Jordan
أنا من القمر – Jordan Pt 11 – Desert Castles
To the East Of Amman lays the great Eastern Desert which along with Jordans other desert areas make up 80% of the country yet support only 5% of its population, a fact it is easy to forget from the homely confines of the Canary Hotel in Amman.
أنا من القمر – Jordan Pt 10 – Death Of An Endangered Arabian Oryx From Eating Plastic Bags
أنا من القمر – Jordan Pt 9 – Wadi Rum
أنا من القمر – Jordan Pt 8 – Petra
I’ve seen some pretty amazing places in my life, places that have stopped me in my tracks as I stared slack jawed in amazement. Often the horribly overused word “awesome” escapes ones lips at these moments and yet there are few places that truly “inspire awe”.
Petra IS one of them.
أنا من القمر – Jordan Pt 7 – Amman to Petra on The Desert Highway
أنا من القمر – Jordan Pt 6 – The Dead Sea
Finally a post about my Jordan trip where I make it out of Amman! Only about an hour away though, Just as far as the lowest point on the Earth at 408m below sea level – The Dead Sea.
أنا من القمر – Jordan Pt 5 – Amman – The Canary Hotel
In my travels there are certain hotels, not the opulent and comfortable but ultimately faceless ones, but the cheaper more full of character ones, that have left an indelible impression on my memory, stories can be told (some not in polite company) about them and occasionally years later I wake up from a particularly vivid dream upset to find that I’m not in the hotel room I was dreaming of.
The “Navrang” in Delhi, The “Hotel California” in Khatmandu, “Thai Thai” guesthouse in Bangkok, The “Regale Internet Inn” in Lahore and The “Z hotel” in Puri to name just a few. The scenes of some of the greatest experiences and the best friendships of my life have begun in these places and many of them will remain with me till I make it to a rocking chair on a porch somewhere to reminisce.
Well now I have a new one to add to my list of places of which I sometimes dream.
I’m speaking of “The Canary Hotel” in Al Weibdeh, Amman, Jordan.
أنا من القمر – Jordan Pt 4 – Amman – “Innocence Of Muslims” film U.S. Embassy Protest Sep 14th 2012
Not content with nearly dying at The Australia vs. Jordan football game a few days before, when protests at the American made idiotic, offensive and inflamatory “Innocence Of Muslims” YouTube film erupted across the Muslim world, I thought…………
“Hey!, I’m in a Muslim country, why don’t I go down to the U.S. Embassy?”……..
أنا من القمر – Jordan Pt 3 – Amman – Australia vs. Jordan World Cup Qualifying Football Match – 12th Sept 2012
The day my wife left Amman was quite an emotional one, on the one hand I was sad to see her go (a few minutes sat on the steps of the hotel fighting back the tears, even though I’d see her again after only 2 weeks) and on the other hand that exhilerating sense of being alone in an unknown foreign country where all that there was was possibility.
Of course the possibility part is great but, it’s the alone part that doesn’t always suit (I’m a pretty social guy) so I wasted no time in inviting myself to sit with the table of westerners enjoying the warm evening in the front garden of The Canary Hotel later that day.
That one small act of pushy friendliness led to friendships that lasted the rest of my time in Jordan (and hopefully for long to come) and to some pretty crazy situations.
The first of which was the Australia vs. Jordan World Cup qualifying match attended by 16,000 people at the King Abdullah International Stadium in Al Qwaismeh, Amman.
أنا من القمر – Jordan Pt 2 – Amman – The People
Part 2 of the Jordan blog posts – Amman-The People
