At breakfast, we met some East Coast Aussies who had been to Coral Bay! Sailed in on a yacht.Our first tour today, with a great guide (a real dapper gentleman) was of the 12th century Islamic Citadel where 3,000 people lived. Then we escaped from Aleppo's crazy traffic (it is a city of 4 million people) into the countryside near the Turkey border to see St Simeon's Monastery and Basilica. Simeon was a bit of a strange Christian dude in the 400's AD w...

Today was a red letter day. Fruit for breakfast - we are already liking Syria! We have had buffet breakfast through out Egypt and Jordan and whilst there has always been some sort of eggs, olives, tomatoes and yoghurt the standard buffet is overloaded with sweet pastries to please the European palate and never any good old Aussie multi grain toast, muesli or fruit.The night before, we had arrived quite late and our organized pick up was not there for us .Eventua...

People strolling nonchalantly along the beach caked completely in black & grey mud, steaming hazy air and lukewarm water that forces you to float half out of the water- sounds crazy? The Dead Sea is crazy!For a start it is the lowest point on earth at 400 metres below sea level. Then its chemical makeup means nothing, absolutely nothing, lives in it. You are not going to step on a crab or have a bit of seaweed drift by. Then the other weird thing is that there ar...

 "Oh my God my legs are broken!" said our new friend Hadda with a dramatic stooping and limping to emphasis her words. Her friends broke into fits of giggles all mimicking limping and chattering away among themselves in Arabic. We were hiking uphill out of the Siq in Petra at the end of the day when a group of school girls from Amman on an excursion to Petra asked where we were from. Hadda introduced herself in her very tentative English and then chattered away...

Our next adventure was into the desert.The more we drove, the more the surroundings began to look like Lawrence's Arabia. Just before sunset we arrived and were put in the hands of our very comical Bedouin camel driver for a camel safari. After getting us onto the camels and heading off, he commenced to yell at the top of his voice into his mobile phone! He was quite elderly and didn't have much English but we communicated well with signs and gestures an...