Skip to main content

Palmyra

The bus dropped me off 2km the wrong side of town. The usually scrap over my bag ensued but this time I won and stormed off before any taxi drivers could kidnap me. After this the hotel touts tried there luck. Just say la shukran and keep walking. Then it was the kids. They worked in packs. While one was begging for money pretending (very poorly) to be sick, another was reaching in to your pockets while another was trying to unzip your bags. This continued until i got to my hotel and the owner chased them off.

Ancient Palmyra must have once been a spectacular city but after an earthquake a 1000 years ago all that remain are a few temples and quite a few columns. If this was anywhere else it would be packed with tourists. But as it is there were only a few dozen other people around. For every one tourist there must have been ten locals trying to sell posts cards or tours or camel rides or taxi's or just asking for money. The youngest of the postcard salesman must not have been a day over two. I guess teenagers just don't have the selling power.

The town itself was just like any tourist resort in Turkey. Everyone talking to you telling you how good their restaurant/store/tour was. It was also more expensive then anywhere else. After seeing the ruins and the citadel nearby I couldn't wait to leave.

cheers,
Scott.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zabid

There's nothing like a big travel bag to attract anyone in sight who speaks English. This guy was a teacher keen to ask me about Australia. Like most who asked he couldn't believe that Australia only had 20 million people. He bought me a juice, helped me find the taxi stand for Zabid, asked if there was anything else he could do for me and went on his way. The drive to Zabid was another of those 'anywhere to Port Augusta' drives. The hotel was pretty basic and was the first on this trip to have the cold water only shower directly above the squat toilet. Zabid is the second UNESCO world heritage site in Yemen but walking around the streets you wouldn't guess it. So this was one those occasions I was glad to have a guides approach me. Again with the 'ask you like' payment. I knew where it would end but atleast it would work in my favour. With a guide you got to see inside some of the court yards and they were truly impressive. You even got to see inside some o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hamburg

Its hard not to say how much I liked about Hamburg without contradicting what I said about Denmark. It had the bars and clubs, but it also had graffiti on the walls and dog shit on the street. It had a buzz to it. And strange things happened. Among other things, I was in a net cafe near my hostel when i got a tap on the shoulder. Turn around there's a bloke I had met in Jordan 4 months earlier. Creepy. Turns out he had just flown in for the weekend to meet someone he met randomly in Poland. I could have just as easily been in Bergen. Other than catching up with random friends I checked out a few of the museums and churchs around town. Highlight was probably the History of Hamburg museum which had more model cityscapes, planes, boats and trains than a boy at heart could poke a stick at. I got lost looking around a harbour that seemed bigger than the rest of the city. I also found myself in the middle of a joke when two germans, two indians and an Australian went out until dawn on t...
3 comments
Read more

Aden

I caught a shared taxi to Aden without hassle though again it stopped on the outskirts of Town. For the first time in Yemen I was mobbed by taxi drivers as I got out of the car. I played quiz show host trying to ascertain who was going to be the least hassle. The winner was a fraud. The only English he knew was "I know that Hotel, only 500 rials." He was also a liar. We had to stop twice for directions and he asked me for 'only' 2000 rials when we finally got there. I stayed at the Rambow Hotel. Named after the French poet Rimbaud not the fictional Vietnam Veteran Rambo. It might have been quite grand once but now you would say it had character. It wasn't too bad but became uncomfortably hot the second night when the electricity failed to kick/be turned on. Aden was a lot less interesting than I thought it would be. Once occupied by the British I was expecting they would have made left more of a mark on then town than a store that sold Argos products (seriously) a...
Post a Comment
Read more