Palmyra by day

In short Palmyra was pretty cool, the lengthy review follows.

I woke up in the morning, went to buy some batteries for my camera. One thing I discovered about the middle east you have to be very careful what you are buying, quality varies from place to place, brand to brand, no where else was this noticble than in the realm of batteries, often when asking for batteries I would get more or less generic brands, "Panasonic" "Energy" "Super Power" and the like, all of which would provide enough power for maybe a day's worth of camera activity, which despite the cheap cost of the batteries was annoying. In Palmyra they had Duracells, so I stocked up, about 3 times the price, but worth every penny.

After that I headed to the ruins. Almost 2km main street was clear, but surrounding it could be found an assortment of fun stuff. Columns, statues, great big stone balls, it was pretty cool, a few temples dedicated to a variety of Deities were also within an easy walk of the main street, little to no vegetation though. Palmyra was built right next to an Oasis, which was clearly visible from the hills surrounding, but in the ruins itself you wouldn't have been able to tell that anything could live there with so little water, and yet they still do.

I checked out the Theatre, and the massive temple complex dedicated to Bel, the head God from the region. For these two features I was required to pay a total of 250 Syrian Pounds(about 5 bucks), money well spent, as they were both among my highlights of Syria to be sure.
I spent the day wandering around the ruins, exploring, and then I figured it would be a good idea to get a picture of me, something which as a lone traveller is rather uncommon. I set up my shot, and as I was taking it a couple boys came up to me and offered to take my picture. They did, and then they tried to sell me stuff, I claimed I had no money, but the younger one was persistent and wanted to make a sale of postcards. After about 5 minutes he tried a different tact, offering to show me how to wrap my Keffiyeh like a Bedouin(a group of which he was a proud member) and then he wanted to be in a couple pictures with me. Then I slipped, taking a pen out of my pocket I pulled out 100SD, which he immediately claimed should be spent on his postcards. He had been so patient and polite that I couldn't say no.
At that point I decided it was time to head off to check out the burial spires and climb a hill to watch sunset overt the ruins(something which everyone I had talked to about it highly recommended).
However as that involves a lengthy story and some addendum, I shall leave it until next time

Palmyra, the night of two hotels

After parting ways with Sabine in Homs, both the Alex's and I caught a minibus to Palmyra. Upon arrival the driver pointed us in the direct of the city centre and went on his way.
The moment we stepped onto the street it seemed like we were swamped by children. It was about 9 at night and there were a couple dozen kids hanging out on the street with a soccer ball. Out arrival seemed to feed a frenzy of excitement that ended their game. They came over and more or less without words just swarmed around us, occassionally one would ask a question, I would do my best to answer, the Alex's would tell them to go away.
After a bit of walking a guy in a truck came to tell us to stay at his hotel, and that not only would he give us a ride, he would also reduce the price. After two such encounters we gave in, hopped in the back of his truck got our rooms, had some tea and chatted a bit.
I was hungry having not eaten anything but pistachio's(from Aleppo) since that morning, so I went in search of food. Found a shawarma stand and ate my fill, then went in search of more tea. I couldn't find anywhere for tea, but one place the owner instead offered beer.
He gave me the full treatment telling me about all the beers, I eventually settled on Petra Beer 10%, which came with a bartender's warning not to drink more than one otherwise you'll start to see the chick inside the egg, I told him not to worry.
He was a quite interesting fellow. 3 beers later I knew all about his position on geopolitical matters, the War on Terror, Islamic Radicalism, Al Bashar, Israel, Obama, and different types of cigarettes.
Two hours later, I went on my merry way, go to bed to be able to check out the ruins in the morning. When I got back to the hotel, the door was locked. How odd, places usually closed their doors no earlier than 11, I rang the bell, knocked, and figured the owner had just gone out and decided to lock up while he was away.
So I figured I'd come back in a half hour and he'd be back.
In the mean time I decided, hey I've got a half hour, go check out the ruins of Palmyra at night, see what they're like, and they were, majestic I think would be the way to describe them. It was neat wandering around at night, imagining what it would have looked like in it's heyday. And then the dogs began to howl. Not like wolves or Coyotes howling, but a close, angry howl, and barking, and growling. I'm not one to be afraid of dogs, but there seemed to be an aweful lot of them, and nobody who could speak my language well enough for me to rely on if I got in trouble.
So I headed back to my hotel, still locked, I considered climbing in the window in my room that I had left open, but decided against risking the 30 foot drop.
I went in search of a telephone to wake up the owner. I found one in another hotel, which was full of guys playing cards, drinking what amounts to flower tea and smoking. Great guys, said they'd call my hotel to wake up the owner, and served me some tea.
The tea they claimed was bedouin and it was unlike anything I'd ever had, it tasted like flowers, it was wonderful and strange at the same time. Very good, so they gave me more. Same as in Iraq, they played cards counter-clockwise which made it hard to follow their game, but they seemed to be playing a Rummy type game.
After 4 tries to awake my hotel owner, we gave up, and I gave in and got a room with these guys for the night, they gave me a discount because of the circumstances.

It was a night to remember in Palmyra, the next day was pretty good too, I explored the ruins, had a run in with some Bedouin, a pair of kids, and a flock of sheep. But you'll have to wait until next post

Crac des Chevaliers and travel companions

Two sleeps in Lattakia, and in the morning went in search of a bus to Crac des Chevaliers with the two Lithuanian brothers(both named Alex) and the German girl, Sabine.

I tend to travel alone for a wide variety of reasons, mostly because I like to make up my schedule as I go, I don't like having a set plan because you never know what could come up. I can take a detour whenever I want, I can spend more time in a place if I like it, or less time if I don't. I am able to make my journey truly my journey.

However it does come with a few drawbacks, primarily it means I miss out on some opportunities. I took a lot of goodwill from a lot of people in the middle east, but at the same time I turned down lots of rides, offers and more because I really didn't want to be completely at the mercy of a stranger in a strange land that although very safe does have a few trouble spots where the price of making a mistake is very high. When you have a traveling companion the risks associated with getting in a friendly locals car diminish greatly. You also get to share your experience with other people which is nice, rather than just having stories to tell, you have someone to tell them with.
Up to this point I had traveled by myself, but now I was going places with three other people, two of which were rather strange, and one who spoke the local language, but many male members of society would not talk directly to. It was strange.
The Alex's had a tendency to take things too far. Especially when it came to bartering. Well it was mostly just one of them, he would haggle beyond reason, not negotiating, but rather setting a price he deemed to be "cheap" and wouldn't waver. Often times this "cheap" price was far below what was reasonable. The purpose of bartering isn't to destroy the sellers profit margins, but rather make a deal rather than just a sale. It seemed that he saw it only as a way to take as much as he could get from the locals without giving anything back. It extended with the way he talked with the locals. Incredibly demeaning and thoroughly disrespectful of almost every local I saw him interact with(except the Falafel guy in Lattakia who made wicked falafel and watched "Just For Laugh Gags", it was interesting watching him explain the gags as he was making your sandwich).
What got me the most was his willingness to ignore deals that I had made with locals regarding transport, frustrating to the 'enth degree.
Together the Alex's were loud, obnoxious, disrespectful, and on and on. Imagine your stereotypical American travelling, it was them.
Sabine on the other had spoke the local language quite well, and was thoroughly interesting. She had many interesting stories about interactions with locals and men who would refuse to address her in cars and in shops despite being the only person able to bridge the language divide.



Either way we made it to Crac des Chevaliers with about an hour before close, which seemed to be long enough to see most of the cool stuff.
To imagine a Medieval Castle is to imagine Crac. Smooth white stones towers. moats, a keep, chaples, you name it they had it.
Crac was a key point in Crusader defences and was build so strategically well and in such a good spot that it was never taken by force. It was attacked more than once by the Muslims, even Saladin was unable to defeat it.
In the end it succumbed to the harsh reality that Islam was going to win in the region, 200 Knights were holed up in the Castle, provisions for something like 3+ years, but knew that the tens of thousands of Muslims laying seige would eventually win, so they cut a deal, they got a free escape to the coast if they gave up the Castle.
It was amazing, until it rained, which wasn't fun, and made exploring some parts of the castle treacherous.
But alas the sun went down and the castle closed down and the 4 of us started the long walk back to the bottom of the valley and the highway to catch a ride to Homs.

Again the Alex's found a way to kill a good negotiation with a passing car by setting an initial price far too low that would never get us a ride.
In spite of this we did get a minibus all the way to Homs for about a couple dollars. not worth makeing a scene over 25 cents in my mind, the Alex's were a different story.

Now that I've gotten the Alex's out of my system.

Homs turned out to be a rather short stop, to the bus station to catch a bus to Palmyra and it's Roman ruins of high regard. 8 hours on the road that day led to a tired traveler by the end of the day, but arrival in Palmyra didn't go quite as smoothly as I had hoped, and will be the subject of my next post.

Lattakia

Lattakia started out in a rather unfun way. Rain is rarely fun when you want to stay dry, but I also discovered that since leaving Istanbul my shoes had been blessed, by which I mean they were holy. Lots of holes, big ones, small ones, which to be fair did help the water drain out of my shoes, but often let in far more water than they drained. I also encountered the one and only traffic collision that I saw in Syria, it wasn't even all that serious, bumper on bumper, drivers got out yelled at each other, and I carried on. It surprised me, but what surprised me more was that it was the only collision I saw while in Syria.

I did eventually make it to my hotel, where the owner (can you guess what his name was? it started with M and is the most popular name in the world) immediatly made me sit down and brought me tea and shared a tray of veggies and olives that apparently were grown by him and his family.
It was here where I finnally me the first white people since leaving Istanbul, oddly enough the same guys that I saw at the train station in Aleppo. Turns out they had even stayed at the same hotel as me in Aleppo, in the next room, yet we never saw each other. They were Russians from Lithuania living in London who had been on the road for almost 4 months, it was nice to talk to someone almost from my type of world for at least a little. We joined up later when leaving Lattakia, but that comes later.

The owner of the hotel was friendly, almost to a fault, was as described by everyone I met who knew him(a rather well connected guy) as eccentric, and that still fails to describe him. A massive fan of Tintin, has all the books, all the movies, and had decorated the hotel with an assortment of pictures of Tintin and drawings, he was particularly proud of a larger than life Tintin mural on the exterior of the 7th story of the building that he had made. Obsessed, eccentric, friendly, interesting, all of the above.

Lattakia as a city was interesting, the rain stopped for brief moments, but not enough to risk leaving my rain gear at the hotel to explore the city. It had a few nice churches, a couple interesting Mosques, the main Syrian Port. But the most interesting part of the city was the people. Lattakia was the first time that I had seen the skin of a woman other than her face and hands, there were women wearing short dresses(just below the knee), there was a sense of style that was almost trying to emulate Istanbul and the west. And though they tried, the restrictions of the rest of Syrian society seemed to keep the city in check.

Spent most of the day exploring and reading, as I had borrowed a book from the hotel to read, as I had long ago ran out of reading material in english that wasn't telling me about all the wonderful things that Islam could do for me if I were to convert.

I also met the second(well third) white person I encountered on my journey, a pretty German girl by the name of Sabine. Living and studying Arabic in Amman Jordan on a weekend trip to Syria and Lebanon.
Along with her and the two brothers we set out the next day to check out Crac des Chevaliers, a Castle from the era of the Crusades, but that is a story for the next post.

End of Aleppo, Train Station and Kids

The morning was a bit of a rush to pack and get out because I didn't know exactly when the train for Lattakia departed, and I had to stop at a place to get food for the day, find the post office and then find the train. Fortunately I knew where the post office was, it was even the first time that a place I needed to find was on my map, made me happy and food was on the way to the Post Office.

At the post office a man decided to help me out as I seemed to have found my way into the wrong post office, the one for sending out mail was next door(silly me thinking mail services could survive with half the bureaucracy!) Mail off my postcards and went in search of the station.
I had a general idea of where it was, but yet again, my destination was off both maps I had, and both gave contradictory directions on how to get there, one said 750 metres west, the other said 500metres north, both were wrong.

This brings me to an interesting point about the Lonely Planet series of guidebooks, they are good, but have some glaring flaws associated with them, I both experienced it first hand and second hand through discussion with other travellers and hotel owners(some went so far as to dub it the Lonely Liar, but I don't think it was quite that bad). Museums that have shut up show years ago, buildings that don't exist, important transportation hubs that aren't located correctly(in Gaziantep, all the minibus station was so poorly marked that I missed the turn off thinking I had another 4 blocks to go, 4 blocks later a local told me I was 4 blocks too far).
My point is thus, if ever it came down to life or death, I would not trust Lonely Planet, it is a good start, but you need to have a good head on your shoulders to interpret/decide what is important/true and what is not. It's a good start, but it should not be the be all and end all of your trip.

So, between Lonely Planet, and the tourist map being wrong, and 3 locals giving me interestingly unintelligible directions, I meandered my way through the main park, which was quite pretty, had statues, monuments, fountains, green grass, some guy going around selling terrible tea. On the other side of the park, there was a street sign telling people that the Train station was to the east, once again, wrong it was to the west. Eventually after almost 2 hours of searching I found the train station.

Once I got there the silliness had only just begun. I have previously mentioned the incredible layers of bureaucracy, much like an Onion, which also has layers and makes people cry. To buy your ticket you were required to purchase it, then go to the ID check booth, and because I was a foreigner I had to go see security, but was directed to the wrong security, then I got escorted to the right security desk, who looked at my passport+ticket nodded and sent me back to some other desk that I never did figure out what it was for, and then back to the ID desk only for them to simply put a check mark on my ticket. It was infuriating.

It was also at the train station that I saw the first white people on my trip since leaving Istanbul, and later on would get to know the two guys who looked suspiciously like brothers.
I had a bit of a wait in the station so I walked around a bit, explored the surrounding area. One thing in the station however caught my attention, a mural, with burning tanks, and triumphant Syrian soldiers rallying a charge with the Syrian flag proudly flying, the burning tanks had Stars of David on them. Now I may or may not have focused my IR studies upon the Middle East and Israel and it's wars, but I don't recall any war in which Syria, or any other Arab power was triumphant(minor successes, but usually followed up with incompetent decision making and massive errors, see: not bringing a long enough extension cord to plug in your anti-aircraft missiles)
Eventually the train left, and off I went, for those planning on taking the Aleppo-Lattakia train any time soon, let me say, the extra for first class is worth is. My tray table had no lock, and thus kept falling on me. Eventually I jerry rigged it to prevent it falling, and I was able to fall asleep.
When I woke up I was surrounded by about 6 children, all staring at me, something which I had almost gotten used to, and yet this was different, I woke up and there were a bunch of eyes there staring at me. They were fun, did a few fun tricks made something come out of one of their ears, magically make a finger transfer over to the other hand and other simply yet fun things that kids enjoy.
Some got scared off by my desire to interact with them, but one kid kept coming back with questions to ask me(I later discovered that he had a relative near the front of the car who spoke english and was feeding him the tranlations for his questions) Standard questions, where are you from, what do you do, why are you here etc.. but it was different because it wasn't an immigration control officer asking the questions. Because of him, my train journey turned out to be quite fun.

Eventually the train stopped in Lattakia, and off I got, the city on the coast seemed to have been under invasion by the sea, but by air (it was raining, alot, like I haven't seen in a long time, perhaps since Nicaragua). So I put on my rain gear and off I went to find my hotel where I would spend my time in Lattakia.