The pick up time for the Petra tour was at 5am, so I intended to only sleep for 4 hours or so. However, at 2:30am, I was already awaken by the rackets outside our Airbnb apartment. There was a group of people apparently singing something, with drums banging along and everything. It felt like as if it was right outside of our door. At first, I thought they would just pass, but that racket lasted on and off for an hour or two. I kept checking my time on my phone, 2:30am, 3:15am, 3:45am, I could still vaguely hear it, I became very anxious. At one point, I thought there were police car siren and gun shots, it probably wasn't, but I wasn't dare to go check. The whole thing was seriously nerve wracking, since I wasn't sure whether there was a riot, or was it just drunken kids gathering. Were they singing in Hebrew or Arabic? Is there a violent thing? Who knows. It is the night prior to Sabbath, maybe it was just kids, I don't know. That is a feasible explanation. I was just glad that when I left to the Petra tour pick up, there were no crowds gathering outside our apartment and I got to my pick up location safely. There were still many kids on the streets though, at 5am in the morning. I guess this holy city has its not so holy sides as well.


At the tour pick up, I met Freddie and his mother Rosa, they were from New York, they spoke Spanish, I later found out that they were originally from Guatemala and Freddie's step father were Jewish, very nice people. They were also waiting for the Petra tour at the hotel. I was terribly exhausted, I hardly slept for 2 hours. The pick up truck finally arrived, but we still had to wait for another girl, she was running late. Probably at 5:20am or so, we had everyone and finally took off and headed for Eilat, which followed the same highway to Masada/Dead Sea, but continued heading south to the Red Sea, where Moses once J-walked across the other side. It would take 3 hours or so, I slept most of the way, except a few moments when everyone was clicking their camera because of the sunrise over the dead sea, I tried to catch it, but it is difficult on a moving van, I sat way way in the back too, and my window space was a tiny gap.

Eilat of Israel is right next to Araba of Jordan. We headed straight to border crossing. We first passed the Israeli passport control. It went so smoothly, too smoothly in fact, before I finished my sentence "Would you mind... ...stamping on a paper instead of mmmmy p-a-s-s-p-o-r-t?" Chop! She had already stamped the exit stamp on my passport. Ooopsy Daisy, I said inside. Heard so many stories about the other Arab countries would refuse you if you have an Israeli stamp on the passport. I guess now I can no longer go anywhere in the Middle East other than the friends of Israel in the region. Not that I am dying to go to any of the other countries nearby. But I better check which other Muslim countries in the world I may have issues visiting because of this. Why are people so complicated!? Can we just get over it already? Oh well, not the end of the world.


After Israeli passport control, we literally walked into Jordan, it seemed like a long walk, carrying my big backpack on my shoulder. It felt kind of like the movie Bridge of Spies where Tom Hanks led the Russian spies for exchange of two Americans on a bridge, each step is very heavy. I was looking at the "Welcome to Jordan" sign as I approached their security gate, I felt a little strange, it seemed very foreign. It was one of those "What on earth am I doing here?" kind of moments. I had been to Egypt before, but that was long long time ago back in 1996, and I flew to Egypt with a tour group from Hong Kong, so they pretty much had everything arranged. On that same trip, I also stopped by Dubai for a night. I think today it has been truly the first time since then I have visited another Arab country. The people look very different, their eyes are the very deep kind and have the power to hypnotize you if you look at them long enough.


The Jordanian guard searched my bag, but very causally, he was like, "ah, heavy bag, just out of sight" very much unlike their neighbor. The whole process was actually seamlessly smooth. We were picked up by our Jordanian guide, and off we go, we headed for the Rose-Red City.