From Damascus to Amman

We finished up level 2 of Arabic classes and headed to the Al-Samariyeh taxi/bus depot located in western Damascus. We got to the depot by hopping on a Samariyeh minibus, although the Duwar Shamaly service has gotten us there before just as well. Once at the depot, we made our way to the “back area” where there are buses and taxis to Lebanon and Jordan; this is the same area from where we got the bus to Beirut back in December. I had read up on some other travelers’ accounts of this journey — like this one and this one — and knew the price for a hired private car to Amman would be around 700 SYP ($15) per person.

That was indeed the figure that was screamed at us just after the metal detectors by a man who holding a semi-official looking clipboard and an ID of some sorts hanging around his neck. I was mentally prepared to attempt to negotiate the price down to 5-600, but the whole operation looked a little more organized that day than the previous times we’d been to this bus depot, so I gauged the 700 figure to be non-negotiable. Soon we were shuffled over to some cars where a second man popped out of nowhere yelling “MONEY? PASSPORT? MONEY? WELCOME!” at us, before a third man snatched our luggage and put it into the trunk. A fourth man, evidently the driver, coolly looked on until two others were recruited for this taxi ride. With the car now full — four passengers plus driver — we were soon on our way. I fully agree with Wade when says:

Nonsensical dealings and lies are just a part taking a taxi. If I do not want a headache, I should just expect the taxi men to work something out between themselves in their own way. I will never know the inner workings of the taxi mafia, and I have no need to figure it out.

Rest area near the border with Jordan

At the Syria-Jordan border
The border crossing into Jordan from Syria was remarkably quick considering a) what horror stories I’d read online, and b) our experience at the Syrian-Lebanese border. It helped that we were only a group of four in a taxi, rather than 20 or more in a bus, for the simple reason that the whole process is only as fast as the slowest individual. I think it also helped that it wasn’t a particularly busy day at the border. While at border control I think we saw only one bus and less than a dozen cars going through. Perhaps this was because we were traveling on a relatively slow day (Wednesday) in a relatively slow month for tourism (January).

Of course, we had to pay the 500 SYP exit fee to the Syrians. But the operation was pretty quick, taking only 30 minutes from start to finish — paying the fee, getting the exit stamp, getting all your docs checked a few times by a few different people, having the car driver’s documents sorted out, etc. Then, on the Jordanian side, we had another pretty quick 30 minute ordeal. Not too bad.

Important to note: the cost for an Jordanian entry visa was 20 JD ($28) and you must pay in Jordanian dinar, so best to arrive with some JD in hand. The 20 JD entry fee is double what it was in 2010; the increase was effective as of Jan 1, 2011. As Middle Eastern countries go, this is very expensive for an entry visa, however, as we discovered during the week, this was not the only extraordinarily overpriced thing in Jordan…

 
Approaching Amman

An intense arrival in Amman
Our driver, a Syrian man, didn’t really know the streets of Amman, Jordan, at all. We had a funny exchange in Arabic when I asked if he new where this one particularly street was; he just looked at me with a flippant expression and replied, “I’m Syrian.” I said, “Okay, I’m American, so can you take me to the city center?” He smiled and asked if we needed a hotel. I made a mistake here, though, because in the moment I thought he was asking if we already had a hotel, not if we needed one. Hence my confusion — after I answered him “Yes” — when he said he’d take us to the Cleopatra Hotel. Jennifer and I consulted each other in English… why is he taking us to some random hotel? why can’t he just put us some place central, or at an Amman bus depot? Oh well… let’s see what happens.

He ended up letting us off at a big square we would learn later to be called Abdully. The square was crammed full of yellow and white taxis, lined by dirty looking hotels and men yelling and gesturing at all the passing cars. We’d learn later from a different Jordanian taxi driver that these crazy men are actually Syrians who work out of these Amman hotels, and their frantic gestures meant they’d pay a taxi driver 2 JD ($3) if he let off his passengers in front of their hotel. Our Syrian driver from Damascus knew about the racket and drove us here for this very reason — free money, right?

Of course, from the briber’s perspective, there’s no guarantee that the new arrivals will end up choosing to stay at the hotel they’ve been dropped off in front of, thus the bribers are pretty aggressive in trying to get you to stay at their hotel. You’ve got to think that yelling and screaming and fighting between each other to grab for your backpacks in an effort to get you into their grimy looking hotels must work as a selling technique, at least to a minimal extent, or else they’d be spending their energy doing something else. But in our case, we already had reservations with a hotel in a completely different part of the city, so we naturally proceeded to flag down a yellow taxi to take us there….

This resulted in an uproar between some of the Syrian racketeers and the local Jordanian taxi driver, the latter of whom was apparently stealing us from the former’s hotel. I tried to interject in Arabic that we already had a hotel reservation, but these guys wouldn’t listen. They were absolutely nuts. They kept screaming at the Jordanian taxi driver who, remarkably, remained chilled out at the whole episode. I couldn’t understand all of what was being said, but his argument was to the effect of, “Look, these guys got into my taxi. They choose me. I’m just doing my job. Not my problem if you’ve already paid off some other guy.” And he was right.

We drove off, checked into the hotel and relaxed for a while before heading out to wander. We’d spend the next day in Amman touring the two main site, the Citadel and Roman Theater, and a few other places off the beaten track such as a really neat bookstore / cafe whose proceeds go completely to helping wildlife. Amman itself is quite young as a city and doesn’t have a whole lot of things to do or see compared to other Middle Eastern capitals. We used it mainly as a jumping off point for the coming days’ excursions to the Dead Sea, the biblical sites at Mount Nebo and Bethany, and the breathtaking Petra in the south. Below are a few photos I took in Amman, with more on my Flickr page.