Wadi Rum
rock bridge in Wadi rum i climbed and was on top of
Wadi rum
the treasury in Petra as seen in Indiana Jones
The monestry, longgg hike but worth it!
Wadi Musa where I crashed a wedding
Eilat- the touristy city of Israel... not too big fan of it, but it's still cool
So this weekend I decided to go on a trip to Jordan. I mean come on it's Jordan, it's this mysterious country shown in Indiana Jones and it was going to be my first Arab/muslim nation that I was going to visit. So me and my friends decided to meet up in Eilat, Israel and then head over to Jordan by crossing the southern border to Jordan. There are only two borders to Jordan from Israel. But since my friends were comming from Tel Aviv they were going to leave at 12 am from Tel Aviv and get to Eilat at 6 am Thursday, but me living in a middle of desert of Sed Boker didn't have much choice but to arrive to Eilat by myself at 7pm Wed.
I got to Eilat and walked around the city, and I guess this woman could see that I was a college student looking around and asked me if I wanted a hostel for 100 shackles. Now that's about $30 but me being a college kid, and preferin the adventure told her that I was just going to sleep on the streets and meet up with my friends at 6 am. Now this woman wanting to rip some money off of me called me crazy saying that I will get drugged by people if I sleep on the streets. I said thanks for the warning and just walked off, but that kind of stayed in the back off my head throughout the whole night... So I just walked around the city and went to the North Beach of Eilat. They had amazing night life and night market and I walked around eye shopping and just chilling like a tourist. Then around 2 am I decided I should get some sleep and found a nice layer of rock next to the beach and went to sleep. I kept one eye open just incase lol (that stupid woman's warning haha) but slept an hour or so but I kept having to evacuate from one loacation to another not because of people trying to drug me but becuase of these whole bunch of couples who kept waking me up by sitting near me and making out and moaning. lol love birds what can I say, and I guess they couldn't see me because I was flat on the rock and it was pretty dark. So I finally found a nice quiet spot and slept until 5 am. I woke up brushed my teeth, got some water from the fountain and met up with my friends. Then we took a taxi to the Jordan border and waited until the border opened. But all in all, my adventure in Eilat was fun, but I was quite disapointed in the City. It was just way too touristy for me, with all these expensive hotels, bars, shops, all it really was just a huge money spenidng place with not much history or substance. But for just partying and hanging out it's a good place.
Border to Jordan opend and then we went in had security check, got visa, and the Israeli gov. Raped our wallet (we had to pay $30 to leave the country. wtf right? but moving on) we then took the taxi and went to our hostel which was in Wadi Musa (Wadi means valley btw). It was a pretty city with mountainieous regions but some how apartments and houses growing in these mountains, like fungus and mushrooms growing on trees. From our hostel we drove to Petra and entered Petra. Now Petra was gorgeous. It's name one of the new wonders of the world, and it was in Indiana Jones, and man it was quite a beauty. And I was amazed at how old this place was, and even few years ago people were still living in this caves and rock carved buildings. We did some awesome rock climibing, hiking, and saw the nature, and also hiked for a 1.5 hour to get to the monestry which was very high up. I did a pretty good bargain and bought some souvneers for a pretty good price. (look at the pictures attatched and you will realize how beautiful it was)
After petra we had dinner and then me and some of my friends saw this huge parade of cars and was wondering what is was (there was a truck in this parade that had a fire work luancher on it's back trunk, something totally illegal in the U.S haha, and they kept launching these huge fire works as it traveled) we asked a man next to us and he told us that it was a wedding, so we decided to crash the wedding and jumped in his truck and joined the car parade. we yelled "Mah-Brook" which means conrtaualtions, and clapped and hinked and etc, and just massed around. Then we got to the wedding, and people warmly welcomed us in as we danced on the streets yelling mabrook mabrook. The girls went in to dance and shake hands witht he bride, and we were sent to the man's side to have man talk and be with the groom's side. all in all we had alot of fun and then went back to our hostel.
The next day we went to Wadi Rum, which is a town with preserved natural beauty and where Lawrence of Arabia's home is (the general in WWI-watch the movie) and it was alot of fun and we climbed alot of rocks. and we got a jeep tour through the desert which was sweet. off roading in the desert was pretty bad ass. We took some sweet pictures and saw the sun set and then came back to camp and tent out in the middle of the desert. Then we washed ourselves and had an amazing bedwin(the name of people that live in the caves and in the desert) dinner and I stuffed myself with amazing food. After eating we made a bon fire, had some beer and just danced to some Jordanian songs and also danced to some modern music and etc. It was a pretty sweet party in the desert. Then for some reason, I had this amazing idea that we should go streaking. In my head what I was thinking was Tarzan from Disney or Mowgli from hungle book where you run with the wild and you feel like a wild natural man. So me and some of the boys mentioned it (I was completely sober) the other guys not so much, but running with the natural just sounded awesome so we all stripped and ran out of our camp site. But as we kept running what we didn't realize was that there was another camp few hundred meters away from us that could see us. Me and my friend didn't knwo so we jsut kept running around, but other guys who wanted to scare the other camp (they were clearly gone) got clsoe tot he camp and the other camp guys saw them and ran after them. They quickly hid but me and my friend not knwoing just ran around without realizing that they could see us... then we got the cue and hid as well and quickly made our way back to our tent secretly. But when we got back our other friends thought it would be a great idea to hide our clothes and we were scrambling trying to get something to hide ourselve with. I picked up a 4 leged flat chair and coverd myself and my other friends took some cloth and animal fur. Then our tour guide also wanted to play a prank on us and dressed up and a bedwin and dressed on of our friends as a bedwin woman and set in the camp fire, and the other tour guide came up to us and said these are bedwin people so you should put clothes on and stay quite. not being able to find our clothes we covered oursleves with rndm stuff and set quietly in the chair not knowing what to do, hoping he bedwin man won't kill us for being naked infront of his bedwin wife. (it's a muslim country so.. streaking and being naked probs wasn't the best idea...) but then we realized that this was a prank and then massed around with them and then just massed around a bit more and then asked them for our clothes. but of course our friends didn't give it back to us and we had to sit around the camp fire with furs around our private parts( by then i had ditched the chair and wnet for the fur)... then the cops came....
so the other camp seeing the we were naked called the cops and also made a noise complaint for the loud music. So when the cops came in me and my friends were danicng around.... bascily naked with a small fur thing around our selves. our tour guide told us to quickly sit down and we set nervous wndering what was going to happen.... so bascily we could have gone to jail for what we did.. but our tour guide smooth talked to them saying that we weren't naked and had fur things covering us and we were jsut acitng like native americans around the camp fire. The cops and our tour guide argued for about half an hour and they finally went away and our tour guide told us that he saved our ass, and that he will have to go to police station the next day to figute it out and may go to jail or not depending on what they do. So that was the end of the party and we all went to bed. the next day we went to Acka, Jordan (not sure about spelling) and street shoped. I made some arabic friends and shopped, and then finally crossed the border to Israel and went back home. But all in all Jordan was alot of fun and people were really nice. I was on guard at first because Jordan and muslim country is some where I never been to and it was a mysterious country for me, but I realized they were some of the nicest people i have ever met. They always went for hand shakes even when I jsut said excuse me and were very friendly people. One thing kinda anoing was that they all thought I was either Chinese, Japanese, or Jacki Chan, but I liekd Jacky Chan so I just kept that name in the trip. but all in all it was an awesome weekend, and I am prety pumped for next weekend! shalom :)
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