From Amman, we travelled to Petra by car which took us like 3 to 4 hours to reach Petra. What is Petra? Let me copy a brief description about Petra from a brochure that I received :
Petra, chosen as one of the 7 world wonders (really?? I didn’t know that), it is without a doubt Jordan’s most valuable treasure and greatest tourist attraction. It’s a vast, unique city, carved into the cheer rock face by Nabataeans, an industrious Arab people who settled here more than 2000 years ago, turning it into an important junction for the silk, spice and other trade routes that linked China, India and southern Arabia with Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome. By 16th century Petra was completely lost to the West, and so it remained for almost 300 years. In 1812, a Swiss traveller named Johann Ludwig Burckhardt persuaded his guide to take him to the site of the rumoured lost city. Secretly making notes and sketches, he wrote “ It seems very probable that the ruins at Wadi Musa are those of ancient Petra”. ....
My version of Petra? It’s some kind of rocky brown place that requires you to walk and walk and walk and walk. No doubt, it’s a beautiful place, i think people used to live in these rocky things because some look like caves and if you go inside, it’s very very cooling, screw air con. Even my stupid air con at my Casa Indah condo isn’t as cooling as inside the air conless cave. The entrance fee into Petra is 33 dinars PER PERSON, convert it to RM, and it’ll be RM 155. What the &5$#??!! ( 1 Jordanian dinars = RM 4.71). My mom told me not to buy anything at Petra and Dubai because the things are freaking damn expansive. Thus, i have to resist the shopping urge and wait til my trip to Egypt in 2 more days.
It looks like cave...
And that bloody 33 dinars entrance fee doesn’t include a tour guide, hence we have to walk by ourselves. You want a tour guide, you have to pay EXTRA which could extend to 50 dinars. It’s quite a long walk along Petra so they offer donkey/horse rides which you have to pay, 15 dinars. We choose not to get the donkey ride because firstly, it’s expansive and secondly I don’t want to end up like the guy who played Superman in the earlier Superman movies who ended up paralysed from head to toe when he fell from the horse, in case the horse decide to go berserk. This is another reason why I don’t plan to ride a camel either. Besides, i’m an animal lover, don’t want the poor thing to carry my fat ass, a heavy burden for it.
There were a lot of people at Petra, mostly in big tour groups. As we started out journey, i saw a horny donkey making horny noises (he was damn far away but his horny cry is loud). Then another horny donkey started making horny noises in REPLY. Why did i think the donkeys were horny? After making the noise, the donkey started to turn side by side on the ground (i saw this from far). It’s pretty much like what horny cats will do. Anyway, enough with the horny donkeys, this is about Petra.
ONE OF THE DONKEYS BUT NOT THE HORNY ONE...
Since my dad knew how much I LOOOOOOOVE “walking”, him, being sarcastic told me to IMAGINE that I was walking at the One Utama shopping mall, from the old wing to the new wing and there are many shops by the side.
I was wearing flat covered shoes but yet my feet were still tired, painful and blisters started to form. I was also having breathing difficulties because i was still having flu so my nose was still watery and blocked. But they were not blocked enough since i could still smell HORSE SHITS along the way. The stuff is green in colour. Smells like zebra or donkey shit too since it’s the same smell when i was at Mexico when i was younger because they had Zebras along the street. Or was it donkeys? I swore it was Zebra. But camel’s shits are like tiny small balls. I think it was camel shit since the camel was there before it went away.
INTO PETRA...
THIS IS WHERE I STOPPED...
My feet were killing me so i decided to stop at the 3rd pit stop instead of continuing up to the monastery. The first walk was about 800 m. Then the 2nd walk was 1.3 km to this beautiful thing (i really don’t know what’s the correct term to described it so i just show you a picture of it). After that, the walk to the monastery was a little bit further and there are 800 STEPS!! I told my father i’m not gonna climb those steps because i didn’t even climbed the steps at BATU CAVES which is like what, 1000 steps?? My brother corrected me and said it’s just like 500 something. Whatever, it’s still a lot of steps for my fat ass to climb up. So my dad and bro continued they journey to the monastery while i wait for them at this one eating and drinking place. Bought a coke for 1 dinar. Bloody hell expansive since it’s just a small can.
I saw some cats around the place, tried to call them but they ignored me since i have no food. Evil cats! While waiting for my dad and bro to return, an elderly couple sat next to me. I just smiled at them. Later, a local tour guide joined us at the table. He started to talk to me, the basic local-foreign people conversations. His English is good. So far, all the Jordianian people that i come across have good English. Our private tour guide has excellent English. He was telling me that he was doing Nursing course at Germany (ooooHHH my God, that’s where my darling Michael Ballack is from!!! Sorry for my “gedikness” ;-p) and stayed at Germany for 17 years before he decided to return back to Jordan. I asked him why he didn’t continue doing his nursing course here. He said nursing here doesn’t give you good pay, only 500 dinars per month while being a tour guide, you could easily earn 170 dinars per day or was it per week?, sometimes per month you can get 7000 dinars! He also told me that he personally think that the Petra’s entrance fee is too damn high and the most expansive tourism entrance fee he had come across. Per day, Petra can get as much as 5000 tourists!!! Now that i remembered, the entrance fee for Petra will be 50 dinars starting 1st November 2010!! And the tour guide told me the Petra’s entrance fee is always increasing. Then the elderly couple started talking to him about some stuff and i found out the couple is from Belgium and the tour guide can speak several languages. Later the couple left and the tour guide had to continue with his tour group.
Then a young boy who was working at the cafe started to talk to me. He was wearing thick eyeliner, thicker than mine even! He started to talk to me because i was meow meowing the blooding damn arrogant cats. He asked me whether i like cats and i told him yes. It was his cat, altogether he has 7 cats. Oh My God, i just love those fat orange cats. My conversation with the boy was mainly he trying to promote Petra. He told me instead of waiting here, i should go up to the monetary like my dad and bro. I told him i was too damn tired and that it was far. He told me i should ride on the donkey to go there. I told him donkeys are expansive. He said he can persuade his brother to give 7 dinars instead of 15. Donkey or no donkey, i will not go up there because i’m tired and my dad told me to stay put. So i just declined him. I don’t know how over conversations went back to talking about cats because he told me he has a BLACK cat and it was pretty, even prettier if he put khol (the eyeliner) around it’s eyes. Seriously, that’s what i heard he told me. And how in the hell do u put eyeliner around the cat’s eyes especially since it’s already BLACK??! I must have misheard him but i’m sure he mentioned KHOL!
PICTURE OF THE MONASTRY. TOOK THE PIC FROM MY DAD'S CAMERA SINCE I WAS TOO FAT AND LAZY TO WALK ALL THE WAY UP THERE.After 1 hour plus, i saw my dad and bro returning so i said goodbye to the boy. Me, being a world class cat harasser, tried to call to another orange cat. Instead of the cat answering me, one of the guys working there told me the cat’s name is SHAKIRA. I was dumbfounded for a moment. A cat named Shakira? I’m pretty sure he named it after the Latina singer Shakira.
THERE WERE A LOT OF PRETTY COLOURFUL FLOWERS IN AMMAN.My dad, bro and i started to walk back to the entrance of Petra from where we initially came from. We were all tired, although I didn’t go up all the way to the monastery :-D... We waited for our tour guide to pick us up and send us to our hotel. Got to stop here for now because i have to get ready for dinner!
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