From Hama to Palmyra

Amman, Jordan

 

On Wednesday morning, I decided to take the Cairo Hotel up on it's offer for a tour of Crac des Chevaliers, which included a "free" stop in Misyaf to visit that cities citadel. The original intent for the day was to just catch a bus from Hama to Crac, then from Crac to Homs and finally from Homs to Palmyra. All very doable, but when the hotel offered to drop me off in Homs after the tour and said that I could leave my bag in the car the entire day I took them up on the tour offer, even though it was probably 2-3 times as expensive as I could have done it for. Sometimes you just have to pay for convenience...

 

That morning, I was surprised that the other 2 people joining the tour were Katharine and Eddie, the Australian couple I had met in Aleppo a few nights earlier. The travelers circuit is indeed small. So the three of us setup from the Cairo Hotel with "Drive Massoud", as he wanted us to call him. Sadly, he spoke very little English because he seemed like a nice guy and he is quite possibly the most law abiding driving in Syria. I don't know if he was trying to impress us Westerners or what, but this guy didn't make one bad move the entire day. Blinkers every time the car so much drifted in the lane, let alone when actually turning. Four-way flashers when we slowed down for speed bumps or pot holes, rarely, if ever actually used the horn, kept great vehicle spacing (which is no small task in Syria) and just all round drove like he was a student and I was the instructor. Very impressive. Of course, it might have had to do with the fact that his car was new because it still had the plastic on the ceiling as well as parts of the dashboard and side paneling. He was clearly proud of his new car and was in no hurry to remove said plastic. Didn't bother us... Driver Massoud, Katharine, Eddie and I headed off from Hama bound for Misyaf.

 

The citadel in Misyaf isn't really all that exciting. You can explore it and like most things built on a hill it offered some pretty decent views of the surround town. With Crac de Chevalier ahead of us we spent less then an hour in Misyaf before getting back in the car for a rather pleasant drive through the Syrian country side. Being in a car on the back roads was a nice change from riding in big coach buses on the main highways. You actually do get to see a bit more of the country and a better feel for the smaller towns and villages that no doubt dot the country. After almost 2 hours of driving through winding, somewhat mountainous roads, we arrived at the impressive Crac de Chevalier, a crusader castle from the 11th century.

 

Maybe it's just my complete lack of education for anything related to history, or maybe after only 2 months I'm already burnt out of sight seeing, but while the castle was nice to visit, it didn't blow me away. We did have a kid follow us around, pointing our this and that and taking a liking to Katharine and Eddie until I warned them that if they keep being so friendly they're going to inadvertently hire a tour a guide. Sure enough, once they sort of waved him off he was asking for a tip. Sorry, but unlike the juice guy and the insane asylum guy, this kid wasn't going to get his tip.

 

Regardless, like all previous citadels and castles, the views were excellent but the castle itself is really just several walls of fortification with an inner courtyard of empty rooms and storage areas. I'm sure in it's hay-day, the castle was impressive, but I just have a hard time appreciating things like when all I'm looking at is a large empty room with stone walls and a plaque that reads "Kitchen". Beside that, a room that looks almost identical to my eyes reads "Armoury". Not far away are the "Stables" and so forth... Crac is definitely one of those places you have to visit when you're in Syria, and if you're a buff of crusader castles then you'll probably be in heaven and never want to leave, but for me, 2 hours was plenty of time so Katharine, Eddie and I hit the local restaurant for a few cups of tea before calling for our driver.

 

Back in Homs, Massoud dropped me off at the local bus station where I felt like I was being treated like a VIP. There were only two bus companies to choose from for getting to Palmyra and since the first company had no more buses running that day, Al-Kadmous it was. As I got in line, someone from behind the glass counter came out, asked me where I was going, then just took me inside the office, and got me a ticket. He then escorted me outside to the correct bus, chatted with me for a bit and then finally waited for me to board before heading back to the office. Granted, all this took less then 10 minutes since I arrived at the station around 3.20pm and the bus was leaving at 3.30pm but still, I couldn't have done less if I tried.

 

The road from Homs to Palmyra is desert, plain and simple. Palmyra is about 2 hours east, towards Iraq, and it's kind of funny to see highway signs for "Baghdad" and just "Iraq" in general. I wish we had stopped somewhere so that I could have gotten a picture but sadly we didn't. The bus station in Palmyra is a little bit out of the way so with the help of some local at the bus station who spoke some English, I managed to get a taxi to take me into town to my hotel for a price pretty close to what a local would pay! Sure the taxi driver had to ask for directions once or twice, but in the end he got me to the Baal Shamin Hotel where Mohammad "a mountain of mirth" as Lonely Planet describes him, got me setup with a room.

 

There's not much to do in Palmyra at night since there is really only one main road and a few restaurants to choose from. I chose the "Traditional Palmyra Restaurant" which also goes by the name "Pancake House", go figure. Apparently they have some of the best pancakes around, which seems kind of odd in the Syrian desert so I figured I'd check them out. The pancake, with cheese and tomatoes in it, left a bit to be desired and the milkshake, touted as "amazing" was, uh, terrible. Why on earth I ordered a milkshake in the middle of the Syrian desert I have no idea, but I shouldn't have and you shouldn't either. That's the last time I trust Lonely Planet when it comes to milkshake advice...

 

Back at the hotel, I spent the next hour or so helping a local named Tayser write a letter in English to some girl named "Epp" who apparently lives in Georgia (the country). I guess they met while she was visiting in Palmyra and hit it off. Tayser wanted to send her an email but his English is rather weak and he definitely can't write English, so I stepped in to help him. Basically, he would tell Mohammad in Arabic what we wanted to say, then Mohammad would tell me him broken English, and I would translate that to something you could actually send in an email that made sense.

 

Since Tayser wanted to send the letter as soon as possible, and I'm always up for hitting an internet cafe, we went back to the Pancake House, which by the way doubles as an internet cafe, and fired up GMail. Well, turns out that Tayser doesn't really have an email account, so first we had to setup one of those for him. Next, he doesn't really know how to use a computer, let alone type at any speed that would have gotten the letter sent before the end of the week. I noticed that one problem was that Tayser could not find the letters on the keyboard because I had written in lower case while a keyboard is all in upper case. So, I re-wrote the letter in all upper case letters thinking that might speed things up. It didn't. Next, the internet cafe owner (and Pancake House waiter), who is friends with Tayser tried to help out, but he had a hard time typing up the English letter as well and while his typing speed was probably 100 times faster then Tayser, 100 times 0 is still 0, so we didn't get very far. After about 30 minutes of painful watching while I tried to type my own emails, I just decided that I could type the letter in about 2-3 minutes, so I did, then hit "Send" and as far as I know some girl in Georgia named "Epp" received a more or less love letter from some guy in Palmyra called Tayser... Gotta love the internet.

 

Back at the hostel, Tayser, Mohammad, a fellow traveler from Slovakia named Stanley and I all stayed up pretty late talking. Mohammad is indeed an interesting character and rather scatter brained at times, but we had fun. For awhile, he was trying pretty hard to get me to rent a motorcycle from him for the following day. I guess some of the ruins that I was going to explore are too far to reach by just walking and he was adamant that I rent a motorcycle. I kept saying that I wanted to first see the ruins that I could reach by walking, then I would see if I needed a motorcycle. Sometimes I can't tell the difference between genuinely not understanding English and being a salesman because he'd always reply with something like "Ok, so what time in the morning do you pick up bike?", or "Ok, we meet here after lunch with bike for sunset.", even though I was always saying things like "In the morning I don't need a motorcycle." and "In the afternoon I'll decide if I want it for the sunset." Finally he got the message and laid off on the motorcycle sales pitch but it took some direct language to get there.

 

Sometimes the English as a second language produces interesting conversation and at one point we were talking about movies and Syria actors. Mohammad was trying to come up with the name of a famous Arabic actor from Saudi Arabia and while looking at me for help (??) said, "No, not Mel Gibson but something like that...". Uh, ok, I never said Mel Gibson and he definitely isn't who comes to mind when you ask me for a Saudi Arabian actor (no one does) but whatever, it was kind of funny.

 

Then, while Tayser, Stanley and I were talking, Mohammad sketched out a little caricature of a cowboy and asked me what it was. I said it looked like a cowboy. He said "No, it's a black cowboy. See I used a black pen and filled him all in. You don't have black cowboys in America, that's what makes this interesting." Hmm, not sure how to respond to that one but I went along, though I did suggest that there probably are some black, uh African American, cowboys who might take offence to that but I don't think that idea got through. For what it's worth the caricature was kind of good and he finished it off with some bubble-text for good measure. (His second drawing was off a cowboy riding a camel, but the cowboy was holding a sword and the camel was holding a gun. Apparently the camel wanted to be "new school" while the cowboy was "old school"... Much deeper then the black cowboy.)

 

With a full day of exploring ruins

 

Kenny