Nights Out in Amman
After leaving Petra behind, we headed towards Amman, the capital of Jordan. In terms of sights, there really is nothing to do in Amman – but it is one of the few cities in the Middle East where half-decent nightlife can be found. Having not had a proper night out for my birthday, and it being Duncan’s (truck owner) last night, we decided to go out to (of all places) an Irish bar – quite a good night of drinking and dancing, and my first Guinness in quite a while (I really do miss a cold pint).
A reasonable night, but not to be compared to the bizarre experience we had the night before our drive day to the Syrian border. Some of the group had met up with some local (but not Jordanian) girls while they were drunkenly running a 10k marathon in womens clothes and climbing gear the day before (that is another story entirely) – and for our last night in Amman we figured we’d meet up with them at a bar not too far from our hostel. Lots of games of pool, beers and shots later we met a Middle Eastern guy about our age (not Jordanian either) who invited us back to his house after the bar closed. Never ones to refuse an invitation, we all hopped in a couple cars and drove to residential Amman where we quickly realized that this guy was, to put it lightly, very well-to-do. After refusing any money, he bought loads of take-away kebabs and booze and we hung out in his posh basement until about 7am when we had to go back and get on the truck to leave Amman.
Crossing into Syria was less exciting than you might imagine – being a group, the others had no issues securing visas and after we jumped through all the right bureaucratic hoops we were let into Syria without any trouble.
