MID-TOUR DRIVEL

More of the usual mid-tour drivel. I'll get back onto the fun stuff in a bit.

Images of Syrian President Al-Assad and his father, who was Syria’s previous president some 30 odd years ago, are on just about every shop and private vehicle on the road. It’s a fascinating thing to observe in a country where the religious doctrine forbids the representation of humans in visual form. I don’t know enough about Syria’s history or Islam to draw any conclusions from that but I think it’s interesting all the same.

What I can say is that the people are friendly and polite, possibly more so than just about any country I’ve been to. There’s absolutely no hard sell in the souks, which comes as a massive shock after Egypt and the streets are clean and well laid-out, the road rules pretty well respected and there aren’t huge numbers of heavily armed police or soldiers on the streets. There are no checkpoints between Syria’s towns or in its cities that I have come across. Begging and homelessness seem almost nonexistent. I haven’t come across one conman, blatant rip-off merchant or petty crook yet and I wonder why that is. I don’t know. And there in lies the frustration of group travel. Two nights in Damascus, two nights in Aleppo and a string of desert campouts don’t give you enough opportunities to gain an insight into the political and social weather of a country.

What I do know is that on the top layer society seems to be relatively open and free but there are indications that that might not be the case once you’ve cut through the icing. Facebook is banned for one thing and I can’t access the public facing side of my blog. Phil was told to minimise the skype window he was using to call his folks back in Idaho with the words “not in Syria my friend”. So there are undercurrents of something here.

Despite being painted in some quarters as fanatics – fundraisers for terrorists, sponsors of the nuclear ambitions of southern neighbours etc – there has been no animosity from either the Syrian officials or people toward any of the western tourists I’ve spent time with. That may be because many of the Syrians I have met rely directly on the tourist trade for a living but one of my travel companions is from the US and he hasn’t been bothered or harassed by anyone and he’s been quite open about his nationality. Damascus has a huge number of Iraqi refugees and perhaps, had we met one or two of them, or some of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Jordan, we would have received a different response. I don’t know. Again, time has been too short to find out.

I have seen no overt sings of religious fanaticism. Possibly Ramadan has had some influence over this but there are large and seemingly well integrated Christian communities in Damascus and Aleppo. And the Christian community has the freedom, even during Ramadan, to serve alcohol to willing tourists who will probably drink too much and subsequently pay too much for taxis back to their campsites. At the very least that shows a level of tolerance for certain aspects of western culture that I did not really expect to see. And the six shelves of condoms prominently displayed in the grooming and toiletries isle of supermarket in Jordan showed a sexual liberalism I wasn’t really prepared for in an Islamic country.

So two days away from Turkey what have I learnt? Not much really. Places surprise. People are individuals and countries can’t be summed up in two-minute newsreels or by governmental travel advice. And that people aren’t their governments or their leaders and that just because different people want different things out of life is no cause for friction. There is no best country, no better way of living. Just people. When I was wondering around the ruins of Palmyra a tour guide approached offering his services. When he found out I was from Australia he immediately told me that he once guided former Australian Senator Nick Bolkus around the ruins. At the end of that tour Senator Bolkus told the guide he could help him get to Australia if he were interested. The guide turned him down without a second thought; “Australia! Why would I want to go to Australia? All you have is kangaroos and the world’s biggest rock. You have no culture! 200 years. You are a baby. We have smaller rocks but we have six thousand years in ours.” And then he told me I had many freckles on my arms. You had to admire his honesty. I didn’t take the tour.