Met with a chorus of groans

I was the only foreigner on the bus to Palmyra and I really started to feel my appalling lack of Arabic. The entire bus ticket was in arabic so I just showed it to every person I saw and said "Palmyra?" repeatedly until someone showed me to my bus. Some lovely ladies on the bus happily showed me to my seat and even let me hold their small children for a short while. I then got out my phrase book and spent the remaining 40 minutes until the bus left partaking in complex and sophisticated communication that resulted in an exchange of nationalities, names and destinations. I was most proud of figuring out how to say "Your baby, beautiful" but I don't think my language skills are quite up to diplomatic levels just yet.

When the bus finally started moving a guy came round to check our tickets. He was most displeased with mine and I thought I was on the wrong bus until he repeated "police" and mimed stamping my ticket several times. I just shrugged and then he indicated I should follow him off the bus. It turned out that I had neglected to get my ticket stamped by a police officer and a young boy was instructed to accompany me to get this rectified before the bus left. My bus had already started driving slowly off through the depot at this point and I was pretty worried that my big pack was off to Palmyra without me. We had been told to run so we took off weaving through several hundred buses in the depot and after 5 minutes came to an abrupt halt. Thank god I had my young guide with me because how on earth anyone was supposed to identify the rather non-descript man sitting at a table in front of us as I policeman was beyond me. Anyway he roughly stamped my ticket so it now had a blue smudge on it and we took off again to find the bus. The driver seemed very happy with my blue smudge and soon we were heading off through the desert towards Palmyra.

The ruins at Palmyra stretch over an impressively large area and there is no better way to take in the scope and beauty of the sight than by visiting the citadel, high on the hill, at sunset. You can see the vast expanse of sandy desert, the nearby valley dotted with tombs, the long colannaded street of the roman ruins with the Temple of Bel and the palm groves stretching out in the far distance. The situation in Syria has meant that many tourists have left the country and no where has this been more apparent than at locations that only exist to service tourists, like Palmyra. At the citadel I met the most persistent souvenir sellers I have encountered thus far in the middle east. My frequent repetition of "La, shukran" (no thankyou) was met with cries of "No tourists for 5 days" and "Why you not buy? Because I am Bedouin?".

By far the highlight of my time in Palmyra was the excellent company I had from my fellow guests and the host at the Al Faris hotel. The guests were a young frenchman who was living in Latakia with his wife, an older french couple (who are the frenchman's parents in law) and the lovely latvian Kristine and her czech partner Jan (diplomats living in Brussels). The hotel was a recommendation from Barbara and its location, directly opposite the ruins on the road that lead to the citadel, could not have been more perfect. We shared breakfasts and dinners sitting at the communal table in the front garden and enjoyed the entertaining company of our host Mohammed almost as much as his mother's outstanding cooking.

After dinner each night, we relaxed with glasses of arak while Mohammed tried to teach us rude words in arabic and would always challenge any females present to play the coin game with him. The loser of the game would have to dance on the table, which was why our host only ever wanted to play against the females. Mohammed would fold a tissue and place it over the top of a glass. He would then place a coin in the middle of the tissue. The players had to take turns using a cigarette to burn small holes in the tissue, and the loser was the player who made the burn that caused the coin to fall through the tissue into the glass. The quality of a particular game was judged by how many cigarettes were used before the coin fell. The game is very entertaining as it progresses and the players take longer and longer to decide where to place their burns. In the final stages when the coin is held aloft by a few tiny shreds of tissue each new burn is met with "oooohhh"'s and "aahhhh"s from the spectators. I played the first night and won - and despite much protesting Mohammed did not dance on the table (he promised to do so the following night). Kristine lost her match the following night but in the end we all got up and had a great time dancing in the lounge inside the hotel.

The upside of the lack of tourists was that when I set out to explore the vast ruins the second day, I had large sections of the site completely to myself for half hour stretches of time. Palmyra is certainly the largest area of roman ruins I have seen so far, and their location, rising out of the desert next to an oasis, lends them an eerie atmosphere of a city abandoned. I've discovered that whilst I find deserts interesting places to visit, I start to feel a bit unsettled if I'm there for more than a couple of days. Something about the vast emptiness, quiet and lack of greenery unnerves me a bit - and so whilst I was sad to say goodbye to Kristine and Jan, I was quite happy to make my way to Hama after 3 days at Palmyra.

Given that most of the large demonstrations, and subsequent troubles, occur after midday prayers on Fridays - I had planned to arrive in Hama on Thursday, buy some supplies, and hole up in the my hotel for much of Friday. The Riad hotel was the perfect place to execute my plan as it is run by the very outgoing Abdullah (whose Aussie accent is so good I thought he was from Australia) and I managed to get a cheap room with a TV there.

In the end I joined an early tour to the majestic Crac des Chevaliers on Friday and spent a lovely morning exploring the crusader castle and enjoying the spectacular views from its ramparts in the company of a japanese backpacker, an energetic German lady called Irene and a surly South African guy. The South African had been living in the UK and was so overwhelmingly negative and pesimistic that he provided much entertainment for Irene and myself throughout the morning.  Some of  Mr Wet Blanket's pearls of wisdom were:
"I HATE the English. They are all so spoilt"
"Don't bother going to the Dead Cities - they're lame"
and upon hearing from our driver that we would have two hours to explore the Crac des Chevaliers, "Oh really?! (Sigh) I won't need more than 10 minutes."
Of course he was the last of us back to the car after more than two hours and Irene couldn't help but comment, "Gee, that was a long ten minutes!"

We got back to Hama just before midday and the streets were so deserted that I half expected to see tumbleweed. Thankfully there were no serious clashes on that Friday and I had a very pleasant afternoon enjoying a picnic of bananas, nuts and chocolate on my bed as I watched the Royal Wedding on BBC World.

In the days that followed I relaxed walking by the river and sitting in the lovely gardens in the centre of Hama. Everywhere I went I was met with a chorus of groans from the many norias (giant wooden water wheels) that line the river in, and around Hama. The norias still operating in Hama date back to the 12th century but in the museum I saw a mosaic from the 4th century which depicted a water wheel - so it seems as though they have been a feature of the region for quite some time. The mournful groaning sound comes from the friction between the wooden wheels and the blocks they are mounted on and my favourite times of day occurred when the groans from the norias battled for supremacy with the calls to prayer from the local mosques. The largest of the norias is more than 20m in diameter and on warm days I saw that the cool water and the thrilling height lured a few local teenage boys who climbed into the wheels, rode around to the top and jumped off into the river.

While based in Hama I also took a day trip to visit the citadel of Shayzar, Apamea, the dead cities of Al-Bara and Serjilla as well as the mosaic museum. Given my usual snail pace for sight seeing (visit a single sight, then rest up for 3 days) this schedule was a bit full on for me but in the end price and convenience won me over and I joined the tour with two swiss ladies and a russian gentleman.

Prior to getting in the car that day, I had not even heard of the citadel of Shayzar and was rather shocked to see how gorgeous the remains of this 10th century fortification were. The citadel is perched on a rocky hill and towers over a small town on one side and a stunning river gorge on the other. The ruins were covered in wildflowers and the surrounding landscape, not to mention the presence of thousands of flowers that bore an uncanny resemblance to the scottish thistle, brought back wonderful memories of the highlands.

The scenery at Apamea was no less striking, as these roman ruins are located high on a grassy moor. On the day we visited we had the entire 2km of Apamea's cardo (colonnaded main street) to ourselves. Looking out through the columns at a sea of red poppies in the surrounding fields was a sight that will stay with me always. Contrary to the surly South African's prediction, I also loved wandering around the abandoned buildings and tombs of Serjilla and Al-Bara. I loved that the ancient tombs were dotted around rocky olive groves, vinyards and apricot plantations. The houses, inns and hammams in Serjilla are in remarkably good condition given that they haven't been inhabited for some 15 centuries! Our only company at the site was a local family and, after hearing where I was from, the father took great delight in getting his children to show off their English to me by reciting the alphabet and counting to 10 several times each. My clapping seemed to extend the performance, rather than end it, and I'm not sure how I would have made a polite exist had our driver not started honking the horn indicating that it was time to leave.

Our last stop for the day was the mosaic museum and it did not disappoint. I was particularly taken with an enormous animal scene mosaic, in which the animals all had very detailed facial expressions. Being able to clearly depict a look of utter defeat on the face of an ox, using only the medium of tile, must be a rare gift for an artist. As with the last three museums I have visited, we had the place to ourselves which meant that each room had to be unlocked and the lights turned on before we could enter. My visit to the museum in Hama had obviously interrupted someone's morning tea as turing my head, even momentarily, away from a particular display resulted in the lights being immediately turned off by the impatient curator at the door!

Would you like salt with that?

I continued my exploration of downtown Amman by visiting the Roman Theatre on Sunday. The theatre was built in the 2nd century AD and was cut into the northern side of one of Amman's many hills. I had seen the theatre from the citadel, but did not really appreciate its immense size until I was standing on the stage looking up at the endless tiers of seating in front of me. To give you an idea of the size, the theatre can seat 6000 people and to say that the tiers of seating are steep is like saying that Gaddafi is not the nicest man in the world.

(By the way if you want a fun challenge check out the vlogbrothers video called "Sheen or Gaddafi?" in which you have to decide whether various insane ramblings were said by Charlie Sheen or Gaddafi - harder to pick than you'd think! http://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers#p/u/4/WsiYvcn8oZw)

I saw that other people had scaled the tiers right up to the top so I elected to do the same. Going up the first 50 or so crumbling steps was not so bad. Then I made the mistake of looking down and though I continued on, determined to reach the top, I noticed that my legs had begun to stage their own protest by getting a bad case of the wobbles. I learnt from my mistake and did not look down again until I reached the top - all the while trying to block out the nagging thought that the trip back down was going to be terrifying.

Now contrary to Mum's beliefs, I don't think I have a fear of heights. I'm fine on aeroplanes, tall buildings and can hadle centrepoint tower with no problems. I think what I have is a healthy self preservation instinct, that is a fear of falling to my death from a great height.

Anyway, I got to the top and shakily turned around to face the stage and sat down.
I almost immediately very nearly brought up my breakfast.

I tried to enjoy the sweeping views of Amman - but it was like being perched on the very edge of a cliff. Thank god my camera has an anti-shake feature. I took a few shots of the scenery and quick one of myself (in which I have a smile so tense you would think that someone has a gun to my back!) to prove I climbed up there - before I begun the excruciating task of carefully side stepping back down to the bottom. Once I was on safe ground, I was pleased to see all the other tourists were side stepping down just as gingerly as I had - and a few also looked a bit green around the gills. In this part of the world I expect to come across quite a few more old Roman theatres - but I think in future I may be able to appreciate the awesome feats of engineering better from the stage :-)

On Monday I took public transport to go on a day trip to the lovely town of Madaba - about 45 min out of Amman. It was great to get out of Amman and enjoy the lovely scenery as we drove past grove after grove of olive trees. Madaba is renown for its amzing collection of mosaics dating back to 560 AD and has the added bonus of being small enough that you can walk to every site. I was initially consulting my map quite a bit until I realised that the easiest way to know how close you were to another site was to look at the concentration of souvenir shops on any given street.

The most famous site in Madaba is the mosaic map of Palestine currently housed in the Greek Orthodox church of St George, which was built over the remains of an earlier Byzantine church. The orginal map measured 16 x 6 metres and was made from 2 million stone tiles. They estimate it probably took 6 years to put together. The map is remarkably geographically accurate and you can still see Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, the River Jordan, Jericho, Hebron as well as The Nile Delta in Egypt. I spent about an hour looking at the map - but I should say about 45 minutes of that time was spent sitting back as another bus load of tourists bustled in and pushed to the front. I would dart foward for a quick look between each new busload. Those Japanese know how to run a tour don't they? Matching jackets, caps and head sets to hear the Japanese translation of what the local guide was saying in English -very impressive. My favourite part of the map was the fish swimming up the Jordan River away from the toxic salt levels in the Dead Sea.

Speaking of the Dead Sea, Tuesday saw me set off on a day trip tour to Mt Nebo, the Dead Sea and Bethany-beyond-the-jordan (the baptism site of Jesus). My companions for the day were our ever-smiling driver Hani, two Phillipino flight attendants and an older know it all American who used to work for an American oil company in the Middle East more than 25 years ago. Joanne and Nikki (the flight attendants) spent much of the car trip re-applying make up - which I found endlessly amusing - and Tom (the American) spent much of the trip delivering his pearls of wisdom relating to middle eastern politics in a most patronising tone. I usually interrupted his rants by leaning forward and asking Hani yet another question about the local area (why are there so many bridal dress shops in Madaba?) which he answered with endless patience.

I found my reaction to the biblical sites of Mt Nebo (place where God showed Moses the promised land before he died) and Bethany-beyond-the-jordan a bit strange. I thought, even as a lapsed catholic, I would find them a bit moving but I felt none of the historical significance whilst there. I found the sites more interesting for their geographic and political significance than for any religious connotations.

Mt Nebo was windy, crawling with more busloads of tourists but afforded excellent views of the region. The baptism site, now just a stagnant puddle as the river has changed its course over the last 2000 years, is located in a military zone as the jordan river forms the border between Jordan and Israel. The river, which used to be a mighty 60 metres across, is now a depressing 3-4m wide creek. I asked our guide what the cause of the drop in water level was and he smiled and said "we have lovely neighbours". He went on to explain that both Israel and Syria have built dams further upstream.

On reflection I think my reaction to these biblical sites has much to do with my reaction to the bible stories in which I first heard of them. As a child I suppose I viewed the bible stories as (apologies if I offend anyone) mythic tales. Jesus walking on water - to me occurred in a magical place - not a real location on the other side of the world. And naturally enough the brown waters of the River Jordan and the windy peak of Mt Nebo - though interesting - did not seem magical to me.

Anyway, for me the real highlight of the day was visiting the Dead Sea. As we drove down through the rocky desert landscape from Mt Nebo we would catch glimpses of the sparkling aqua blue water and I could feel my excitement building. It is a stunningly beautiful part of the world.

The only way to swim in the Dead Sea is pay to go to a "beach" which is more like a resort with swimming pools, good shower facilities and many refreshments on sale. We went to the cheapest beach, Amman Beach - though cheapest is a relative term as it still cost 15 JD to enter. The pools looked lovely but as soon as we got changed we all headed down the steps to the Dead Sea. My flight attendant companions were dressed in the tiniest of bikinis and I looked positively victorian covered as I was from neck to knee in my rash top and board shorts.

The beach is made up of brown dirt dotted with plastic chairs and the aqua water is dotted with buoyant tourists. The incredibly high salt levels mean that it is difficult not to float in the Dead Sea. Even you Dad, would float here! Though it allowed me to tick off one item on my "bucket list" - it seems as though god doesn't really want you to swim in the Dead Sea. To get beyond ankle deep water you have to clamber over small, sharp and very slippery rocks. This inevitably leads to small cuts and grazes if you're lucky, and a badly sprained ankle if you are not. I was lucky and soon knew I had acquired many small cuts and grazes as the salt was literally added to the wound!!

So with stinging ankles I floated on my stomach, on my back, and standing up in the Dead Sea. It was fun for a while but after a small wave meant that I got some water in my eyes and on my lips I realised that they really were not exaggerating about the salt levels. I soon headed back to shore and again marvelled that there is no way to leave the Dead Sea in a dignified manner. I joined other tourists around me gingerly crawling in low squats through the rocks back to the safety of the brown dirt and plastic chairs.

Joanne and Nikki wanted to pay another 3JD to have some Dead Sea mud smeared on their faces and bodies. I felt, as I watched tourist after tourist ascend the stairs to the showers looking like racially offensive cabaret performers from the deep south with their black faces, that the Jordanians may have been having a bit of fun with the tourists whilst making sizable profits.

My skin did not seem to like the cleansing properties of the salt water. By the time I got back to my plastic chair my face looked like I had invested in a chemical peel. I had gathered my belongings and was headed back across the dirt when my foot went through the sand and I found myself falling up to mid thigh in the dirt. As other concerned tourists asked if I was OK I found myself laughing hysterically. I scrambled in the dirt to find my lost thong and a lovely old lady asked with real worry in her voice "are you SURE you are ok?".

I think she was relieved when I smiled up at her, covered in an attractive mixture of salt and dirt and said, "I'm better than OK. How many other people here can say that they got a Dead Sea pedicure for free?"