Amman & Jerash

We arrived in Amman, capitol of Jordan, at a reasonable time of the morning, having reached daylight waiting for our connecting flight in Dubai. The 3 hour flight from Dubai to Amman was incredible for the contrast between the deep blue of the Gulf of Oman and the yellow brown of the desert peninsula of Saudi Arabia. In fact, we saw no vegetation at all on the approach to Amman, other than a few green irrigation circles. Trees seriously struggle here, and while not really in the desert in this part of Jordan, the ground is very rocky and barren (seems to be all folded limestone), actually very much like the dry areas of south eastern Spain (which Kate visited in 2002). There are even many olive orchards, cypress and the same sort of gnarly pines.


Amman was a bit of a shock for us in that it was so different to any place we have ever travelled before and the differences were a little overwhelming on the first day. A lot of it is tiredness also, but it didn’t take too long to get the feel of the place, although we still find it tiring wandering the streets! The biggest challenge is the very frequent hassling by taxi drivers (particularly) and some shop owners just because you are foreigners. It’s interesting to see how much you are bugged compared to locals who are left pretty much totally alone. We have paid a bit more than the locals for the same services, even the local bus, but it’s not been too bad. There are many times where we could have paid much more if we hadn’t been firm and relatively on to it!

Our first day in Amman we spent the morning having a bit of a nap after our flight, then decided to head out for the afternoon to downtown Amman and The Citadel, a large complex of Roman ruins (built approximately during the 1st century, with a further Umayyad palace and Byzantine basilica from the 6th and 7th centuries) on top of Amman’s largest hill. We soon found that Amman is very hilly! It’s an amazing city of almost identical limestone and concrete block apartments all clambering on top of one another all over the hills. Would be very easy to get lost and confused in! We walked all the way from our accommodation into the downtown area, which was a real assault to the senses so we very much enjoyed the peace and quiet of wandering the Citadel complex in the late afternoon light. The complex has excellent views over the city so well worth it, even just for that! On our way back, we were getting a bit worried about food for dinner. It’s actually a bit hard to find restaurants – there are some stalls etc but rather hard to know what they’re selling and whether it’s ok to eat. We found this little place near the Citadel where this wonderfully friendly young guy made us a type of Jordanian BBQ. It’s a pita bread stuffed with meat, tomato, chillies, onions and spices, and thrown in a big oven – seriously yummy!

 The Temple of Hercules on The Citadel, Amman

 View over Amman from The Citadel

Yummy Jordanian food!

Today we visited the roman city of Jerash, about 50 km north of Amman. We took the local bus which was JD1 each, each way (about NZ$2), compared to taxis which are JD10-15 (NZ$20-30), although it took some convincing of the taxi drivers that we were going to take the bus! Jerash was amazing – much better than we had expected, though not sure what we did expect! We had a wonderful time exploring the ruins and it was surprisingly quiet. Tour groups seemed to come and go and certainly not as far into the city as we explored. The restoration work is really excellent and many of the buildings, roads and columns are being largely reconstructed from the rubble. They say that only about 10% of all the ruins have been excavated and that is certainly impressive. Highlights were the two roman theatres, the Temple of Zeus, Temple of Artemis and the beautiful paved and columned roads, where you can still see the grooves from the ancient chariot wheels. In its heyday, more than 15,000 people lived in the roman city.

 Walking down the Cardo Maximus

 The South Theatre

Temple of Artemis

All in all, we are glad that we are starting our trip here instead of Cairo as I think it gives us a more gentle start to a new culture and way of doing things. We are also really glad we had a couple of days here to try things ourselves and make our own way around, but it certainly is tiring and hard work so think the tour will give us a bit more time to relax in that respect.

We are just listening now to the most beautiful call to prayer we have ever heard. The beautiful blue King Abdullah Mosque is right across the road from our accommodation. We got woken up this morning at 4 am by his amazing singing – it brings a lump to your throat.

Haha, just met our tour leader, Scott, for the rest of our trip. Turns out he is from Christchurch, lived in Shirley, went to Banks Ave School and even had the same teachers as me!! Such a small world!

Phuket, Thailand

We arrived early morning in Phuket after 3 flights and a long wait overnight in Bangkok airport. This first day was a quiet one as we were pretty out of it for most of the day! Our accommodation in Phuket is Boomerang Village in Kata Beach. It has wonderful gardens, very friendly hosts and staff and lovely and quiet. The village is on the hill at the back overlooking Kata Beach. The first day we spent mostly at the swimming pool, trying our best to keep awake until night time so we could adjust to the new time zone better. We booked a trip for the following day out to the Phi Phi islands as the weather was supposed to be very good. Leaving early the next morning we all squeezed on to a large 3 engine speed boat with about 30 other people. This was a good indication of how busy this particular area of Thailand is! Our first stop was Maya Bay, the famous beach on Ko Phi Phi Lei that featured in the movie “The Beach”. Fantastic beach, pity about the hundreds of other people! Was literally pushing other boats out of the way to squeeze in at the beach and get onshore. We did kind of know it would be very busy but still something to keep in mind in future. Think if we went again it would be worth spending the night out on Ko Phi Phi Don to allow more time visiting Ko Phi Phi Lei and getting there outside the busy times. Because it’s reasonably far from Phuket, if you do it as a day trip, the only way is by speed boat but you still don’t get a lot of time to look around. Our next stop was around the other side of Ko Phi Phi Lei for a swim in a beautiful lagoon with steep sided limestone cliffs, before heading over to Ko Phi Phi Don, visiting a monkey beach and spending some time snorkelling on the reef, before having our included buffet lunch on the beach. Only time for a quick look around the shops and beach (were trying to head to the other beach on the other side of the sand isthmus but didn’t even have time to do that – had to turn back!) before we were off again to our final stop for the day at Khai Island. We spent the longest time here just relaxing and snorkelling. Lots and lots of fish, which was really neat, but getting quite murky water (as we were further north into Phang Nga Bay) and the coral is pretty average. Khai Island is a sea of umbrellas. Definitely could have spent more time at the Phi Phi Islands and less time there, but think that’s how the tours work with the companies getting more out of having everyone on a private island where they have business relationships with the vendors etc.

 Our accomodation, Boomerang Village, Kata Beach

 Maya Bay, Ko Phi Phi Lei

Ko Phi Phi Don

 Our next day was spent around Kata Beach, having a relaxing walk along the main Beach and over to Kata Noi, the smaller beach to the south. Kata Beach area is really beautiful and definitely the place to stay in Phuket, very quaint shops, beautiful sandy beach and great food. It’s also well known for the snorkelling around the headland between the two beaches. We are planning to do some of that today but the surf was up the other day so we just explored around then.

Yesterday we went on another tour and this one was much better than the Phi Phi Islands and an absolutely incredible area. We went up into Phang Nga province, just north of Phuket. Took about 2 hours to drive to the pier, but through fascinating countryside of rubber plantations and little villages. Our tour started off with sea canoeing though the caves and lagoons of Panak Island and Hong Island in the Phang Nga National Park area at the head of Phang Nga Bay. The limestone islands here are so impressive and we saw them on our approach by plane from the window – looks just like a drowned version of the limestone provinces in China. These great monoliths rising steeply from the sea – wonderful! We went first on Panak Island into a cave tunnel that we had to lie down in our canoes for that opened up into this little mangrove filled lagoon in the middle of the island, completely surrounded by towering vine covered cliffs. The lagoon on Hong Island was also spectacular, with many little caves to explore and a wonderful tall monolith guarding the entrance. Like with the Phi Phi tour there were many of us doing the same thing, but with us all on larger, slow boats and much mre room and time to spend, it was quite comfortable. We had a traffic jam in one of the tunnels in our sea canoes which was actually quite funny! Our next stop was a fairly brief visit to James Bond Island, or more correctly, Kao Tapu (means crab eye mountain – because it looks like a crab’s eye stalk!). Ridiculously busy again but ok! After that we had an excellent buffet meal lunch on board the boat while steaming off to our own private beach for a swim and some relaxing and canoeing. The rain set in big time at this point so we headed back in the rain to the pier and the long drive back to Kata Beach. A really great day out and well worth it!

 Mangrove Lagoon in Panak Island, Phang Nga Bay

 Hong Island, Phang Nga Bay

Kao Tapu aka James Bond Island, Phang Nga Bay

We are now just enjoying our last day in Thailand before heading to Amman this evening via Dubai. Had a look at the weather for Aswan just before, 39, 35, 34 and 37 degrees over the next four days – yikes! :)