Pornography & John McClane

We have just returned from Petra, a world wonder near the town Wadi Mousa in Jordan. We spent 10 hours walking an entire city of ruins and canyons, climbing up to the peaks of the highest canyons we saw and trekking over endless stretches of desert and rocky mountains around the ruins. The day was undoubtedly one of the greatest of my life. The wonders we saw, the views from the tops and a few mad events made Petra a wonderful memory. We rode donkeys up steep cliffs, camels over desert roads past countless 1800 year old ruins and monuments carved into huge canyons, ate some Bedouin womans lunch and canned tuna on a high peak called the View of Sacrifice. It is impossible to describe teh day in any real detail because of its wonders and so my only advice is for you to go there, and spend more time than we did.
We stayed at Cleopatra Hotel were the motto is, enter a stranger, leave a friend. There is no debating that. As soon as we checked in we were seated in a comfortable lounge and asked if we wanted any thing to drink. The only TV in the hotel was there along with access to internet and so in that homely living room we met other travelers and talked with the family that runs the hotel. The rooms were not expensive and clean and the hotel provided a ride to Petra. Five pluses in my carnet, my personal favourite this journey.
Downstairs in the living room we met some Irish girls and a Canadian guy who we later hiked with the following day in Petra. A v. nice guy working in Qatar, good photographer and a formidable co-adventurer.
Today we left early to Amman, a three hour bus ride made easy with a thousand an one nights to read. Came back to the Hotel we had been in before to find out we weren't in a private room anymore but sharing with two others. They later turned out to be two good travelers like ourselves, one remarkably on a similar path... we saw him in Aqaba, here and although his journey slightly deviates from ours he is leaving for Bangkok two days after us to explore all the same countries we are. Good stuff.
Before I end this brief post I must tell you about our trip to the cinema. We were a little tired from the long walk in Petra yesterday and found it fit to go to a cinema for an hour and half just to recharge some batteries before dinner. We came to a little corner entrance and asked what they were playing. They seemed troubled and so I suggested Die Hard 4.0, they mumbled something in arabic and then said 'ok no problem, we show you die hard at four, one dinar (1 euro) each'. We came back at eight only to find some silent movie to be playing and then to our astonishment, some hardcore porn. I asked the man what was going on, he asked me to 'wait one minute sir, action soon' Then, in the middle of a scene that need not be described, there appeared an eject sign on the screen, some noise and finally the starting credits of Die Hard. We sat down on some wooden seats and lit ourselves a cigarette, not because of our rebellious nature but because everyone was smoking and we had never smoked in a cinema before, so we lit up despite feeling no real need to smoke. After all here in the Middle east we have smoked in hotels, immigration offices, aquariums, McDonalds (went in just to smoke) and a dozen other fun places, including a pharmacy but guilt got the better of me and so we left. Anyway, the movie was about half way gone when the cursed eject sign appeared again and the screen was lit up with more hardcore porn. We began yelling at the man who had showed us to our seats and asked for an explanation. He told us to be patient, the porn would only be for ten-twenty minutes and then we could resume Die Hard. Its not that sleeping in the same room has ruined our appetite for the female form in all its glory, rather amplified it I think, but we are men of morals and enduring pornography on the big screen surrounded by arab 'porn connoisseurs' didn't sound like what we wanted to do. Just before exiting the cinema, we realized than in these lands of haggling, we should ask for our money back, or at least half of it. After some good haggling we got half of our dinar back, and so that experience whether it be qualified as good or bad cost us 50 kr/cents.
I still love the middle east

Behave, Ill write some more soon!

Love

Rutur