Where in the world? Currently, Amman, Jordan! Sun has just gone down and the minarets are lit up like Christmas lights. Break of fast has just happened (it's 8.15pm) and people are spilling into restaurants. We just had cool pastries for dinner. We're in Amman for half a day. Bumped in at 3pm, crawled into the city centre in traffic where lanes were optional. The place has history everywhere you look, from the Roman forum to the temple of Hercules (150ish AD) and the added on mosque (500ish AD). The girls were confronted at first, but relaxed when they realised that the people are very friendly.
This is blog 1 of probably 52 weekly blogs, following the Carolin-Vandenbergs as they embark on a year long trip around the world. It's the desire to be fearless, and see things they've never seen before. There's also a bit of a hope that the girls will not be telling it to a psychiatrist in twenty years time.
So far, in nine days, there's been five flights, four changes of time zone, and five countries.
Singapore was first stop, and we were immediately confronted by the humidity, the efficiency and the friendliness of the people - things that remained with us throughout the stay.
Jurong Bird Park had an amazing array of birds, including toucans, macaws and I got to hold an owl!
The zoo was the best I've been to, and seemed very "enclosure optional", with a lot of animals out of their cages and able to roam around. There were white tigers, white rhinos...white animals were popular. There was a bit of elephant riding.
One day we went to Gardens by the Bay. It's a fairly new exhibit but had the most amazing indoor waterfall and tropical garden growing around it where you could tree top walk around.
At night the man made trees glowed and sparkled.
We checked out the Marina Sands Hotel. One of the more confronting things I've seen! Especially when they are cleaning the windows. We had a cocktail up the top
The public transport was amazing. Clean and punctual, (and if you missed a train, you'd have to wait a whole three minutes!). All the lines interwove, unlike the spider like map that Melbourne has where all roads (well, tracks) lead to Flinders Street! And the people were so friendly (yes I know it's a cliche, but its true). Several times people took pity on a confused foursome and gave up seats, helped us with bags and generally chatted because they wanted to.
On the final day, after lightning shut down the water park we went to, we jumped on a plane to KL, walked on another plane straight away to Amman (via Thailand), staggered on another and finally collapsed in Dubai!
Oh, how I would love to say it was worth all the jet lag and stringing the kids out more than we should have. It was hot, or to put it another way, it was ?&$/!!ing HOT. It really didn't drop below 35...ever! It was often mid-40s. And Ramadan put a lot of restrictions on what we could do...and when to eat. It was almost post-apocalyptic during the day.
Highlight for me (girls will say Wild Wadi Water Park...where the watersides went upwards!!) was a 4wd dune "bash", culminating in a desert feast, camel riding, sheesh pipe smoking (legal stuff, mm grapey...at least I know what they do at that Broadmeadows restaurant now), falcon holding and henna painting (which are still on renae and the girls hands as I write five days later!!) Heres some pictures!!
There is building everywhere in Dubai, it is nothing like it was 10 years ago...which was flat! There's a sense of oneupmanship in the building. The Burg Khalifa is huge and pointy, but there will be another huge and pointy building to surpass it in no time. That made it a bit soulless for me.
We leave early tomorrow through the honking and backfiring, to DEUTCHLAND (Frankfurt) and I'll add pics of Amman. So till next week...
Bye from the EUROPEANCARAVANS
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