Friendly Jordan

Due to the available flight paths on my airline network, I found myself on a Royal Jordanian flight to the capital of Amman (en route to Israel) so I decided to use this unexpected opportunity to get to know the country of Jordan a little bit and I'm very glad I did. To my pleasant suprise I discovered that Jordan is a nice place and the people are ridiculously friendly. I'd heard their reputation for being friendly but it was still a suprise when I experienced it first hand. They really are ridiculously friendly; whether it's the taxi driver giving you his number in case you have any problems in town or the old men inviting you to sit down and drink a tea with them or everyone you talk to saying "welcome to Jordan!" with such enthusiasm.

I spent a day in the capital Amman getting to know the place a little and checking out some ancient Roman ruins, before heading to the incredible Petra. This place is shortlisted for one of the "new seven wonders of the world" and it's easy to see why. They used this place in films like Indiana Jones & the Mummy. It's basically a city carved into sandstone mountains and terrain on an epic scale. I rode a horse into the caverns with this Jordanian horse man jogging along side. He thought it would be hilarious to make the horse run as fast as he could while he yelled things like "Try before you die!" at me. I thought I might be dying sometime soon for a minute before some lady yelled at him to give me a break. It was pretty funny though.

Another unexpected place that turned out to be a winner. I really think it's much better not to know too much about a country before you get there, it makes everything more interesting. Also I think the countries in this region like Syria, Lebannon & Israel are underated destinations. The middle east is definately a nice place to travel and interesting too.