📸 Photography sickmint79 takes you to jordan
- Thread starter sickmint79
- Start date
Camel dick makes you smile?if you told me this was beef i wouldn't have fought you. it is leaner than beef though. was pretty good and i'd definitely have it again.
Totally odd question, but for all the walking/hiking, what are you wearing for shoes? Like trail runners, hiking boots/shoes, etc?
israel would be cool to see too... some time, at least.
i'm exploring during the day, working at night, then leaving to somewhere new for breakfast in the morning so that is not exactly ideal lol. at best i think there is a cute girl in amman now i could maybe try and meet my last day/night here which will be in amman.
i have some shop guys trying to get me to come into places but that has not been a big deal. the mule guys at petra were pretty easy to turn down given i'd just say i needed the exercise and i eat a lot. taxi guys there in front of it offer to take you to the back entrance, and get to the monastery quick vs. the hike i did today - i wasn't sure if that was a scam or not. turns out there is a back way to enter via little petra. it seems you maybe avoid paying for petra if you come in this way, and pass by some bedouin camps. it seems a fairly well trodden path although surely less people are on it and it is still some effort. there is a "Back Door hiking route to the Monastery" in the middle of nowhere on google maps and people make it sound easier and it looks that way too. hmm. i did see a couple today in petra where this dude was hounding this woman pretty bad to sell her something. i was really surprised the husband didn't tell the guy to buzz off.
in egypt i think people are more desperate (inflation is super bad) and particularly around the pyramids you will get quite harassed. my first day there is right by them, and the only free day i'll have in egypt flying solo. i'm going to postpone that until the next day with a guide though. apparently if you're with a guide the harassment is way less or drops to zero. if not you get quite hounded, especially if you show any engagement or interest.
most of the year i'm not wearing shoes/on the thai island. else i am usually wearing some ecco shoes. these are the current onesCamel dick makes you smile?
Totally odd question, but for all the walking/hiking, what are you wearing for shoes? Like trail runners, hiking boots/shoes, etc?
ECCO MEN'S ULT-TRN WATERPROOF LOW SHOE
Shop ECCO MEN'S ULT-TRN WATERPROOF LOW SHOE at ECCO® Shoes - Premium Quality And Comfort ✓ Free Shipping And Returns For Members.
here is what some jordanian dinar looks like
i tried to go to this rooftop restaurant that was rated fairly high on google, but it was closed. the hotel looked like it had 0 people staying at it. another hotel near me with decent reviews had 1 car in the lot. my hotel has 3. other hotels seem closed and restaurants closed early. there's 2 hotels across the street from mine under construction, although none is happening, and i'm wondering now if they are simply covid skeletons. the big nicer chain one by me is movenpick, although it looks pretty quiet for its size as well. i read on some random blog that there were 4000 daily petra visitors roughly during high season and 400 during low.
some interesting more official visitor stats:
410,371 | 2015 |
464,154 | 2016 |
780,378 | 2017 |
828,952 | 2018 |
1,135,300 | 2019 |
271,760 | 2020 |
236,088 | 2021 |
Petra sets a new record with the highest number of daily visitors since the start of the Corona pandemic
طقس العرب - تُعد مدينة البترا الأثرية في محافظة معان جنوب الأردن، واحدة من أشهر إبداعات البشر في العالم وإحدى عجائب الدنيا السبع الجديدة، ونظرا لطبيعتها الفريدة يزورها أفواج السياح من كل بقاع الأرض،...
4,135...
Petra welcomes ‘highest ever’ number of tourists in Q1 2023 — PDTRA
AMMAN — A total of 324,350 tourists visited Petra during the first quarter of 2023, marking a 35 per cent increase compared with the same period in 2019, Al Mamlaka TV reported on Friday. Chairman of the Board of Commissioners of the Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority (PDTRA)...
The number of tourists visiting Petra in March reached 143,962, including 131,116 foreigners, of whom 23,746 are Americans followed by 16,108 Italians, 13,926 French and 13,565 Germans, according to Farajat.
that's 4,643/day
on one hand, 400 seems low, on the other... maybe that is all who came in today... in any case i didn't want to go to the more tourist trap type restaurants, and others seemed to not actually be open, aside from one that looked good but was italian and i figured i should try something new and jordanian. i ended up at the same place i ate last night.
i had some haloumi cheese as a starter. i'd prefer they just grill it, it's going to be enough calories already. but they fried it instead. it was indeed tasty
then i had a chicken and peppers and onion dish. really probably leaning towards one of the healthier things i've had.
i guess if i think my options are limited now, i'm in for a treat tomorrow
i'll be going to wadi rum. it's where mars is usually filmed for movies. you've probably seen some instagram or elsewhere pics of the geodesic dome hotels in the dessert. there's actually a lot of them and other options to stay, i found it a bit overwhelming. i'm staying at a camp i'm spending 60 usd to stay at a day, although i think this dude on youtube may have stayed there for 14 even 
and the only option to eat will be what they provide for breakfast and dinner (i think both included) and lunch (not included) and the protein bars i bring, is my understanding.
drove to wadi rum from petra. drive was ok. staying in a bedouin camp. honestly forgot what kind of room i booked and remember being overwhelmed with options. ended up with a nice tent one, had my own bathroom and shower. i did not use the shower while i stayed here though, playing around with it i didn't get warm water to come out. i'm not sure where the place was getting power from, definitely had solar panels, not sure how large of a battery? no generator. gas heater in my room, although i didn't use it.
this is where mars movies are filmed (and plenty of others) - the sand is red, although it looks more red in particular around sunrise and sunset. so i think they get short filming windows there. it is high season now and they typically expect their camp and pretty much all the camps to be full - but because of the war in israel, huge amounts of people have canceled. there were 5 other guests in 2 other rooms my first night. there were only 2 guests in 1 room my second night, other than me for both those counts.
i assumed i could just arrive and sign up for a jeep tour, which normally i could i'm sure, but with so few people it would have needed to be better planned or just fairly expensive. i probably should have done a camel tour, but i didn't want to potentially smell like camel for much of the rest of my trip. so i did some hiking and exploring. the first place i went was this canyon in the big ol rock our camp was by.
khazali canyon
i was surprised you can only climb through it up until a part that was actually fairly close to the start where you should probably not try and proceed if you're an average idiot like myself.
here's me walking around the desert. i was literally the only one doing it. everyone else was on a camel (a few people) or on a 'jeep tour' (although i rarely saw anything but a hilux) and i was the only person wandering around. even though i know shit that is big seems closer and it takes you longer to walk to it then you think, and even accounting for that i'm trudging through a dessert, i was still surprised how long it would take me to get from A to B on the map.
i was trying to find 'lawrence's spring' and my gps seemed wonk and i checked out on google maps it was near 'wadirum tree' which 1. at first felt silly then 2. was a great reference point lol. there were literally 2 trees all around period.
my camp's camels
dinner being cooked (zarb) which involves burning wood down to coals in a pit, dropping the food in, then covering it up with sand for 2-4 hours. bedouin oven basically.
my camp (quiet village)
time to get the zarb, chicken and veg
he's like CMNT bro i made this all for you
and you better eat something because there's nowhere else to get any food bruh
should i eat all this baklava, no, did i both nights, yes
tea and jamz after dinner
the guy playing is one of the owner's sons. i chat more with another who i think just completed high school. the family lives in the town on the map above, not the camp. he said boys and girls go to school separately, i tried asking how he meets girls but it got a little lost in translation. he is 1 of i think 9 kids. same mom. he mentioned someone else that had a family of **33** brothers and sisters. 3 moms. wild.
breakfast included the next day. beans under wrap. i don't typically like baked beans, but these were mixed in with whatever and they were great, like the best i've ever had. stocked up on calories as i was just hiking around again and would only have protein bars i brought until dinner. this breakfast didn't have eggs but the next day did.
while out on a morning hike i crossed paths with my footprints from the prior day...
heard some of you fellas like camel toe
multiple places have some kind of domes, although i think this might be the most famous and instagrammed one. they had open wifi so i took a rest here a bit and bullshit some youtube videos. the morning was cold so i had on a long sleeved shirt, a hoodie, and a coat on top of it. i took one off by this point and the hoodie off when heading back.
as far as i could tell no one was staying here. this camp had a generator. it looks like these are $225ish a night now which is less than i thought before actually.
this other camp had bubbles and, similar to other camps i walked to, seemed to have few guests or even (i'd lean toward this) zero.
i went to a shop by the canyon rock by my camp. got a coffee there, some kind of instant thing. i couldn't find coffee in the petra area, like literally no espresso machines around i think. tea was free here but the coffee was 2 JOD.
heading back to my place.
we had some kind of mb water truck.
sunset over the neighbor's camels
sunrise the next day
bedouin vehicle of choice, the toyota hilux
it rained my last night there while in bed - like 30 min if that at midnight and maybe 10 minutes in the morning. wasn't really obvious it had happened by the time i got up (730). i left around 9 for a 4 hour drive to amman.
it started raining then a lot, and i was like wtf sure is raining a lot for me on this trip, esp in a desert. and it got to be fairly legit rain. the unfortunate part was the highway (called desert highway) i was on was one of the best (maybe the best) here, but at some point i needed to take a detour. the detour was not minor to get back on the highway - it was a 15 km detour. and unfortunately it went up, and it was still raining quite heavily... it wasn't nearly as much ups as what i didn't exactly enjoy before, but it was climbing - and rainy as fuck. as a plus i couldn't see death cliffs, as a negative i couldn't see fuck all at one point. i was in 2nd gear and i think going 20 kmh at some points, could really barely see in front of me it was brutal. didn't upload the video yet. this blew ass and i was crawling.
eventually escaped out of that, and made a detour to see the royal tank museum, which was pretty cool.
naughty bmw
heroic harley
this is where mars movies are filmed (and plenty of others) - the sand is red, although it looks more red in particular around sunrise and sunset. so i think they get short filming windows there. it is high season now and they typically expect their camp and pretty much all the camps to be full - but because of the war in israel, huge amounts of people have canceled. there were 5 other guests in 2 other rooms my first night. there were only 2 guests in 1 room my second night, other than me for both those counts.
i assumed i could just arrive and sign up for a jeep tour, which normally i could i'm sure, but with so few people it would have needed to be better planned or just fairly expensive. i probably should have done a camel tour, but i didn't want to potentially smell like camel for much of the rest of my trip. so i did some hiking and exploring. the first place i went was this canyon in the big ol rock our camp was by.
khazali canyon
i was surprised you can only climb through it up until a part that was actually fairly close to the start where you should probably not try and proceed if you're an average idiot like myself.
here's me walking around the desert. i was literally the only one doing it. everyone else was on a camel (a few people) or on a 'jeep tour' (although i rarely saw anything but a hilux) and i was the only person wandering around. even though i know shit that is big seems closer and it takes you longer to walk to it then you think, and even accounting for that i'm trudging through a dessert, i was still surprised how long it would take me to get from A to B on the map.
i was trying to find 'lawrence's spring' and my gps seemed wonk and i checked out on google maps it was near 'wadirum tree' which 1. at first felt silly then 2. was a great reference point lol. there were literally 2 trees all around period.
my camp's camels
dinner being cooked (zarb) which involves burning wood down to coals in a pit, dropping the food in, then covering it up with sand for 2-4 hours. bedouin oven basically.
my camp (quiet village)
time to get the zarb, chicken and veg
he's like CMNT bro i made this all for you
and you better eat something because there's nowhere else to get any food bruh
should i eat all this baklava, no, did i both nights, yes
tea and jamz after dinner
the guy playing is one of the owner's sons. i chat more with another who i think just completed high school. the family lives in the town on the map above, not the camp. he said boys and girls go to school separately, i tried asking how he meets girls but it got a little lost in translation. he is 1 of i think 9 kids. same mom. he mentioned someone else that had a family of **33** brothers and sisters. 3 moms. wild.
breakfast included the next day. beans under wrap. i don't typically like baked beans, but these were mixed in with whatever and they were great, like the best i've ever had. stocked up on calories as i was just hiking around again and would only have protein bars i brought until dinner. this breakfast didn't have eggs but the next day did.
while out on a morning hike i crossed paths with my footprints from the prior day...
heard some of you fellas like camel toe
multiple places have some kind of domes, although i think this might be the most famous and instagrammed one. they had open wifi so i took a rest here a bit and bullshit some youtube videos. the morning was cold so i had on a long sleeved shirt, a hoodie, and a coat on top of it. i took one off by this point and the hoodie off when heading back.
as far as i could tell no one was staying here. this camp had a generator. it looks like these are $225ish a night now which is less than i thought before actually.
this other camp had bubbles and, similar to other camps i walked to, seemed to have few guests or even (i'd lean toward this) zero.
i went to a shop by the canyon rock by my camp. got a coffee there, some kind of instant thing. i couldn't find coffee in the petra area, like literally no espresso machines around i think. tea was free here but the coffee was 2 JOD.
heading back to my place.
we had some kind of mb water truck.
sunset over the neighbor's camels
sunrise the next day
bedouin vehicle of choice, the toyota hilux
it rained my last night there while in bed - like 30 min if that at midnight and maybe 10 minutes in the morning. wasn't really obvious it had happened by the time i got up (730). i left around 9 for a 4 hour drive to amman.
it started raining then a lot, and i was like wtf sure is raining a lot for me on this trip, esp in a desert. and it got to be fairly legit rain. the unfortunate part was the highway (called desert highway) i was on was one of the best (maybe the best) here, but at some point i needed to take a detour. the detour was not minor to get back on the highway - it was a 15 km detour. and unfortunately it went up, and it was still raining quite heavily... it wasn't nearly as much ups as what i didn't exactly enjoy before, but it was climbing - and rainy as fuck. as a plus i couldn't see death cliffs, as a negative i couldn't see fuck all at one point. i was in 2nd gear and i think going 20 kmh at some points, could really barely see in front of me it was brutal. didn't upload the video yet. this blew ass and i was crawling.
eventually escaped out of that, and made a detour to see the royal tank museum, which was pretty cool.
naughty bmw
heroic harley
lol @ this sign
got to my hotel then went to the roman amphitheater, and lil theater
i like this one as i feel less likely to fall on small old worn stones
i wonder if i'm less pleased/sure footed on these because of size 12+ feet
maybe i'm just a puss with vertigo i dunna
but i prefer climbing to the top row of this one
it is quite hilly here, like istanbul or hong kong, but i feel like i have to deal with them even more. and they are more chaotic and messy. here were some stairs after i had already wound my way around some roads to go to the citadel from the theater.
just a few pics from up there
i got my hotel near rainbow street in amman, and already picked out a few places i planned to eat. but there is a mass general strike to try and aid applying pressure on the government to do all they can to try and end the war.
the only thing really open is my hotel rooftop bar. i don't think any of this was really jordanian, except the beer is petra beer. some artichoke spinach cheese dip, and sea bass. i've never had a lemon risotto but will go back up before the night is over to try that and some shrimp app too i think. gotta make sure i'm fat enough to be allowed back into 'murica again.
for my ability to risk having the shits in unfortunate places? can't be for my willingness to climb high places or drive at speed through mountains
This would be my fear, from eating foods that I know don't agree with me. Doesn't seem like a whole lot of places you can drop trou and let 'er rip, or public bathrooms. Of course, when you're in the desert, just act like a cat, cause it is just one huge litter box to them.for my ability to risk having the shits in unfortunate places? can't be for my willingness to climb high places or drive at speed through mountains
Thanks for the photos and descriptions. It really is impressive to see. From a "physical" standpoint, how many steps per day were you averaging while exploring the desert on foot?
yeah i guess i didn't think of what would happen if i had a sudden onset of the poopers, i had to piss but would force myself to trudge back to camp rather than whip my dick out. always felt right when i'd do it a hilux full of people would pop out and they'd see me in the middle of nowhere and oh yeah imma pissin'.
i go on bouts of wearing my fitbit or not, i don't end up usually wearing it in thailand. i should have probably charged it and brought it on this trip but i didn't. the sand fought steps were hard fought steps though that's for sure.
signed up to go into one of the smaller pyramids tomorrow instead of the great pyramid. although jordan has way less tourism now, my guides here told me it's about 80% the usual for them. they said the experience of going in the pyramids was basically the same, but the smaller one would be a little faster and less crowded. from reading about khafre i'm hoping it's that one as it sounds a little easier/has space high enough in some areas for not tall people to fully walk. i'm sure i'll still be too tall but it will beat being crammed. also we'll see how much it mindfucks me crawling into a hole anyway i'm not super keen on the idea to start lol. at least it's winter.
i'll have to catch up on pics (and some work stuff) later. about midnight and i need some rest and need to be up and ready to go by 8am tomorrow.
one of the things i figured out here is that unlike argentina the black market for currency here is actually enforced and has to be much more hidden. the smart way around it that is legal would be to bring some precious metals actually like silver or gold. arguably i could take my dollars to go buy some precious metals from guy A then sell them to guy B and it would be all on the up and up lol... although i don't think i'll have a need for that much egyptian currency. i'd like to have more just so i can tip comfortably really.
view from my room balcony
view from down the hall fire escape
which oops yeah means i have to start a new thread for a new country
one of the things i figured out here is that unlike argentina the black market for currency here is actually enforced and has to be much more hidden. the smart way around it that is legal would be to bring some precious metals actually like silver or gold. arguably i could take my dollars to go buy some precious metals from guy A then sell them to guy B and it would be all on the up and up lol... although i don't think i'll have a need for that much egyptian currency. i'd like to have more just so i can tip comfortably really.
view from my room balcony
view from down the hall fire escape
which oops yeah means i have to start a new thread for a new country
Thread Info
-
Created -
42Replies
-
653Views
-
Participants list
