In transit

Wednesday has officially become, and will hopefully remain, the most forgettable day of this world trip. Think sitting, and waiting, and sitting, and waiting and maybe waiting a little more. It’s not to say it did not have its interesting moments. But it is to say we could do without another day like it.
After a decent start to the day which included a free breakfast at our hotel and “sweet as” (like our NZ friends would say) navigation of KLIA we boarded our first plane to the Kingdom of Bahrain. I got on to the plane feeling fairly out of sorts because of (here comes an “Oh Matt” moment) my idiotic decision to chug both of our bottles of water that couldn’t make it past an unexpected 2nd security checkpoint. Now I know its possible to over-hydrate and it can actually be quite dangerous. I’m not saying I was in that territory but it sure got me thinking and worrying about it a little.
The flight was decent but long. Another 6 hours to get to Bahrain (which reminds me, I need to update our airplane time accumulation) By the time we landed in Bahrain we were already approaching a reasonable dinner time and very much not looking forward to our 8 hour layover in the airport.
Bahrain airport was one of the most interesting, flummoxing, frustrating, draining airport stays we both agreed we’d ever experienced. Besides the long wait I’ll highlight a few interesting parts:
1. Being that it is currently Ramadan, about once every hour, out of nowhere, the airport loud speakers would pipe in, at a high volume, Ramadan prayer chants. The first time, I thought it was someone’s ringtone or music player blasting the airport walls. When I noticed Kris and I were one of the only people confused about it, I changed my mind.
2. My micro McDonalds experience. It was getting late in the night, closing in on our boarding time. We were feeling very famished and needed a light something to tide us over. What I figured would be a few minute jaunt into McD’s for cheeseburgers became a 20 minute ordeal where two ladies and their child formed a protective circle around me shouting about ice cream and clearly not interested in waiting their turn. This coupled with the abrasive man next to me that was doing everything he could to solicit McDonald’s help in sending out a fax for him. This included gold business cards. I’m fairly certain the employees didn’t get it.
3. The lady we tried to check in with for our second flight. First of all, the check-in desks do not sort out at all by airline or affiliation, so your left to try and form something resembling a line and wait for the next agent who may or may not know what they are doing. Unfortunately ours did not. What she WAS good at was eye-rolling. Eye-rolling to such dumb tourist questions and comments like “we need to check-in to our next flight”, “Here is the flight number”, “Can you look us up by our last name?” You know, ridiculous things like that…I told Kris I might as well have been asking to board the next dragon to Antarctica. Probably would have elicited the same response. Fortunately, the lady next to her had been trying to help me out earlier but told me it was too early to check in. I immediately tried to grab her attention: “Do you recognize me???” She did, and surprise surprise: Got us two boarding passes in a matter of minutes. I knew we weren’t being that ridiculous.
4. While we were waiting at our gate for the flight before us to board and take off we got to witness the most fanatical and perplexing boarding we’ve ever seen. When they announced the gate was open, about 250 men (all men mind you) rushed the gate like the candy shop kids in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory. I don’t know if the first 50 were to receive free watches on the plane or what, but the crowding into line was crazy! You could literally see just body parts squeezing their way into line, hoping to map a few extra inches of real estate for the rest of the body to join them. We have no idea what that was all about, but it sure was entertaining. Thankfully, nothing similar happened to our boarding process.
We eventually did get on our plane, another 25 minutes later then it was supposed to be (which was 4 hours later then our original flight). Got into Amman a little after midnight hoping to find our hotel waiting to pick us up. They were a no-show. So after 15 minutes of standing, debating, and nearly falling asleep, we decided to snag a cab. I made sure to negotiate fair before we left, which was good because apparently, after demanding he knew the way, our cab driver did not know the way. In all the cab ride was 75 minutes, 3 stops, a phone call and a random shout out to a passerby before we got to Sun Rise Hotel at 1:45 in the morning (which felt more like 5 or 6 in the morning) Unfortunately do to some miscommunications, they thought we had canceled and so we waited another half an hour while they set up a room and tried to get us set up. We eventually did find our room and our two single beds and managed to finally sleep by 2:45 in the morning, with only 3 hours to go before we needed to be up to head to Petra…you know, our all day excursion hiking through the desert.
So there you go. 8.5 hours on planes, another 10.5 in airports, an hour and a half in buses and taxis and finally a bed to rest our heads. Thoroughly exhausting, mildly entertaining, VERY glad It’s over. Moving on in the Middle East. First stop, Petra!