Monkeys at the theatre

People i met here who contributed to, and improved my trip: Julia (Russia)

Bosra had one main drawcard from our perspective (mainly Julia's actually) and that was the stunning Roman theatre located there, which had also later served as a citadel. To be honest i have seen my fair share of theatres in the past few months, but Julia still hadn't seen any really good ones, so we decided to visit the ruins on our way from Damascus to Amman.

Luckily a restaurant let us leave our large backpacks with them whilst we were sightseeing, and this certainly saved us a lot of time and energy. The entry fee was 10SYP ($0.20) for students or 150SYP for everyone else, which was pretty reasonable, especially with our student cards ;) Entering the structure, it was clear that every man and his dog had chosen to visit today, as it was a Friday and thus the Muslims day to take a vacation. Having loads of people kind of sucks, but today it was even worse than usual, as it felt like we were in a zoo with a bunch of partially trained animals.

Climbing to the top of the theatre steps, we got some nice views and a sense of the height, which really was dizzying. Thus it seemed incredibly foolish that one young boy was kicking a football from the top and aiming at the stage. Luckily it didn't land on anybody, but if it did, it would surely have caused some serious damage. Other little rascals from the countless school groups, ran around screaming and wreaking havoc, with the teachers seemingly too busy enjoying themselves to try and exert any sort of control. The adults weren't much better either, as they were climbing onto the columns and leaping around in a manner befitting of a primate. Having to keep an eye on not been bundled down the steep steps, whilst trying to enjoy looking around really isn't my idea of fun, so after a short time we reluctantly left to look around the rest of the nearby ruins.

Whilst the 15,000 seat Theatre was clearly the star attraction of Bosra, i actually quite liked the smaller ruins, solely for the fact that there weren't so many people scrambling around them. The City had been made from black basalt rock, which was quite unique and some of the tructures were still in reasonable shape, including a church, monumental gate, Roman baths, Mosque of Omar and plenty of colonnades.

Our trip to Bosra ended in the New town, which really was a dive. I was unable to find an ATM and then we ate what goes down as the Worlds worst falafel, before going to get a minivan to take us to Deraa, which is a town located near the Jordanian border (30SYP). Whilst waiting for the van i got chatting to a nice young man, who was studying English Literature in Damascus. Its quite funny that almost every foreigner that i meet seems to know more about this subject than i do! I blame the education system!

When we reached Deraa we had to wait for a shared taxi to shuttle us across the border (2.5JD/$3.50) into Jordan, which was reasonably painless. Having paid the 500SYP departure tax, we waved goodbye to Syria for the second and final time. Whilst i had enjoyed the country and its people for the most part, i sadly don't think that it lived up to the high expectations that other people had given me.