Famous Last Words...
And we’re off. A good start as I arranged for an unusual flight plan to reach
JFK is always compelling with the global community represented in their terminals. I was a bit disappointed that so many of the folks who were clearly from afar hurried to their gate with cartons of Marlboro’s tucked under their arms! But parking at my
After we lifted off I moved my watch forward seven hours and the night vanished. Instead of midnight it was suddenly seven in the morning! But even with the night going bye-bye, I confess that the 11-1/2 hour direct flight was considerably less painful than I envisioned. I much prefer this versus a couple of five or six hour flights with a layover to span the same distance.
We touched down at
The minute dragged out to ten, but eventually my bag careened around the track and I scooped it up. Exited the terminal and started to scour the audience for Mark (his flight was scheduled to arrive 1-1/2 hours before mine). Didn’t spot him, but no worries --- Mark had reserved a car with Thrifty and that was where we had planned to meet. I spy several car rental desks, but nary a Thrifty amongst them.
Suddenly I see a guy from Payless Auto holding a placard with my name on it! Well, I guess Mark had to change and sent someone to retrieve me. The guy doesn’t speak English, but we acknowledge each other and I follow him outside to a huge lot with many cars. He proudly shows me a car but Mark is nowhere in sight. I attempt to explain that I haven’t reserved a car and need to meet up with someone else. Not sure how effectively I communicated this, but he did loan me his cell phone to dial Mark, which resulted in receiving a “unit not on line” message.
So I promise the guy I will follow up with him once I find my buddy and walk all the way back to the terminal. Once again I walk around looking for Mark with no luck: the only thing I notice is the Payless guy wishfully standing there holding the sign with my name on it. I had asked him previously where the Thrifty lot was and got a blank stare. I asked several random attendants in the lobby with similar results.
Next step was to walk about outside and seek another rental lot. This leads to discovering there are two terminals here (but still, the
Fortune smiles on me when I espy a guy I had talked with on my flight. He is Jordanian but has worked as a chef in DC for the last fourteen years. I have been here for well over an hour now so I guess he was waiting for relatives to pick him up. At last I have somebody fluent in English to inquire about Thrifty! But despite posing my question in Arabic to his brother and mother, the same blank stares. His brother lets me dial Mark’s cell so I can receive another ‘unit off-line’ message.
In my mind I want to look for Mark awhile longer before punting and hailing a cab to Madaba, a town about twenty kilometers away where we have reservations for the next two nights. Problem is that I have been awake for the last twenty-two hours and make the mistake of verbally expressing this. My helpful friends insist on getting me a cab and whisk me out to the street where they make sure I fix the price and pay up front to assure there is no haggling after the service has been rendered.
The secured price to convey me to the Mariam Hotel in Madaba is 21 JD. The amount is paid and I trust it to fate that I won’t get billed some horrendous amount for the rental car I seem to be on the hook for. I am a bit aggravated when some dude grabs my suitcase and simply plunks it into the trunk, then speaks the strategic word “tip”, so I disgustedly flip him a dinar. Now I’m down to three Dinars with no friend or transportation going forward. But at least I’ll have a place to sleep tonight.
My cabbie whisks us away into the Jordanian night and my startling introduction gets more bizarre. We cruise through some neighborhoods resembling American ghettos and there are people running around madly everywhere yelling and lighting fireworks. Fortunately it dawns on me that it is dusk. We had planned this trip around Eid, when Mark has some holidays, and this is the last iftar ===> thirty days of fasting, Ramadan, is over!
But then it is a few miles of speeding through darkness while my cabbie recites/sings to himself very loudly in Arabic. He abruptly veers off the road as we pass an isolated strip mall of dilapidated dark buildings in the middle of nowhere where there is nothing lit and several Arabs are sitting around. In my Western experience this is highly unusual for a taxi ride, but I was thankful for prior experience in the
After a few more useless attempts to gain petrol, we finally fuel up and I get deposited at the Mariam. I grab my remaining three dinars and regretfully part with one for a tip. My cabbie’s response is that this is “so small, and you have more.” I really want to yell at him how I will be stranded in a land where I cannot converse and with no way to get local currency (tomorrow is Eid, so my chances at converting dollars at a bank are zilch), but I just exclaim ‘sorry’ and plod indoors.
Amusingly, they cannot find my reservation at first, but I see “Vance” on their paperwork and we are off to the races (NOTE: I would turn out to be ‘Mr. Vance’ at every place I booked!). I explain to the clerk that I need to hook up with Mark, whose name is not on the reservation, and write his name out in three-inch letters on a sheet of paper. Then I avail myself of the PC in their lobby and utilize the ultr-slow connection to open a free Yahoo e-mail account and send Mark a note that I went straight to the Mariam.
Totally despondent, I dump my suitcase and backpack in our room and retire downstairs for dinner. While working through various scenarios of what I am going to do in
Mark arrives in his Thrifty car soon thereafter and as it turns out, his
NOTE After getting back home I learned what happened around the rental car. Mark had asked me to get some quotes for comparison with what his agent was coming up with, and apparently they have to make a preliminary reservation to get the price. These reservations are supposed to expire if not confirmed, but I guess the one with Payless never did. Fortunately they never had my credit card info, so no worries.
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There is a (slow) internet connection available in the lobby (they charge 1JD per half-hour, if the desk clerk notices you sitting there), and they have a restaurant in the hotel...extremely convenient if you have just arrived. The crowd here is decidedly Western, so you if you hail from an English-speaking culture you should encounter folks to easily converse with.
But if you have read about the 10% discount for telling them you were referred by the 'Rough Guide' --> forget it! I got presented with a photocopied letter in French and a long diatribe around how this had not been authorized when I inquired. But no worries, the rates are ridiculously cheap. The rooms are cramped, but definitely worth the price of admission.
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Lured in by the title which was to near and dear to my recent adventure, I bought a copy despite a misguided opinion that the writing quality would be fairly pathetic (i.e., I was expecting it to read like one of my blogs, lol). But please know this is a remarkably well written book with an important message. Having lived in Israel, Jordan and Egypt, Ben reached the same conclusions which Tom Friedman did serving as the NY Times correspondent in Beirut and Jerusalem. Even though the conclusions are same, the foundations are polar opposites.
Tom developed his opinions ‘top down’ by mingling with high profile politicians, etc. Ben earned his research ‘bottoms up’ by living in downtown Amman where water rationing limited him to a brief, cold shower every other day. “Living in Jordan” is a heart warming documentary that paints a sober picture of the daily struggles faced by the everyday populace. I could recommend the book solely on the merits of a personal adventure as Ben shares his triumphs and travails with touching sketches and great humor. But this is much more than a personal odyssey: compelling conclusions are woven into the saga around many of the problems facing the Middle East today.
The ultimate conclusion is that as remote as it may seem, hope persists that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle can reach a happy ending. My favorite quote from the book is that “it is possible for there to be Palestinian bakers that sell kosher ruggelach”. Reading this book will help support a TravBuddy --- but don’t buy it for that reason. Purchase this book to support a true understanding of places and people horribly misrepresented by popular media. I purchased my copy from Amazon, so it is readily available…I give this outstanding work five stars and two thumbs w-a-a-a-y up!
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