There are three common ways to count age in South Korea, but the government has changed its civil code to recognize one: starting from zero on a person’s date of birth and adding a year at each birthday.
This is the age-counting method used most often around the world, but it is a departure from the country’s most popular method, often called “Korean age.” Under that system, a person is considered 1 year old at birth, and a year is added to their age each Jan. 1. This meant that an infant born on Dec. 31 was considered 2 years old the next day.
The three systems for counting age have confused and inconvenienced South Koreans in all kinds of situations including health recommendations, labor disputes and social hierarchy.
For example, some health officials used inconsistent age standards for coronavirus vaccinations. So, a person could be required to show proof of vaccination based on their age under one system but would not actually be old enough to get a vaccine under another system.
Supporters of the change say the new standard will reduce these conflicts.
But it does not yet apply to all circumstances.
Children will continue to start elementary school using the country’s third counting system, known as “year age”: Age-counting starts as zero at birth, then adds a year every Jan. 1. Under this system, a baby born on Dec. 31 turns 1 the next day.
For now, “year age” will also still be used to determine whether a person can drink, smoke or serve in the military. So, a person born in any month of 2004 is considered 19 years old and, therefore, is eligible for all those things.
- Amanda Holpuch, 'Some South Koreans Just Became Younger Overnight', New York Times, 28 June 2023
Showing posts with label elsewhere. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elsewhere. Show all posts
29 June 2023
08 August 2022
Cairo's haze of heat and odours
Scottish poet G. S. Fraser (1915-1980) was one of many Allied soldiers who visited Cairo during the Second World War. In his memoir A Stranger and Afraid (1983) he recalled his sojourn in olfactory fashion.
When I think of Cairo now, I think of something sick and dying; an old beggar, propped up against a wall, too palsied to raise a hand or supplicate alms; but in a passive way he can still enjoy the sun.... But who can possess a city? Who can possess it, as he possess his own body, so that a vague consciousness of its proportions is always in his mind?...
Cairo probably seemed to me a more confusing city than it really is because I saw it through a haze of heat and odours - the smells of spice, of cooking fat, of overripe fruit, of sun-dried sweat, of hot baked earth, of urine, of garlic, and, again and again, too sweet, of jasmine; a complex that, in the beginning of the hot weather, seemed to melt down to the general consistency of smouldering rubber ... a smell of the outskirts of hell. Ceasing, soon, consciously to notice all this, I would sometimes, in the Garden City near the Embassy, pass a lawn of thin, patchy grass that had just been watered through a sprinkler; and I would realize, for a moment, how parched and acrid my nostrils were. The smell of the Nile itself, of course, was different; by its banks, at night, there was a damp, vegetative coolness, that seemed to have, in a vague, evocative way, something almost sexual about it. And it was voluptuousness, in a cool large room, to bend over and sniff, in a glass bowl on a table, at a crisp red rose. But in such a room there would be European women; and their skins would have dried a little, in that cruel climate, and one would be aware of their powder, and their scent. Beauty, whether of body or character, lay, in that city, under a constant siege. In my memory, that hot baked smell prevails; that, and the grittiness - the dust gathering thickly on the glossy leaves of the evergreens, and the warm winds stinging eyes and nostrils with fine sand - and the breathlessness, the inner exhaustion. Under the glaring day, one seemed to see the human image sagging and wilting a little, and expected sallow fingers and faces to run and stretch, as if they were made of wax.
- G.S. Fraser, quoted in Peter Furtado (ed.), Great Cities Through Travellers' Eyes, London, 2019, p77-78.
12 October 2017
Four gentlemen of Amman
I was wandering through the middle of Amman, the Jordanian capital, on my last day in town some nine years ago (6 November 2008) when these four chaps noticed my camera and asked me to take their picture. I can't remember how extensive their English was, but they liked the picture. Didn't spot the naughty cigarette no.2 is rocking! Wonder what they're up to now? (That was a great trip, by the way).
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12 December 2016
Globalisation & nationalism
As economies and societies around the globe become more and more interconnected and bound within transnational rules and institutions, the range of policy options available to domestic policymakers has declined. Such constraints range from formal rules, such as the acceptance of the free movement of peoples within the European Union, or the asylum obligations that are outlined under the U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, or the limits on deficits stipulated in European Union’s Stability and Growth Pact and the implicit economic constraints imposed by global financial and investment flows. Thus, on issue after issue, from corporate taxation, to control over immigration, to fiscal and monetary policy, national elites frequently find themselves unable to deliver policies consistent with public preferences. Instead they have blamed international institutions for their inability to take actions that they privately do not condone. In this way, politicians feel obliged, in the words of Hillary Clinton, to maintain “both a public and a private position.”
Yet the constraints on national sovereignty entailed by global markets and institutions has weakened the mechanisms that once translated popular views into public policy, leading to a “democratic deficit”’ that has left citizens increasingly frustrated with democratic politics, and increasingly with the democratic system itself. At the same time, the institutions of “global governance” have failed not only to provide avenues for popular participation, but also to deliver outcomes that such participation would be liable to generate, such as compensation for the losers from global trade, or protection of the identities and ways of life of local and national communities. In the words of Larry Summers, one of global integration’s advocates, it is a project “carried out by elites, for elites, with little consideration for the interests of ordinary people.”
This frustration has set up a dangerous dynamic, the consequences of which are now only too visible. In many countries, the only viable challenge to an increasingly homogeneous set of decision-makers comes from political parties or movements established by outsiders, such as the tea party movement and now Donald Trump in the United States, or populist parties of the right and left in Europe. These movements explicitly set themselves against a metropolitan and cosmopolitan elite which, they claim — not always without reason — routinely ignores popular demands and policy preferences. As the differences between establishment parties on the left and right have dwindled in many countries, the only way for voters to effect a change in policy has been to rally to parties that reject many of the traditional rules of the democratic game. In this way, as politicians’ responsiveness to citizens has decreased, citizens have been encouraged to turn away from democracy.
Yet the constraints on national sovereignty entailed by global markets and institutions has weakened the mechanisms that once translated popular views into public policy, leading to a “democratic deficit”’ that has left citizens increasingly frustrated with democratic politics, and increasingly with the democratic system itself. At the same time, the institutions of “global governance” have failed not only to provide avenues for popular participation, but also to deliver outcomes that such participation would be liable to generate, such as compensation for the losers from global trade, or protection of the identities and ways of life of local and national communities. In the words of Larry Summers, one of global integration’s advocates, it is a project “carried out by elites, for elites, with little consideration for the interests of ordinary people.”
This frustration has set up a dangerous dynamic, the consequences of which are now only too visible. In many countries, the only viable challenge to an increasingly homogeneous set of decision-makers comes from political parties or movements established by outsiders, such as the tea party movement and now Donald Trump in the United States, or populist parties of the right and left in Europe. These movements explicitly set themselves against a metropolitan and cosmopolitan elite which, they claim — not always without reason — routinely ignores popular demands and policy preferences. As the differences between establishment parties on the left and right have dwindled in many countries, the only way for voters to effect a change in policy has been to rally to parties that reject many of the traditional rules of the democratic game. In this way, as politicians’ responsiveness to citizens has decreased, citizens have been encouraged to turn away from democracy.
- Roberto Stefan Foa, 'It's the Globalization, Stupid', Foreign Policy, 6 December 2016
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22 May 2015
Palmyra 2008
In the news today, word of the apparent fall of the ruins of ancient Palmyra to ISIS forces was another reminder of the potentially devastating consequences for global heritage of the intractable civil strife that has ravaged Syria. Palmyra lies within Syria's borders now, but its origins lie in distant antiquity as a Neolithic settlement and later in the second millennium BC as a caravan stop for desert traders. Under later Roman control in the third century AD it became the home of the fearsome Queen Zenobia, whose rebellion against Rome was ultimately crushed and the city punished cruelly. Until the civil war, Palmyra was one of the highlights of any journey to Syria. Now its future is wholly uncertain.
I visited Palmyra with my friends Jennifer and Andrew in 2008, during our expedition to Syria and Jordan (relevant blogs: part 1, part 2 and part 3). We were driven by Abdul, a friendly local man, in his ancient burgundy-coloured Mercedes sedan in a daytrip from the middle Syrian town of Hama. En route on the 200 kilometre seatbelt-less eastward journey we paused to admire Bedouin beehive dwellings and pondered the geographical implications of a highway road sign that proclaimed a turnoff for the Iraqi border that lurked less than 100 kilometres further east. The journey was hugely important, allowing us to spend two and a half hours exploring the superb temple complex and the remains of a lavish colonnaded commercial avenue in the heart and heat of the desert, with the landscape peppered with the rubble of long-gone architecture and sprinkled with the odd camel decked out for tourist rides. Here's a few photographic mementos of that visit on 1 November 2008.
I visited Palmyra with my friends Jennifer and Andrew in 2008, during our expedition to Syria and Jordan (relevant blogs: part 1, part 2 and part 3). We were driven by Abdul, a friendly local man, in his ancient burgundy-coloured Mercedes sedan in a daytrip from the middle Syrian town of Hama. En route on the 200 kilometre seatbelt-less eastward journey we paused to admire Bedouin beehive dwellings and pondered the geographical implications of a highway road sign that proclaimed a turnoff for the Iraqi border that lurked less than 100 kilometres further east. The journey was hugely important, allowing us to spend two and a half hours exploring the superb temple complex and the remains of a lavish colonnaded commercial avenue in the heart and heat of the desert, with the landscape peppered with the rubble of long-gone architecture and sprinkled with the odd camel decked out for tourist rides. Here's a few photographic mementos of that visit on 1 November 2008.
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| Bedouin dwellingts, eastern Syrian desert |
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| Palmyra |
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| Temple of Bel, Palmyra |
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| Temple of Bel roof carving |
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| Gates to the grand commercial avenue |
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| Camel tout |
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| Gates to the grand commercial avenue |
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| Temple at the far end of the avenue |
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| Camel & Ottoman fort |
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| Palmyra from the Ottoman fort |
18 April 2014
Why is North Korea poor?
"North Korea is poor because the sanctions are working"
Not even close. North Korea is poor because of an outmoded economic policy and self-imposed isolation from the world. The latest round of UN and US sanctions, implemented in March 2013, only target the elite. They ban the export of luxury goods and clamp down on individuals and companies that are financing proliferation activities. It's safe to say that the average North Korean does not own a yacht or wear a Rolex.
Blame lies with five bad decisions North Korea has made in the management of its economy. First, in the aftermath of the Korean War, Kim Jong Un's grandfather -- President Kim Il Sung -- focused exclusively on heavy industry development and the military while expecting the country to be self-sufficient in agriculture. In a country that only has 20 percent arable land, that was a huge mistake. Second, rather than seek technologies and innovations like the Green Revolution that helped nations like India make enormous gains in agricultural productivity in the 1960s and 1970s, the North tried to substitute longer work hours and revolutionary zeal. Given the broken infrastructure, this was like squeezing blood from a stone. Third, rather than trade with the outside world, the North went deeply into debt in the 1970s, borrowing and then defaulting on hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from European countries, which forever lost them lines of credit with any country or international financial institution. Fourth, in the 1980s and 1990s, the North undertook extremely wasteful mega-projects, building stadiums, hydropower projects, and tideland reclamation projects -- most of which failed or were never completed. Finally, after the Chinese and Soviets stopping giving aid to the North at the end of the Cold War, Pyongyang relied on humanitarian assistance as a form of income, instead of trying to fix their economy.
One could not have imagined a worse economic plan. This country has allowed an ideology that prizes autarky to dictate economic decisions rather than taking advantage of the benefits of trade, technology, or innovation -- which is why North Korea is one of the only countries in the world to have suffered a famine after industrialization.
- David Kang & Victor Cha, 'Think Again: North Korea', Foreign Policy, 25 March 2013
Not even close. North Korea is poor because of an outmoded economic policy and self-imposed isolation from the world. The latest round of UN and US sanctions, implemented in March 2013, only target the elite. They ban the export of luxury goods and clamp down on individuals and companies that are financing proliferation activities. It's safe to say that the average North Korean does not own a yacht or wear a Rolex.
Blame lies with five bad decisions North Korea has made in the management of its economy. First, in the aftermath of the Korean War, Kim Jong Un's grandfather -- President Kim Il Sung -- focused exclusively on heavy industry development and the military while expecting the country to be self-sufficient in agriculture. In a country that only has 20 percent arable land, that was a huge mistake. Second, rather than seek technologies and innovations like the Green Revolution that helped nations like India make enormous gains in agricultural productivity in the 1960s and 1970s, the North tried to substitute longer work hours and revolutionary zeal. Given the broken infrastructure, this was like squeezing blood from a stone. Third, rather than trade with the outside world, the North went deeply into debt in the 1970s, borrowing and then defaulting on hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from European countries, which forever lost them lines of credit with any country or international financial institution. Fourth, in the 1980s and 1990s, the North undertook extremely wasteful mega-projects, building stadiums, hydropower projects, and tideland reclamation projects -- most of which failed or were never completed. Finally, after the Chinese and Soviets stopping giving aid to the North at the end of the Cold War, Pyongyang relied on humanitarian assistance as a form of income, instead of trying to fix their economy.
One could not have imagined a worse economic plan. This country has allowed an ideology that prizes autarky to dictate economic decisions rather than taking advantage of the benefits of trade, technology, or innovation -- which is why North Korea is one of the only countries in the world to have suffered a famine after industrialization.
- David Kang & Victor Cha, 'Think Again: North Korea', Foreign Policy, 25 March 2013
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15 March 2012
From the Veranda of the Room of the Last Chrysanthemum
Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike-topped walls and treble-bolted doors. Gulls alight on white-washed gables, creaking pagodas and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule-drivers, mules and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunchbacked makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed from kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries' vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bath-house adulterers; heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters' sons sharpening axes; candle-makers, rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etoliated lacquerers; mottled-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men's wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night-soil; gate-keepers; bee-keepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet-nurses; perjurers; cut-purses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where there flight began, over the balcony of the Room of the Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night's rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.
- David Mitchell, in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, London, 2010, set in the Dutch trading enclave of Dejima in Nagasaki in 1800.
- David Mitchell, in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, London, 2010, set in the Dutch trading enclave of Dejima in Nagasaki in 1800.
10 April 2010
A foreign devil in Macau
Macau (or, if you prefer, Macao) returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1999, and like neighbouring Hong Kong, it operates as a Special Autonomous Region, entitling it to a certain local leeway. Hence the gambling, and the maintenance of a separate local currency, the pataca, that travellers are warned not to bother taking out of the city, because it’s next to useless as soon as you board the ferry.
The SAR status means visitors from Hong Kong have to go through border control both when leaving Hong Kong and upon arrival in Macau. This involves standing in a huge hall with several thousand mainland Chinese day-trippers for about 20 minutes each time. And if you’re me, it also involves the Chinese guy behind you slipping his snotty tissue into your bag when you’re not looking. Gosh thanks mister, you really know how to make a gweilo tourist feel welcome!
The swift catamaran journey from Hong Kong only takes an hour. On the day I travelled the skies were murky grey and visibility was low. (Services had been significantly disrupted the day before by an impenetrable fog bank that blanketed the region). After another border crossing I took a quick bus ride from the wharf to emerge into the heart of old Macau – a little corner of Portugal in the Far East. The triangular Largo do Senado (Senate Square) is surrounded by pretty low-rise official buildings decked out in brightly-coloured paint, leading to a twisting pedestrian precinct that winds its way up the slope to the site of Macau’s most famous building. Or, to be precise, the remains of said building.
After a 20-year programme of construction, the foundation stone of St Paul’s Cathedral was laid in 1602, during the 60-year Spanish rule over Portugal. The cathedral marked a new bastion of the Catholic faith in the far-flung corners of the Iberian empire. Following a destructive fire in 1835 St Paul’s suffered massive damage, and all that was saved for posterity was the ornately-carved façade that had been carved by exiled Japanese Christians in the 1620s. Now this thin sliver of history is visited by a torrent of tourists, and it has become the most prominent landmark in a city that, aside from its downtown colonial core, does not boast an enviable architectural heritage.
Walking back down from the fortress into the rabbit-warren of city streets I managed to get hopelessly disoriented, but this didn’t prove to be a nuisance as I had already seen the parts of Macau I’d intended to. I walked back to the ferry wharf past the modern harbour-side developments of spectacularly peculiar tourist attractions. First there was a scale model of the Coliseum with shops nestled around its circumference. Alongside was some berserk Aztec-style theme park, which must have been aiming for an Indiana Jones vibe. Further on there was an intricate replica of the sheer-walled towers of Lhasa and an imposing Chinese fortress surrounded by a moat heaving with well-fed koi carp. Lastly, not to be out-done, there was a volcano. A bloody volcano! Imagine the planning permission application for that one.
03 June 2009
An imperial requiem
Ann Morrow’s 2006 book, Cousins Divided: George V and Nicholas II, paints an interesting picture of the long-standing relationship between two imperial cousins, which was curtailed by the Bolshevik Revolution’s overthrowing of the Russian Empire in 1917, and was finally exterminated by the Bolsheviks’ assassination of Nicholas, the Tsarina, all their children and key royal servants in Ekaterinburg in July 1918.
George (1865-1936), the grandson of Queen Victoria, and Nicholas (1868-1918), the husband of Victoria’s favourite granddaughter, bore a striking resemblance to one another. Their immaculately-groomed beards and handlebar moustaches, similar heights and predilection for military garb often found them being mistaken for one another when on royal visits. Each monarch was dedicated to the duty of their birthright and doted on their wives (Mary of Teck in George’s case; Alix of Hesse in Nicholas’). Both also struggled to come to terms with rapid social changes in their countries that called into question the validity of their reign. But while George managed these challenges and emerged as a successful and admired king, Nicholas retreated into the rarefied and almost absurdly privileged isolation of his immediate family and failed to adapt when his country slid into anarchy, which ultimately led to his death and the deaths of his family.
Morrow, a former royal court correspondent for the Telegraph, gained widespread access to royal correspondence to inform her book. It charts the long course of the cousins’ relationship, which was sustained through lengthy correspondence and much-cherished extended family gatherings. The often charmingly unaffected letters provide strong evidence of the warmth of the relationship between the King and the Tsar, which was in stark contrast to the rather chilly links with that other grandson of Victoria, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (1859-1941). But the fact remains that when imperial Russia was dissolving in a riotous panic during the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, which led to Nicholas being forced to abdicate his throne, George failed to offer a lifeline of refuge to the Russian imperial family, despite earlier indications from Britain that this would occur. Ultimately, it seems, the King put the security of his own kingdom as the highest priority above the safety of his Romanov relatives: fearful of a British workers’ uprising akin to that in Russia, the Romanovs were not offered safe haven in Britain.
The last ten chapters of the book are the most stirring and insightful, chronicling the ever-increasing chaos in Russia before and after Nicholas’ abdication, the fallout from the brutal government-ordered murder of not only Nicholas but also his wife and children, and the much later exhumation of their remains in the post-Soviet era for reburial in the chapel of the St Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg. Here Morrow describes the reburial ceremony on 17 July 1998, the eightieth anniversary of the murders:
Below, pictures taken on my July 2008 trip to Russia: the Romanovs’ graves and the chapel in which they reside, in the St Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg.
George (1865-1936), the grandson of Queen Victoria, and Nicholas (1868-1918), the husband of Victoria’s favourite granddaughter, bore a striking resemblance to one another. Their immaculately-groomed beards and handlebar moustaches, similar heights and predilection for military garb often found them being mistaken for one another when on royal visits. Each monarch was dedicated to the duty of their birthright and doted on their wives (Mary of Teck in George’s case; Alix of Hesse in Nicholas’). Both also struggled to come to terms with rapid social changes in their countries that called into question the validity of their reign. But while George managed these challenges and emerged as a successful and admired king, Nicholas retreated into the rarefied and almost absurdly privileged isolation of his immediate family and failed to adapt when his country slid into anarchy, which ultimately led to his death and the deaths of his family.
Morrow, a former royal court correspondent for the Telegraph, gained widespread access to royal correspondence to inform her book. It charts the long course of the cousins’ relationship, which was sustained through lengthy correspondence and much-cherished extended family gatherings. The often charmingly unaffected letters provide strong evidence of the warmth of the relationship between the King and the Tsar, which was in stark contrast to the rather chilly links with that other grandson of Victoria, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (1859-1941). But the fact remains that when imperial Russia was dissolving in a riotous panic during the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, which led to Nicholas being forced to abdicate his throne, George failed to offer a lifeline of refuge to the Russian imperial family, despite earlier indications from Britain that this would occur. Ultimately, it seems, the King put the security of his own kingdom as the highest priority above the safety of his Romanov relatives: fearful of a British workers’ uprising akin to that in Russia, the Romanovs were not offered safe haven in Britain.
The last ten chapters of the book are the most stirring and insightful, chronicling the ever-increasing chaos in Russia before and after Nicholas’ abdication, the fallout from the brutal government-ordered murder of not only Nicholas but also his wife and children, and the much later exhumation of their remains in the post-Soviet era for reburial in the chapel of the St Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg. Here Morrow describes the reburial ceremony on 17 July 1998, the eightieth anniversary of the murders:
The imperial requiem epitomised all the lusciously emotional extravagance of the Russian Orthodox Church; the music had never sounded more poignant, as the bearded priests in gold and cream-embossed silk robes recited the canticles in deep, resonant voices.The only criticisms I have to offer about the style of Morrow’s book is that the first two-thirds is devoted to a rather dense, spillikins-jumble of royal anecdote and parenthetical observations about obscure members of both families, which is at times hard to follow. Morrow’s willingness to write about important events in George and Nicholas’ lives simultaneously when the events being discussed actually occurred years apart also ran the risk of confusing the overall narrative and placing events in a misleading historical context. These caveats aside, Cousins Divided is still an interesting project and is worth reading, particularly for those with an interest in Russian history and the demise of the Romanovs.
As Nicholas II’s coffin was lowered into the earth to the sound of muffled drums, the entire Romanov family [the remnants of which had returned from around the world for the ceremony] sank to their knees. His simple coffin was placed in a vault in the whitewashed crypt, the traditional resting place of the Romanov ancestors, and a nineteen-gun salute was fired across the Neva.
As the Romanovs left after the ceremony, a press of people crowded around them, saying “Forgive us, forgive us…” This recurring lament was almost too much for some of the Tsar’s more elderly relatives.
Below, pictures taken on my July 2008 trip to Russia: the Romanovs’ graves and the chapel in which they reside, in the St Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg.
09 February 2009
Shanghai Pudong
Returning from New Zealand to the UK last month I stopped for a transfer between Air New Zealand and Virgin Atlantic in the relatively new Shanghai Pudong international airport. That's the one that's famous for its frighteningly expensive and hyper-modern maglev train linking the airport with the nearby Pudong city in next to no time. While I didn't have time to examine the super-fast train, I did glide over the polished floors and admire the swooping curves of the wave-like and lofty ceilings. It's an impressive structure, and it exudes confidence.
One aspect of passing through the airport was less than high-tech, however. International transfer passengers were required to have their passports scrutinised twice - once at the regular admissions desk and again in a back room, where presumably strange and mystical methods were used to determine whether or not we were reputable enough to stay on Chinese soil for three and a half hours. The problem was, all of these passports had to be returned by hand to a crowd of a hundred or more passengers who were corralled into a confined space in the massive immigration hall.
Each of the polite young Chinese border officials tasked with returning the passports as they emerged from the back rooms one by one had to call out the names of the passport holders and check they were returning the right passport to the right owner. This was less than straightforward because not only was the mass of transit passengers making a fair bit of noise in conversation, but the Chinese officials were not blessed with loud, stentorian voices - more of a half-apologetic squeak, in fact. And of course many of the names they had to read out were incomprehensible to them, so the names emerged in a garbled fashion. Some helpful Antipodeans assisted by shouting out some of the more challenging pronunciations - the Chinese officials couldn't cope with Maori names, for starters! Luckily everyone took the delay with a dose of wry humour.
After my passport was eventually returned unscathed I exited the scrum and took a couple of sneaky photos of the 'holding pen' - those still held hostage to bureaucracy. Hopefully they all made it out alive!
One aspect of passing through the airport was less than high-tech, however. International transfer passengers were required to have their passports scrutinised twice - once at the regular admissions desk and again in a back room, where presumably strange and mystical methods were used to determine whether or not we were reputable enough to stay on Chinese soil for three and a half hours. The problem was, all of these passports had to be returned by hand to a crowd of a hundred or more passengers who were corralled into a confined space in the massive immigration hall.
Each of the polite young Chinese border officials tasked with returning the passports as they emerged from the back rooms one by one had to call out the names of the passport holders and check they were returning the right passport to the right owner. This was less than straightforward because not only was the mass of transit passengers making a fair bit of noise in conversation, but the Chinese officials were not blessed with loud, stentorian voices - more of a half-apologetic squeak, in fact. And of course many of the names they had to read out were incomprehensible to them, so the names emerged in a garbled fashion. Some helpful Antipodeans assisted by shouting out some of the more challenging pronunciations - the Chinese officials couldn't cope with Maori names, for starters! Luckily everyone took the delay with a dose of wry humour.
After my passport was eventually returned unscathed I exited the scrum and took a couple of sneaky photos of the 'holding pen' - those still held hostage to bureaucracy. Hopefully they all made it out alive!
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14 January 2009
Tokyo, Ueno Park
A city's parks are often a good measure of its civic pride: witness the beloved expanses of New York's Central Park, the oasis of calm in a bustling metropolis that is London's Hyde Park, or the regal promenades of the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. Many people enjoy visiting city parks, and some make substantial journeys in order to reach them.
Following my stopover in Japan en route to New Zealand for Christmas, I can now claim to have visited Tokyo. However, I can't say that I've seen many of Tokyo's sights; in fact I have seen only one. With only a few hours to spare in the Japanese capital, and not wishing to miss the opportunity of seeing at least a small corner of a country I had never visited before, I boarded an airport train and explored Ueno Park in Tokyo on a mild Sunday afternoon in December.
I chose this park for the simple reason that the Keisei Limited Express train that runs from Tokyo's Narita Airport terminates at Ueno Station close by the park entrance. With my command of spoken Japanese running to perhaps five words and my ability to count terminating at the number three, I was reluctant to venture far afield given the possibility of missing my onwards Air New Zealand flight. So I limited my little Japanese adventure to a straightforward low-intensity amble in the park. It turned out to be a good choice.
The train from Narita took 70 minutes to reach Ueno. In that time it passed through open fields, followed by medium-density suburban townhouses, and then the big city apartments and office blocks of the inner city. There were a few fellow gaijin travellers on the train, but most of my fellow passengers were locals. Like me, quite a few of them lolled sleepy-eyed as the carriage rattled along to its final destination. A few others adopted the Asian habit of wearing medical facemasks, indicating that they had a cold and did not wish to infect their fellow passengers with their impolite germs.
At the end of the ride I arrived at the super-clean Ueno Station. Emerging from underground onto a busy thoroughfare, I walked about 50 metres to the park entrance, which was clearly signposted in Japanese and English, and began my exploration.
The land for Ueno Park was given to the city by the then Emperor in 1924, and it is a firm favourite with Tokyo's inhabitants. Its broad pedestrian avenues are lined with mature cherry trees, and on this mild winter afternoon with the temperature about 13 to 15 degrees people were taking the opportunity to enjoy a walk in the sunshine.
The park is dotted with statues and shrines. Near the entrance the statue of Saigo Takamori (1827-77), unveiled in 1898, depicts the famed samurai with a silk belt holding in his middle-aged paunch while he walks his sprightly little dog. Down a broad flight of stairs lies Shinobazu Pond, a little sea of clacking dry reeds with a shrine to Benzaiten on an islet at its centre. Further into the park, past a selection of Japanese street performers juggling and performing acrobatics, an equestrian statue of Prince Komatsu No Miya Akihito (d. 1903) keeps a watchful eye on the passing cyclists and the nearby softball players practicing their hitting inside their towering chain-link fences, which prevent fly-balls from beaning other park-goers.
At the far end of the park sits the impressive Tokyo National Museum building. While it looked intriguing, I didn't have enough time to do it justice so I resorted to visiting its gift shop instead. There I purchased some pretty postcards depicting 19th century Japanese paintings of courtiers and cats (not in the same picture though).
On the way back to the station I passed the National Science Museum and was both impressed and slightly bemused by the huge model of a diving blue whale outside. Perhaps passing motorists might mistake the museum for a fast-food joint? Next door was the National Museum of Western Art with its outdoor sculpture garden, where I admired casts of Rodin's The Thinker and The Burghers of Calais and Bourdelle's Hercules the Archer, and one of the original three casts of Rodin's monumental La Porte de l'Enfer (The Gates of Hell).
While I had only had time to visit a tiny corner of massive Tokyo, I was glad to have been able to enjoy the sights and take a few photographs. As I drowsily observed the scenes of Tokyo life as the Narita train passed through the city, I promised that I would return one day to explore the city with a little bit more time up my sleeve.
Following my stopover in Japan en route to New Zealand for Christmas, I can now claim to have visited Tokyo. However, I can't say that I've seen many of Tokyo's sights; in fact I have seen only one. With only a few hours to spare in the Japanese capital, and not wishing to miss the opportunity of seeing at least a small corner of a country I had never visited before, I boarded an airport train and explored Ueno Park in Tokyo on a mild Sunday afternoon in December.
I chose this park for the simple reason that the Keisei Limited Express train that runs from Tokyo's Narita Airport terminates at Ueno Station close by the park entrance. With my command of spoken Japanese running to perhaps five words and my ability to count terminating at the number three, I was reluctant to venture far afield given the possibility of missing my onwards Air New Zealand flight. So I limited my little Japanese adventure to a straightforward low-intensity amble in the park. It turned out to be a good choice.
The train from Narita took 70 minutes to reach Ueno. In that time it passed through open fields, followed by medium-density suburban townhouses, and then the big city apartments and office blocks of the inner city. There were a few fellow gaijin travellers on the train, but most of my fellow passengers were locals. Like me, quite a few of them lolled sleepy-eyed as the carriage rattled along to its final destination. A few others adopted the Asian habit of wearing medical facemasks, indicating that they had a cold and did not wish to infect their fellow passengers with their impolite germs.
At the end of the ride I arrived at the super-clean Ueno Station. Emerging from underground onto a busy thoroughfare, I walked about 50 metres to the park entrance, which was clearly signposted in Japanese and English, and began my exploration.
The land for Ueno Park was given to the city by the then Emperor in 1924, and it is a firm favourite with Tokyo's inhabitants. Its broad pedestrian avenues are lined with mature cherry trees, and on this mild winter afternoon with the temperature about 13 to 15 degrees people were taking the opportunity to enjoy a walk in the sunshine.
The park is dotted with statues and shrines. Near the entrance the statue of Saigo Takamori (1827-77), unveiled in 1898, depicts the famed samurai with a silk belt holding in his middle-aged paunch while he walks his sprightly little dog. Down a broad flight of stairs lies Shinobazu Pond, a little sea of clacking dry reeds with a shrine to Benzaiten on an islet at its centre. Further into the park, past a selection of Japanese street performers juggling and performing acrobatics, an equestrian statue of Prince Komatsu No Miya Akihito (d. 1903) keeps a watchful eye on the passing cyclists and the nearby softball players practicing their hitting inside their towering chain-link fences, which prevent fly-balls from beaning other park-goers.
At the far end of the park sits the impressive Tokyo National Museum building. While it looked intriguing, I didn't have enough time to do it justice so I resorted to visiting its gift shop instead. There I purchased some pretty postcards depicting 19th century Japanese paintings of courtiers and cats (not in the same picture though).
On the way back to the station I passed the National Science Museum and was both impressed and slightly bemused by the huge model of a diving blue whale outside. Perhaps passing motorists might mistake the museum for a fast-food joint? Next door was the National Museum of Western Art with its outdoor sculpture garden, where I admired casts of Rodin's The Thinker and The Burghers of Calais and Bourdelle's Hercules the Archer, and one of the original three casts of Rodin's monumental La Porte de l'Enfer (The Gates of Hell).
While I had only had time to visit a tiny corner of massive Tokyo, I was glad to have been able to enjoy the sights and take a few photographs. As I drowsily observed the scenes of Tokyo life as the Narita train passed through the city, I promised that I would return one day to explore the city with a little bit more time up my sleeve.
18 December 2008
In the court of the Nabataean kings
[Cont'd from Part 2]
It was with some small sorrow that we emerged from the Cairo Hotel, took a taxi to the coach station, and said our goodbyes to unassuming, friendly Hama. After an uneventful two-hour trip south we returned to the north Damascus coach station we had left a week earlier: it was every bit as chaotic and noisy as before. We quickly arranged a taxi to take us across the city to the part of town where the service taxi drivers congregate and await passengers.
As we neared the site one particularly persistent service driver was waving at our taxi driver while driving alongside our cab, hoping to secure our fare to Amman. But my attention was elsewhere - I was sitting in the front passenger seat with the window down to let the breeze in, and a wasp managed to secrete itself down the back of my shirt and sting me twice, once on the shoulder and once on the lower back. I shook the marauder out and Andrew planted a boot firmly atop it on the taxi carpet, while I proceeded to say 'ow' a bit. Not the most convenient timing on the wasp's part, given that we had to negotiate with a service taxi driver and cross an international border.
The service driver was keen for our business and we offered him half up front and half on arrival. His car was another white Hyundai, like the chap who'd driven us from Amman, and there were no dents in its paintwork, which sold us on his driving ability. However, once we emerged onto the open road it became apparent that this would be yet another knuckle-clenching ride, as the driver bobbed and weaved into any gap in the traffic and seemed keen to get to Amman as soon as possible at the highest speed. I don't wish to belabour the point, but suffice it to say that at one stage on the two-lane highway both lanes were blocked by slower traffic, so our driver 'undertook' on the dirt verge to sneak past a truck, with one wheel on the dringe of the tarmac and the other wheel rumbling 20 centimetres lower on the dirt. At this point the speedometer read 140 km/h. From my front seat vantage point the fastest I saw the speedometer climb to was 155km/h. That's 96 miles per hour.
Still, we got through the border crossing without incident, although we did have to put up with the driver encouraging us to carry a couple of packs of his cigarettes each to avoid him getting pinched for duty free violations. As soon as he dropped us off in Amman and we had paid him the rest of his fare he was on his way in a trice, haggling over a return fare to Damascus with a businessman in a suit. Then we boarded a local taxi to bring us to downtown Amman where we found our beds for the night at the Palace Hotel, which was down a small arcade dominated by garment and fabric shops. As the early dusk swept over Amman we climbed the steep steps behind the hotel to the well-off Al-Rainbow area on the hill, a part of town dominated by wealthy Jordanians and expats in the business and diplomatic community.
Admiring the view of the Amman city lights, we walked to the smart 'Books@Cafe', a combination English-language bookshop and cafe/nightclub. We knew it was a bit unusual when we were frisked for concealed weapons by a uniformed security guard before we entered. Upstairs, we relaxed in the chic dining area while trendy young Ammanites and expats chatted cheerfully, and we relished the opportunity to devour broad, thin and tasty pizzas from their wood-fired ovens. We retired early, as it had been another tiring day of travel, and because tomorrow would be another.
==
We had arranged a minibus tour to take us from Amman southwards to Wadi Mousa, the town adjacent to the fabulous ruins of Petra. The tour would take us eight hours, and would visit many historic and scenic attractions along the way. We were joined in the minibus by a young Swiss couple who spoke excellent English, and were friendly travelling companions for the day.
Highlights of the journey included our visits to:
- Mt Nebo, the rocky peak said to be the spot from which Moses gazed down upon the Promised Land at the end of his long life. The beaten-down ruins of a 4th-century monastery adorn the peak now, and the remains of its splendid mosaics are on display. There's also a memorial to the goodwill visit of Pope John Paul II in 2000, which is an impressive sight in this relatively open and tolerant Muslim country.
- The sweeping vistas of Jordan's own Grand Canyon, the Wadi Mujib, a giant gouge carved out of the terrain by millennia of river erosion.
- The age-old mosaic in the church at Madaba, where the remnants of a Byzantine mosaic map of the known world have survived 1500 years.
- Karak, a former Crusader castle built in the 1140s with cavernous stables for warhorses and a row of medieval underground shops.
Until this point in the narrative I've successfully glossed over the general illness and malaise that can beset travellers in the Middle East, but it would be remiss of me if I omitted to mention that on this day of buzzing about in a minibus along twisty, curlicued Jordanian hill roads, I was quite impressively off-colour. By the time we finally reached Wadi Mousa at sunset I hurriedly checked in to our hotel for the next few days and immediately went to bed to recover. After 12 hours of bed-rest I was feeling much more human!
==
The next day I fortified myself with food and drink to rebuild my energy levels, and set off down the valley to the entrance of the Petra world heritage site, which was once the capital of the Nabataean kingdom. (Jennifer and Andrew had departed earlier to catch the best sunlight). Wadi Mousa (Moses' Valley) is a narrow gully lined with shops and restaurants, with the steeper portions occupied by olive groves and the scanty huts of a few Bedouin herders. At the bottom of the valley several smart hotels are located near the site entrance, as well as the usual souvenir and snack stalls. Past the entrance gates the dusty path passed the Princess Alia charitable home for retired horses and donkeys, which would be some small relief to the army of animals lugging tourists up and down to Petra either in canopied gigs or on their backs. There are camels for hire too, but for some reason they don't qualify for the home. Maybe that's because once they stop being useful you can eat them?
As you enter the former eastern gates of Petra you begin the descent through the narrow canyon known as the Siq, with its russet-red sandstone walls still etched with the irrigation troughs that once supplied the city with its life-giving water. The canyon walls tower over the path and would have offered great protection from invaders; now they are crowded with clumps of tour groups having the features explained to them, and the harnesses of passing horse-drawn gigs send echoing jingles bouncing off the stones. The walk through the Siq to the city is over a kilometre, and after what seems like an age the ravine narrows to a mere crack, through which carved stonework is just visible.
The first and most famous view of Petra is of the tomb known as Al-Khazneh, the Treasury, a 10-metre high semi-Roman facade cut into a vertical cliff. A long-held rumour maintained that jewels were secreted within the toppermost urn, and the upper statues are still pockmarked from the gunfire of raiding tribesmen several centuries ago. The climbing holds cut into the rock face by the would-be thieves are still clearly visible too.
The area near the Treasury is thronged with tourists and the attendant camel, horse and donkey-ride touts, so it's something of a relief to leave the little canyon and move further downhill past other, less grand tombs cut into the rock face, and a 7000-seat amphitheatre carved into a hillside. The city opened out at that point, and as you walk westwards past old Bedouin cave-dwellings you enter the old heart of the city along its broad processional way. The heavy flagstones of the ancient city still rested underfoot, their jumbled irregularity in stark contrast to the patterned order of the hexagonal floor tiles of a grand temple (of which little remains).
At the end of the way by the free-standing Qasr al-Bint temple, I turned aside and stumbled up a side path to the ruins of a Byzantine church where the views of its elaborate floor mosaics were soundtracked by the soothing voices of a choir-group of French pilgrims. The afternoon was hot and still, and the temperature was only briefly diminished when a fleeting two-minute rainshower wetted the sandy earth and brought some sustenance to the hardy desert plants clinging to the hillsides.
What with the early sunsets and my late start it was soon time to think about returning to Wadi Mousa. I hadn't run into Jennifer and Andrew but had stayed in touch with them through the day by text, and now we arranged to meet up for a meal at a nearby cafe. We shared our experiences of Petra and looked forward to another day of exploration.
==
The next morning we returned to Petra and made our way to the furthest edge of the city by the Qasr al-Bint before beginning the invigorating hike up 850 steps to the far-flung tomb known as the Monastery. The path was peppered with wiry Bedouin women selling cheap trinkets to passers-by, but we pressed on with a polite 'laa shukran'. As the path wove upwards we stepped aside often for passing donkeys carrying rather lazy tourists up. Given the steep path and number of steps involved I don't think it would've been a comfortable ride!
Finally we reached the top and were able to admire the stark beauty of the Monastery, which received its name because it was consecrated by the Byzantines and used for church ceremonies centuries after its construction.
Past the Monastery the path meandered along the mountain top to a series of lookout points offering spectacular vistas over the surrounding valleys, and a corresponding plunge to doom if we got too close to the edge. Each of the best vantage points was marked with a rickety souvenir hut that enteprising Bedouins had erected to soak up any excess cash tourists might want to fling around, and here and there haphazard cairns of stones brought up from the valleys by walkers formed lopsided totem poles.
After the somewhat more sedate walk back down to the main part of the city I ventured up the incline to the series of eastern tombs overlooking the colonnaded way. Most prominent was the tomb of the Roman governor of the province of Arabia, Sextius Florentius, which was carved in about 126-130 AD. To the south sits the impressive architecture of the Urn Tomb, the largest tomb in Petra, which is believed to have been carved in about 70 AD - about the same time construction began on the Colosseum in Rome. More recently the Urn Tomb was reconsecrated as a Byzantine church... but when I say more recently, I mean in the mid-fifth century - i.e., about 1500 years ago!
Finally the time came to bid farewell to Petra. I could've easily spent more time there exploring the furthest trails and soaking up the atmosphere, but a day and a half was enough to get a good feel for the place and its history. As I walked slowly back up the Siq I paused to admire the acoustics and the soft shades of the stones in the setting sun. Here's a couple of videos to give you an idea - the second one is just a few moments after the first, when I heard the horse-drawn gig approaching up the slope.
==
After a leisurely breakfast chatting to a Belgian couple at the hotel dining table we packed our belongings and adjourned to the nearby bus depot to await the minibus back to Amman. The vehicle was waiting there so we loaded our gear onboard, paid the man a few pounds each and settled in our seats to wait for a full complement of passengers. The services don't operate on a timetable - rather, they leave when they're full or when the driver gets sick of waiting for more people to arrive. In this case we ended up waiting 55 minutes. Our middle-aged driver wore a Bedouin headdress and spent the majority of the three hour journey to Amman fielding numerous calls on his mobile phone. A quick taxi ride from the depot to the Palace Hotel and we were out on the streets of the capital once more.
We went for an excellent late lunch of chicken tawooq at the busy but remarkably cheap Cairo Restaurant (everything's named Cairo in the Middle East, it seems). After a bit of shopping we had a low-key dinner and packed our bags for our flights the following morning: Jennifer and Andrew were bound for Cairo and the continuation of their Middle Eastern adventure, and I was returning to London. It only remained to get up ludicrously early for our taxi ride out to the airport at sunrise, and to say our farewells before we boarded our respective flights. As far as I was concerned it had been a marvellous adventure in Jordan and Syria, but I had to hand it to Jennifer and Andrew - if I'd been going on to Egypt for another 10 days of travelling I think I'd have needed a relaxing day or two off first!
Photos taken flying back over London:
It was with some small sorrow that we emerged from the Cairo Hotel, took a taxi to the coach station, and said our goodbyes to unassuming, friendly Hama. After an uneventful two-hour trip south we returned to the north Damascus coach station we had left a week earlier: it was every bit as chaotic and noisy as before. We quickly arranged a taxi to take us across the city to the part of town where the service taxi drivers congregate and await passengers.
As we neared the site one particularly persistent service driver was waving at our taxi driver while driving alongside our cab, hoping to secure our fare to Amman. But my attention was elsewhere - I was sitting in the front passenger seat with the window down to let the breeze in, and a wasp managed to secrete itself down the back of my shirt and sting me twice, once on the shoulder and once on the lower back. I shook the marauder out and Andrew planted a boot firmly atop it on the taxi carpet, while I proceeded to say 'ow' a bit. Not the most convenient timing on the wasp's part, given that we had to negotiate with a service taxi driver and cross an international border.
The service driver was keen for our business and we offered him half up front and half on arrival. His car was another white Hyundai, like the chap who'd driven us from Amman, and there were no dents in its paintwork, which sold us on his driving ability. However, once we emerged onto the open road it became apparent that this would be yet another knuckle-clenching ride, as the driver bobbed and weaved into any gap in the traffic and seemed keen to get to Amman as soon as possible at the highest speed. I don't wish to belabour the point, but suffice it to say that at one stage on the two-lane highway both lanes were blocked by slower traffic, so our driver 'undertook' on the dirt verge to sneak past a truck, with one wheel on the dringe of the tarmac and the other wheel rumbling 20 centimetres lower on the dirt. At this point the speedometer read 140 km/h. From my front seat vantage point the fastest I saw the speedometer climb to was 155km/h. That's 96 miles per hour.
Still, we got through the border crossing without incident, although we did have to put up with the driver encouraging us to carry a couple of packs of his cigarettes each to avoid him getting pinched for duty free violations. As soon as he dropped us off in Amman and we had paid him the rest of his fare he was on his way in a trice, haggling over a return fare to Damascus with a businessman in a suit. Then we boarded a local taxi to bring us to downtown Amman where we found our beds for the night at the Palace Hotel, which was down a small arcade dominated by garment and fabric shops. As the early dusk swept over Amman we climbed the steep steps behind the hotel to the well-off Al-Rainbow area on the hill, a part of town dominated by wealthy Jordanians and expats in the business and diplomatic community.
Admiring the view of the Amman city lights, we walked to the smart 'Books@Cafe', a combination English-language bookshop and cafe/nightclub. We knew it was a bit unusual when we were frisked for concealed weapons by a uniformed security guard before we entered. Upstairs, we relaxed in the chic dining area while trendy young Ammanites and expats chatted cheerfully, and we relished the opportunity to devour broad, thin and tasty pizzas from their wood-fired ovens. We retired early, as it had been another tiring day of travel, and because tomorrow would be another.
==
We had arranged a minibus tour to take us from Amman southwards to Wadi Mousa, the town adjacent to the fabulous ruins of Petra. The tour would take us eight hours, and would visit many historic and scenic attractions along the way. We were joined in the minibus by a young Swiss couple who spoke excellent English, and were friendly travelling companions for the day.
Highlights of the journey included our visits to:
- Mt Nebo, the rocky peak said to be the spot from which Moses gazed down upon the Promised Land at the end of his long life. The beaten-down ruins of a 4th-century monastery adorn the peak now, and the remains of its splendid mosaics are on display. There's also a memorial to the goodwill visit of Pope John Paul II in 2000, which is an impressive sight in this relatively open and tolerant Muslim country.
- The sweeping vistas of Jordan's own Grand Canyon, the Wadi Mujib, a giant gouge carved out of the terrain by millennia of river erosion.
- The age-old mosaic in the church at Madaba, where the remnants of a Byzantine mosaic map of the known world have survived 1500 years.
- Karak, a former Crusader castle built in the 1140s with cavernous stables for warhorses and a row of medieval underground shops.
Until this point in the narrative I've successfully glossed over the general illness and malaise that can beset travellers in the Middle East, but it would be remiss of me if I omitted to mention that on this day of buzzing about in a minibus along twisty, curlicued Jordanian hill roads, I was quite impressively off-colour. By the time we finally reached Wadi Mousa at sunset I hurriedly checked in to our hotel for the next few days and immediately went to bed to recover. After 12 hours of bed-rest I was feeling much more human!
==
The next day I fortified myself with food and drink to rebuild my energy levels, and set off down the valley to the entrance of the Petra world heritage site, which was once the capital of the Nabataean kingdom. (Jennifer and Andrew had departed earlier to catch the best sunlight). Wadi Mousa (Moses' Valley) is a narrow gully lined with shops and restaurants, with the steeper portions occupied by olive groves and the scanty huts of a few Bedouin herders. At the bottom of the valley several smart hotels are located near the site entrance, as well as the usual souvenir and snack stalls. Past the entrance gates the dusty path passed the Princess Alia charitable home for retired horses and donkeys, which would be some small relief to the army of animals lugging tourists up and down to Petra either in canopied gigs or on their backs. There are camels for hire too, but for some reason they don't qualify for the home. Maybe that's because once they stop being useful you can eat them?
As you enter the former eastern gates of Petra you begin the descent through the narrow canyon known as the Siq, with its russet-red sandstone walls still etched with the irrigation troughs that once supplied the city with its life-giving water. The canyon walls tower over the path and would have offered great protection from invaders; now they are crowded with clumps of tour groups having the features explained to them, and the harnesses of passing horse-drawn gigs send echoing jingles bouncing off the stones. The walk through the Siq to the city is over a kilometre, and after what seems like an age the ravine narrows to a mere crack, through which carved stonework is just visible.
The first and most famous view of Petra is of the tomb known as Al-Khazneh, the Treasury, a 10-metre high semi-Roman facade cut into a vertical cliff. A long-held rumour maintained that jewels were secreted within the toppermost urn, and the upper statues are still pockmarked from the gunfire of raiding tribesmen several centuries ago. The climbing holds cut into the rock face by the would-be thieves are still clearly visible too.
The area near the Treasury is thronged with tourists and the attendant camel, horse and donkey-ride touts, so it's something of a relief to leave the little canyon and move further downhill past other, less grand tombs cut into the rock face, and a 7000-seat amphitheatre carved into a hillside. The city opened out at that point, and as you walk westwards past old Bedouin cave-dwellings you enter the old heart of the city along its broad processional way. The heavy flagstones of the ancient city still rested underfoot, their jumbled irregularity in stark contrast to the patterned order of the hexagonal floor tiles of a grand temple (of which little remains).
At the end of the way by the free-standing Qasr al-Bint temple, I turned aside and stumbled up a side path to the ruins of a Byzantine church where the views of its elaborate floor mosaics were soundtracked by the soothing voices of a choir-group of French pilgrims. The afternoon was hot and still, and the temperature was only briefly diminished when a fleeting two-minute rainshower wetted the sandy earth and brought some sustenance to the hardy desert plants clinging to the hillsides.
What with the early sunsets and my late start it was soon time to think about returning to Wadi Mousa. I hadn't run into Jennifer and Andrew but had stayed in touch with them through the day by text, and now we arranged to meet up for a meal at a nearby cafe. We shared our experiences of Petra and looked forward to another day of exploration.
==
The next morning we returned to Petra and made our way to the furthest edge of the city by the Qasr al-Bint before beginning the invigorating hike up 850 steps to the far-flung tomb known as the Monastery. The path was peppered with wiry Bedouin women selling cheap trinkets to passers-by, but we pressed on with a polite 'laa shukran'. As the path wove upwards we stepped aside often for passing donkeys carrying rather lazy tourists up. Given the steep path and number of steps involved I don't think it would've been a comfortable ride!
Finally we reached the top and were able to admire the stark beauty of the Monastery, which received its name because it was consecrated by the Byzantines and used for church ceremonies centuries after its construction.
Past the Monastery the path meandered along the mountain top to a series of lookout points offering spectacular vistas over the surrounding valleys, and a corresponding plunge to doom if we got too close to the edge. Each of the best vantage points was marked with a rickety souvenir hut that enteprising Bedouins had erected to soak up any excess cash tourists might want to fling around, and here and there haphazard cairns of stones brought up from the valleys by walkers formed lopsided totem poles.
After the somewhat more sedate walk back down to the main part of the city I ventured up the incline to the series of eastern tombs overlooking the colonnaded way. Most prominent was the tomb of the Roman governor of the province of Arabia, Sextius Florentius, which was carved in about 126-130 AD. To the south sits the impressive architecture of the Urn Tomb, the largest tomb in Petra, which is believed to have been carved in about 70 AD - about the same time construction began on the Colosseum in Rome. More recently the Urn Tomb was reconsecrated as a Byzantine church... but when I say more recently, I mean in the mid-fifth century - i.e., about 1500 years ago!
Finally the time came to bid farewell to Petra. I could've easily spent more time there exploring the furthest trails and soaking up the atmosphere, but a day and a half was enough to get a good feel for the place and its history. As I walked slowly back up the Siq I paused to admire the acoustics and the soft shades of the stones in the setting sun. Here's a couple of videos to give you an idea - the second one is just a few moments after the first, when I heard the horse-drawn gig approaching up the slope.
==
After a leisurely breakfast chatting to a Belgian couple at the hotel dining table we packed our belongings and adjourned to the nearby bus depot to await the minibus back to Amman. The vehicle was waiting there so we loaded our gear onboard, paid the man a few pounds each and settled in our seats to wait for a full complement of passengers. The services don't operate on a timetable - rather, they leave when they're full or when the driver gets sick of waiting for more people to arrive. In this case we ended up waiting 55 minutes. Our middle-aged driver wore a Bedouin headdress and spent the majority of the three hour journey to Amman fielding numerous calls on his mobile phone. A quick taxi ride from the depot to the Palace Hotel and we were out on the streets of the capital once more.
We went for an excellent late lunch of chicken tawooq at the busy but remarkably cheap Cairo Restaurant (everything's named Cairo in the Middle East, it seems). After a bit of shopping we had a low-key dinner and packed our bags for our flights the following morning: Jennifer and Andrew were bound for Cairo and the continuation of their Middle Eastern adventure, and I was returning to London. It only remained to get up ludicrously early for our taxi ride out to the airport at sunrise, and to say our farewells before we boarded our respective flights. As far as I was concerned it had been a marvellous adventure in Jordan and Syria, but I had to hand it to Jennifer and Andrew - if I'd been going on to Egypt for another 10 days of travelling I think I'd have needed a relaxing day or two off first!
Photos taken flying back over London:
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