche and saw the Pigeon Rocks. It was great to see the Mediterranean after so much desert.
I experienced a bit of culture shock seeing clean newly paved roads and cars that are from this decade. It became very quickly apparent that Beirutis love European luxury cars. When I crossed a street and realized that crossing signals are few and far between and mostly useless, and my culture shock faded a bit. The constructing going on all over the city is for the most part really boring high end hotels, condos, a marina, and luxury shopping. I hope that Beirut doesn’t loose its identity and become like every other place. It would be a shame for it to loose its diversity and become all Bulgari and Intercontinental. I was struck by how small it is, coming from New York and most recently, Cairo. I could see that being a threat.
May 15th Baalbek, Lebanon.
Baalbek is in the Bekka valley, about 2 hours from Beirut. Baalbek has some very impressive Roman ruins. I guess some of the best preserved ruins anywhere. I thought I was completely sick of archaeology but the site was very beautiful, and it wasn’t Egyptian, so that was exciting! The town is the administrative capital of Hezbollah. It wasn’t overly evident there besides posters and banners, plus at the site a guy selling Hezbollah t-shirts, which I thought was kind of confusing (I couldn’t figure out if it was supposed to be ironic? I don’t see there being a huge overlap between Hezbollah supporters and antiquities tourists).
May 16th Baalbek to Damascus, Syria.
Spent most of the day in transit, waiting at the border for my Syria visa to be approved.
May 17th - May 19th Damascus
A lot of walking around the Old City, visited the Umayyad Mosque, Azem Paace, many hours of walking through the souq, did a fair amount of window shopping and some real shopping. The Old City is from the Middle Ages, a lot of the streets are too narrow for cars, and stop or turn abruptly. It was nice to wander around without a map, never needing to know where I was or where I was headed. I stayed at the Al Haramain Hotel which is an 18th century (I could be off by 100 years or so, but in the Middle East that’s not much) house converted into a hotel/hostel. Aside from a couple quirks (like the availability of electrical outlets, or the tiny communal bathroom built into the underside of the staircase) it was a great.
May 20th Palmyra, Syria
I took a 4 hour bus from Damascus to Palmyra where there are Roman ruins which are supposed to be Syria’s biggest attraction. They were impressive but I was completely sick of archaeology and found the town to be kind of creepy, in the post-apocalyptic ghost town sense. Palmyra is a desert oasis and in being so is very isolated from the rest of Syria. If a lot of tourists visit there I didn’t see them - I saw maybe 10 other travelers total staying in the town and one tour bus make a quick stop at the site, which is nothing seeing as everything I saw was based on the tourism economy. I’m guessing there is a flood of people on tour buses during the middle of the day but that doesn’t explain the number of nearly empty hotels. It was depressing and stands out as the only place I regret visiting.
May 21st - May 22nd Aleppo, Syria
Took the first bus I could get to Homs from Palmyra, from which I transferred to an Aleppo-bound bus. I got to Aleppo in time to walk around, find a place to stay and get my barring. The next day I spent in the souq, the Old City and the Citadel. The Citadel has an amazing view over the city, and is generally a fun place to hang out for a couple hours. The souq is like a crazy labyrinth of fabric shops and spice shops and everything else you expect to see in a souq and mainly devoid of products catered towards tourists. From there I took the train to a 4 hour and roughly $4 very comfortable train ride to Damascus.
May 23rd Damascus
May 24th Damascus - Aqaba, Jordan
I started in a shared taxi from Damascus to Amman, the capital of Jordan, roughly located in the middle of the country. It was a 3 hour ride that included helping the driver smuggle in extra duty free cigarettes, which according to Lonely Planet is standard fare. From Amman I switched to a bus to Aqaba, the farthest city south in Jordan occupying a narrow strip of land bordered by Israel and Saudi Arabia.
May 25th Aqaba - Dahab, Egypt
After reading that there was a 9am bus to Dahab from Taba, the first city after crossing the border into Egypt, I began the day at 6am, intent on getting to the Arava (Jordan/Israel) border at 6:30am when it opens. I read online that a lot of people are interrogated there for up to a few hours if they have been in any suspicious places such as Lebanon and Syria. I lucked out and got through the border in less than half an hour. From there I took a taxi across Eilat, Israel to the Egyptian frontier Taba crossing. With little trouble I was in Egypt by 8am. Unfortunately for me the bus I had read about on several websites doesn’t seem to exist in reality, and the soonest bus was 3pm. So my plan to be in the Red Sea by lunchtime didn’t pan out. A taxi from Taba to Dahab was very expensive so I decided to wait it out. I got a ride to Nuweiba bus station and waited from there, I hoped that there would be a sooner bus but there wasn’t.
May 26th - Present Dahab at last!
Dahab is a divers’ mecca and known as a backpacker town. It has become more upscale in recent years but is still pretty laid back besides the pushy salesmen typical to Egypt. Now I have a few more days in Egypt to do as little as possible except snorkel and make a trip to Mt. Sinai before I make my way to Cairo to return to NYC.
