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Amman, Desert Castles & Dead Sea

Amman Area

Tony Clemens
2005-09-01 18:39:44

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Are you nuts? That was the general response for most people when I told them I was planning on visiting the Middle East for a vacation. I've been putting off visiting the Middle East for many years waiting for some form of stability in the area before visiting but I'm starting to think I'll be long dead and buried before that happens. Terrorism is too random to worry about too much anyway, I've been to the World Trade Center and used the trains in Madrid and London before terrorism incidents and Bali, Tanzania and Peru after the fact. If you really want something to worry about remember more people are killed every year in traffic accidents. The most dangerous thing most people do in their lives is drive, anything you do that's less dangerous than driving a car is probably an acceptable risk. More people have been killed in traffic accidents in Israel than in all of Israel's wars combined. Plus with war and civil unrest in neighbouring countries that should make for fewer travellers in Jordan. Actually if we hadn't already had money spend on our Tanzanian holiday in 1998 (airline tickets plus 25% of our safari cost) we would have went to Egypt after the terrorist incident at Luxor. Fewer crowds and lower prices. More later on the advantage of disaster travel.

My wife had a problem getting her boss to sign her vacation form once she found out we were visiting Jordan. My boss? Born in Vietnam, visited Luxor in 1998, in Kuwait in 2001 for a conference just before the American invasion of Iraq, Hanoi during the SARS scare in 2002 strangely she did not have a problem signing my request for vacation.

One of the disadvantages of living in a small city is trying to get good connections to far-flung regions of the world. Charter flights to Florida or Cuba no problems otherwise overnights or very long days on airplanes. All flights from St. John's to London arrived too late to get any connecting flights ...