Day Five (ctd) Damascus to Palmyra

Picture 1 and 2 : Signs for Iraq and Bagdad

Picture 3: The Road heading East to Iraq

Picture 4: Bus entertainment, crucifixion

Picture 5: Stark Cafe

Picture 6: Stairway Onions


The bus was packed. We hesitantly handed over our passports outside of the bus to our ticket tout and walked up the aisle looking for seats. We were pointed to the back seat and settled back for the four hour trip through the desert.
A high proportion of the passengers seem to be from the Syrian Army. We were surrounded by policemen and soldiers. The fellow next to Wayne was extremely friendly and became so familiar that he would rest his arm and hand on Wayne's thigh for long periods of time.
About a dozen people around us were fascinated with Wayne's camera and phone, which made for easy communication without much use of language.
They made a point of letting us know when something of interest was coming up. This was hardly necessary as anything of interest I had noted twenty minutes beforehand myself as it was glaringly obvious on the barren desert horizon.
Very friendly people and once again, genuinely interested to know about who we were and where we were from.
A video was playing and it seemed a little out place to be watching Muslim people enthralled in a scene depicting a recreation of Christ's crucifixion (it was actually a Jean Claude Van Demme movie).
On the way we passed a turnoff for Bagdad/Iraq. It was 150 kilometres away. Felt a little weird.
There were actually a couple of roadside food places called "Bagdad Cafe".
Toward the end of the trip I started feeling really cold again.
When we arrived in Palmyra we had to walk down the main street and the reception was incredible. Young children everywhere were saying "hello" and "welcome". It was incredible how many times we were greeted. From balconies, doorways, playing in the street, there must have been forty children that made a point of greeting us. It was pretty touching.

Our hotel room was up six flights of stairs and at each yurn of flight, in the corner was a pile of onions. The only reason we come up with for this was it looked recently painted and perhaps the onions neutralised the smell. Who knows? I guess we could have asked, though that would only quell our curiousity.
I had been wanting to go to the toilet for a while on the bus and quickly discovered that I was ill.
We went down to eat in the hotel cafe and I went up and down those six flights of stairs at least 4 times to revisit the toilet, which was not functioning correctly and involved using a hose everytime it was used. Remember that each turn of the stairs has a pile of onions in them. Their sight and smell only helped to increase my sense of sickness.
I was exhausted again. Back in the cafe, Wayne and I made plans for our next day. The conclusion of this was that we would have to rise at 5.30 am to see ruins at 6, this would allow us to press on for a tour of other parts of Syria that we awanted to see.
I told our host that I was ill and wanted to go to bed; could he rush a meal?. He said he was a nurse at the local hospital and knew exactly what to prepare for me.
It took an hour and a half of freezing in this stark cafe before my comfort food arrived..boiled potatoes. Just boiled potatoes.
I ate them, rushed once again to the toilet and went to bed (for a very interrupted sleep due to explosive diarrhoea) for the early rise.