Confusion

Our move on July 9th from Israel to Jordan didn’t go quite as planned.  We were led to believe that we would be dropped off on the Israel side of the 5 km border crossing, pass through a building, get in a VIP van, drive to the Jordanian side of the border and be picked up there. The driver would have our Visas.

Well, first of all the VIP service failed to recognize or honour our reservation and to top it off they wanted 195.00 USD per person to catch a ride for the five km stretch.

Being the seasoned and wise travellers that we are, we immediately said no…..that was the start of our downfall. We got in the wrong line for passport control…finally got through but when we tried to exit they sent us back to pay the Israeli exit tax. Done!

We tried to find the local border bus but it was a little difficult as there were buses for Palestinians, buses for Israelis, buses for Jordanians and finally buses for people like us. Thank goodness we had an English speaking Ukrainian who guided us through the process of finding our bus…which was an hour late.

I was thrilled when the air conditioned bus arrived but they wouldn’t let us board as we didn’t have a ticket….who would have thought that the paper we paid for and  said “passenger fee” was not an actual ticket.

There were a few of us who were caught by this, but the bus driver said he would wait for all of us and he did. Jim, Alice and I boarded but no Fred….he was loading the luggage and didn’t see us get on.  I had to go outside to get the poor guy…he looked so lonely all by himself! Everyone else had boarded.

The hotel we are at is a little bit higher end than we are used to….I felt under dressed when registering, To get into this hotel all bags have to go through an X-ray machine every time 

Even shopping areas have metal detectors at the entrances. Strong security!