Jordan, here we come! First stop: Aqaba
After spending 8.5 hours on a packed ferry (which was only supposed to take 3 hours) we finally arrived in Aqaba, Jordan. Unfortunately, our first day there Anthony caught something nasty and wasn’t feeling to well so we ended up staying a little longer than planned 🙂
Since Anthony was sick, we spent a good amount of time watching more of what we’ve now started calling “America’s Straight-to-Asia” movies (ie. American movies that we’ve never heard of, starring more famous actors and actresses you could shake a stick at, that probably never even made it to video in the USA and instead went straight to cable in Asia). I spent much of the rest of the time walking around Aqaba on my own and eating these incredible “potato spicy” pastries (as the local baker informed me they were called) that were something like an oven-backed perogie with red chilis inside….INCREDIBLE. They were so good, it’s all I ate 3 days straight while Anthony was bed-ridden.
Aqaba is a small port city in Jordan right on the Red Sea, a stone’s throw away across the water from Israel. Walking around, I found that it has distinctly different sections – the two that stood out the most were the newly developed tourist resort area and the more local market area where we were staying. The city is known as a beach and diving town, though I wouldn’t give it too much credit for the quality of the beaches. There was a good amount of motorboat and falucca traffic right along the beach area leaving swirly hues of motor oil on the water’s surface and many boats anchored only about 15 meters from shore as well. There was not much beach area as the sand extended only about 7 meters from the water. What was most fascinating about the public beach in Aqaba was that the majority of the people in the water were men in normal beach attire (though some in tshirts and shorts). The few women there were still fully-clothed and covered from head-to-toe regardless of whether the stayed in or out of the water. Seeing this, I understood why most of the guidebooks cautioned that female tourists may feel very uncomfortable prancing around in a bikini at the public beaches in Aqaba.
Many of the guidebooks say that Jordan is more conservative than Cairo. We found that the Jordanians were much more reserved and less aggressive than the Egyptians were. The people were much less intrusive and didn’t pester you to try to sell you things – a stark contrast to the Egyptians. The Jordanians we met were pleasant, friendly, polite and very hospitable. That being said, I noticed more women without their hair covered and wearing much tighter, revealing, and less conservative clothing in Aqaba than anywhere in Egypt. It was interesting to see women on the street fully covered from head-to-toe walking by the bizarre where some of the stalls had a smorgasboard of g-strings and thongs for sale.
When Anthony finally recovered, we spent a day diving, did our first wreck dive, saw the most incredible collection of hard and soft coral that we’ve ever seen along with our first Napoleon fish. Anthony’s recovery also conveniently coincided with the semifinals of the Champions League soccer, which we had a great time watching with the locals at a cafe in town. The cafe put up a projection screen and packed chairs on the sidewalk for the patrons to drink coffee, smoke hookahs, and cheer on their fave European teams – there was tons of testosterone in the air, especially given that the only women in attendence amongst the crowd of fans were myself and the two waitresses.
Feeling very very well-rested and recuperated, we left Aqaba and headed north, excited to start our tour of Jordan.
-Shan
Tags: Aqaba, Jordan, Middle East, Travel
Shan
May 6th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
What a Jordan experience, you have to take me next time and ride a camel, but,well, we have those at the Iowa State Fair in Augost.
big kiss
Mom