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

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.