Sorry guys, but pictures won’t happen on this post. We are currently in Damascus, Syria, and will head across the border to Jordan in two days.

I promise when I return I shall delight you all with an in-depth analysis of heavy metal in Syria. Currently, all I have to delight you are tales of how bloody ill I’ve been. Syrian food is out-of-this-world tasty amazing, but boy howdy … urgh. I pity the people who’ve had to clean our hotel room.

We took 3 hours to cross the Turkey/Syrian border, a distance of 2km. We had to travel across in groups of 3 and 4 in these tiny volvos that looked ready to fall apart. They weren’t big enough for all our luggage so the drivers propped the boots open and secured our luggage with sellotape. We were asked for our passports about 20 times, had to go to the Doctor who tested our temperature in case we had swine flu (how he can tell from our temperature, especially when his instrument seemed to be out, I don’t know), fill out some silly paperwork, and avoid the land mines, we were all good!

Last night we stayed in Palmyra in the desert, and I wandered around the temple of Baal while CDH was busy being ill. We all had dinner with the bedouin over on the Oasis – chicken and rice cooked in the ground. A Danish Archaeologist turned up to dinner also, so I had a great time talking with him.

Last night we bribed someone into taking us into a forbidden tomb. It was amazing and totally worth the 27cent bride :)

This is the first internet I’ve been able to use since arriving in Syria, and I can’t upload pictures as the signal’s very weak. Most of the internet cafe’s here run on dial-up, and the government has banned sites like hotmail. wikipedia and facebook (I STILL can’t get facebook on this server). We were in a city of 4million people and 3 ATMs, one of which was broken.

Syria – it’s totally something else.

Super Snuggles and Shoggoth Kisses
Steff