jordan day 2: ancient greco-roman provincial city of gerasa

the last item on our itinerary for the day was the ancient ruins of gerasa in jerash. actually it was already 2pm when we arrived there and was supposed to have our lunch first, but as the skies were really dark and gloomy, our driver thought maybe it was better for us to finish touring here first before going for our lunch as he feared we'd have to miss this site if it rained.

however it did rained, even before we went in but we still waited around for the rain to subside, since were there already.

 started our tour from here, the outer south gate, which is about 5 minutes walk from the ancient town centre of gerasa.

started to pour again... not good! 

the colonnade (sequence of columns) at the oval forum, a trademark in many roman cities. the oval forum functioned as a marketplace as well as gathering place of great social significance, and often the scene of diverse activities, including political discussions and debates, rendezvous, meetings etc.

 cardo maximus, or main street, that normally runs through the city and lined with shops and vendors.

corinthian columns... all the roman columns were made up of sections and were never one whole long piece of  stone.

if you stuck a key between the sections in a column, the key will move up and down, especially when there's a wind blowing. this explains how some of the structures were able to withstand the wind, rain, the flow of time and even earthquakes. 

at the north theatre... the guy in red behind there is our guide for gerasa.

it's a big complex and lotsa walking involved! (i know gina will be commenting about how tiring my trips are! :P) here, we're walking up to the temple of artemis, where the columns are.

the ruins of temple of artemis.

ruins of a church.

original mosaics on the floor of the church.

walking towards the south theatre.

bagpipers entertaining the visitors at the theatre.

view of the oval forum from the top.

some original stones on display.

this was how the original temple of artemis looked like.

back at the south gate

by this time, we were famished! we were practically begging our driver to bring us for our lunch, at nearly 5pm! more like dinner, huh? so he brought us to this arabic restaurant some minutes' drive away.

oven baked arabic bread. 

typical arabic bread. 

 hummus, a kind of dip for the arabic bread, made from chickpeas.

tabouleh, also eaten with arabic bread, made from parsley, couscous etc. 

fatoush, a kind of arabic salad. very yummy! 

arabic pickles... very salty, but appetizing. 

the main, a combo of grilled meat. of course this wasn't mine. i asked for only chicken meat... :P this meal came up to JD10 (≈ RM43) per person.

when we got back to amman, our driver asked if we want to have some desserts. since it was quite early, we said ok. so he brought us to this famous sweets shop, habibah sweets. 

the lower floor is the shop part, where they sell arabic sweets, baklavas etc by the kg.

the upper level is the restaurant part, with waiters in vests and all. 

this was what our driver recommended we order, hot and cold kunafa. it's cheesy and very sweet! to be honest, too sweet for us, so we were having some trouble finishing it. i forgot how much we paid for this... probably JD2 (≈ RM8.50)

after stuffing ourselves with kunafa, we went to this souvenir shop next door. it's a shop targeting tourists and we're sure the prices were marked up like crazy. so we didn't buy anything, other than a cake of dead sea mud soap.

even tho' jordan is a muslim country with about 90% of their population are muslims, but given their jewish and christianity origins, we often see these paraphernalia sold in shop run by local muslims. this is definitely something we'll never see back home!

it was a long and tiring day, so we retired quite early that night.

jordan day 1: arrival in amman

as many of you know, i went to jordan last weekend during the eid holidays. we get 3 official days off for this islamic celebration, and since it's over the weekends, it totaled up to 5 days. so yeah, my colleagues and i planned this jordan trip to coincide with this public holiday.

it was a lil risky actually, for us to plan anything on islamic holidays, coz the actual day is only determined after some moon sighting. but as our company made us finish up our leave days in summer, we have no more leave days hence no other choice. we went ahead to book our flights and tour, and kept our fingers crossed that the public holiday would fall on those chosen dates. this time, we were lucky! :)

anyway, there were 4 of us this time round, with colleagues lovely lily and sweet sheila, and my friend lanky leila who flew into amman from germany to join us.

breakfast before boarding...

the 3 of us from sandland arrived at around 2pm and were greeted by our tour representative, who assisted us through immigration and introduced us to our driver, issam. he would be our driver for the duration of our visit in jordan.

there were no activities on our arrival day and we were planning to go to town to do some exploring on our own. another colleague who've been there said we should visit a "fort" up on a hill in the town centre, where we can catch some stunning sunset over the whole city. but while on the way from the airport to our hotel, i asked issam about the fort in town. he was puzzled for a while, when it dawned on him that i was talking about the amman citadel! so he said he would make a detour to bring us there, as a special gift for us! how very nice!

unfortunately, by the time we arrived at the citadel, visiting hours were up (they close at 4pm) and they were closing the gates! so sad... so we could only take photos from outside the gate. i'm not gonna bore you with the story and history of this roman ruins, so if you wanna know more about this place, click here. it was rather cold and our jackets were in our luggage, so we didn't stay for long.

the remains of the temple of hercules taken from outside the gates...

view of the old section of amman city, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.

view on the other side of the hill, all golden and shining in the sunset... amman is a rather hilly place. all the buildings were not organised and the streets between the buildings were narrow and winding...

then we piled into the van again and issam drove down a series of narrow and winding streets to a gazebo-ed spot to show us this view below...

...a roman amphitheater right smack in the middle of the city. this is the most impressive legacy of roman philadelphia (previous name of amman) built under emperor antoninus pius (138-161 ad). *click on photo to enlarge*

at the lookout point, with our driver...

street of amman. not very clean and quite chaotic, due it being the eid celebration, hence it was a lil crowded...

...but they have quite a lot of policemen around making sure everything was in order.

then issam very generously treated us to dinner! this side-street stall is quite famous, as even the king and queen of jordan came here to eat before! so down to earth right, the royalties sitting at the plastic table and chairs in a side-street, among the commoners?

mint leaves, tomatoes and onions, and a chili dip for our fries...

authentic arabic meal of hummus and moutabal, eaten with arabic bread... the  meatball-like stuff are falafel.

happy faces...

then sweet sheila wanted to get the local sim card so that she could go on the internet, as she would die if not connected to the internet for even one day. but it turned out, she was still not able to connect to the internet even with the local sim card, so it was a total waste of money (jd 5 for card + jd 12 for top up; 1 jordanian dinar ≈ RM 5). oh, and she didn't die also from being disconnected for 5 days in jordan :P

flags of middle eastern countries on the rooftop.

finally we arrived at geneva hotel, a 4 star family-owned establishment in the heart of amman. you can read my review for the hotel here in tripadvisor (but it'll only appear in a few days' time, as i just submitted the review and tripadvisor needs a few days to approve and publish it).

i shared the room with lanky leila who arrived quite late, after i've fallen asleep at about 9pm jordanian time. i think she arrived at the hotel after 10pm, as issam also brought her on a short tour of amman city after he'd picked her up from the airport.

to note: our timing in jordan were a bit confusing, as it was supposed to be one hour behind dubai time, but they also have daylight saving time, which was supposed to happen on the day after our arrival. BUT, their government decided at the last minute not to change the timing, so it's still one hour ahead of dubai. however, when i changed the location setting in my phone, it still showed the daylight saving timing, which is 2 hours ahead of dubai. couple that with our watches still in dubai time, and sweet sheila's phone timing which went haywire completely (probably reverted back to china time), which made us a very confused bunch indeed!

*more photos on facebook, for those who are my facebook friends.

homemade pearls for bubble milk tea

have not been blogging much lately, just updates on my travels. hehe... been getting quite lazy. so today, i thought i'd share with you what i made a few weeks back.

as mentioned previously, i was on home vacation recently and while back, i took the opportunity to fill my stomach with all the yummy goodies that's so hard to come by here in the desert. one of my favourite is the bubble milk tea. this trip home, i found that so many outlets have sprung up, and so many brands too! every time i go out and see a stall, i'd be sure to join the queue to buy one.

fav brand of milk tea so far...

after my vacation, of course there's some sort of withdrawal syndrome from suddenly not having my fav drink in my system. actually while back home, i did wonder if these pearls are sold in the dried form, where i'd just need to take them out from the freezer and boil them up, much like those glutinous rice balls (tang-yuan) that's being sold here. then i remembered reading something in kel's place about homemade pearls. after putting it off for sometime, i finally decided to give it a try.

but first i need to go to the chinese grocers to get the tapioca flour and black sugar (or "red sugar" if translated directly from chinese). our typical grocers here dun really cater to east-asians, so it's quite difficult to get the ingredients we need.

so following the instructions in kel's place, i started kneading the flour with the melted sugar. i missed the part about having to pour the sugar mixture into the flour while boiling hot, so not sure if that's the reason for the difficulties i faced later on.

anyway, i found out that tapioca flour is SUCH A BITCH TO KNEAD!!! it's not like our typical flour at all. when kneading, it'll turn hard and powdery, as if it's too dry. but when i held a big lump in my open palm for a while, they'll melt all over my hand, like really watery mud! it's like putty! argh!!! so frustrating... so i wasn't really sure if i've used the correct ratio of sugar water to flour (i used the "agak-agak" method).

the worse part is when i was trying to shape it into balls. that's when the real nightmare began. first i pinched a small amount of dough and started rolling it with my palms. but it very quickly crumbled and disintegrated, very much like trying to roll dry sand into balls! ggggrrrr... not sure how to salvage the situation, i ended up pinching and squeezing and compacting the tiny dough with my fingers first before lightly rolling them into a ball. so means i had to do it all INDIVIDUALLY! luckily i only prepared a small amount, as i managed to get about 20+ balls out before my fingers couldn't take it anymore and i decided to throw the rest of the dough away.

anyway, the boiling part is also a headache. according to kel, we only need to cook it in boiling water for 5 minutes and then turn off the fire and let the pearls sit in the covered pot to let it continue cooking. well, maybe it's because she used potato flour and i used tapioca flour, but my pearls seem to take forever to cook! i think i cooked it for 20 minutes over the fire, but when i tried one, they still seemed quite hard in the middle. i also let it sit in the covered pot for about 10 minutes, but that didn't seem to soften them.

looked ok, though a bit pale coz i used less black sugar to avoid consuming too much extra sugar.

verdict: should have cooked it longer, and way too much work! may not attempt this again, as SO not worth the effort!

bento #27: the first one after 2 years!

in case some of you have not caught on, i just got back from my 3 weeks of home leave. and as usual, i came back with a box full of food and goodies that couldn't be found in the desert. among the items in my luggage, was a bubee insulated container that i bought from a stall in midvalley. it was an afterthought buy, as i was actually helping my colleague to buy one and at the last minute, thought it'll useful for me too.

anyway, yesterday being my first day back to work, i kinda lost my appetite at lunch time when i saw the food in the staff cafeteria. well, who can blame me, after all those yummy food back home?! so i decided to make use of my newly acquired bubee container...

i used the two small containers from this termos set...

preparation:

1. put 3/4 cup of rice to soak overnight

2. wash and chop up some dried mussels, refrigerate 

3. wash some kei-zhi (wolfberries), refrigerate

4. scoop out some pickled szechuan vege into small container, refrigerate

5. scoop out some fermented bean curd into small container, refrigerate

this morning, with only 5 more minutes before the 8am staff bus is scheduled to leave, i drained the rice and put them into the bubee container, threw in the dried mussels and wolfberries, and brought everything to the office.

upon reaching the office, i poured hot water onto the rice in the bubee container and screwed on the lid tightly. and by midday, voila! my porridge is ready!

this was how it looked like when the lid was first opened. i thought i'd put in too little water, not enough for it to become porridge. but upon stirring, i found that the bottom was quite watery after all.

for continuous improvement: 

1. need to use boiling water and not just hot water, as some of the rice were still hard in the middle

2. must remember salt or soy sauce

a simple meal, but yummy all the same! :)

ktm – pkr: stranded at the airport

after a good night’s sleep, i woke up at 6.30am coz my flight to pokhara was at 9am and i needed to be at the airport 1 hour before.

hotel breakfast…

oh, before i proceed, i wanna show you this:

how impractical is this for a keychain? that’s why i always left it at the front desk when i go out.

the domestic airport’s check-in counters. check out the antique weighing machines!

water dispenser in the waiting room before boarding. see the 2 glasses there? most of the people will use those, instead of the white plastic disposables. they’ll just wash it, fill it with water, drink it and wash it before putting it back. a bit backward and icky, but so environmental friendly! anyway, they used bottled water to fill those tanks up, i saw it with my own eyes.

as mentioned, my flight was at 9am and was supposed to take 25 minutes… but 15 minutes into the flight, there was an announcement by the captain that the pokhara airport has closed due to bad weather and we were gonna turn back to kathmandu airport. i was stunned for a while… now what??? i had a hotel reservation in pokhara and my pokhara guide and driver would be waiting for me there! and what about my return flight from pkr – ktm the next day? would that be burnt too?

back at kathmandu airport, i asked the people at the counter. they said they’ll wait for the pokhara airport to open before announcing the next flight, but there’s no saying how long that’ll take. i tried calling my tour agent with my cellphone, but don’t know why, i can’t make any calls out. seems like digi was experiencing some issue with the roaming codes for some countries. then at the boarding hall, i saw a phone there with a sign that said, “free local calls”. imagine my relief!

so i called my agent and told him what happened. he asked me what i wanna do: to wait for the next flight or to cancel my plans to pokhara and they’ll arrange something else for me (like bring me to nargakot instead, where i can take a mountain flight to see the himalayas from the air). i said i’ll wait for an hour and if there’s any flight out, i’ll take it. if not, then i’ll go with plan b.

i befriended a young nepali guy (actually he chatted me up first, coz i guess i kinda stood out from the crowd) who was also going to pokhara for a short getaway. i don’t remember his name, but he helped me take this photo with gil the globetrotter ami-inu.

at about 10.30am, we were called to board the plane again. i quickly used the free phone to inform my agent before passing thru the gate. but then we sat in the plane for quite sometime, without any movement. and again, the pilot’s voice came on, informing us that the pokhara airport has closed again and we had to get off the plane. wth!

again, i called the tour agent to inform him of the delay. and again, i said i’ll wait for another hour. this time, there were quite a few passengers who were pissed off and were making a fuss at the counter. don’t they understand that it’s for their own safety? they wanna risk their lives by having the plane flying and landing in bad weather, just because they don’t wanna be late getting there? *sigh*

bored with all the waiting…

at about 11 something, close to 12pm, i saw a lot of people crowding around the airlines counter again, and they looked like the same crowd from my flight. then the young nepali guy, who was walking pass me from the counter, told me i can go collect my snack. at least they bothered to pacify us with some peanuts and coke, even though it wasn’t not their fault the weather was so bad. and because i was sticking out like a sore thumb, the guy at the counter served me first instead of the noisy locals there. i didn’t even have to jostle like the rest. talk about discrimination! :P

at about 12.15pm, we again got called to board the plane. i called my tour agent and told him that this will be my last try. if i’m still unable to get to pokhara, i’ll give up and opt for plan b. but fortunately this time, we were able to arrive at pokhara safely.

the airport at pokhara is even more run-down! the arrival room (i won’t even call it a hall) is like an abandoned building, with part of the wall crumbling off! sorry, didn’t take a photo of it coz i had to see to my luggage.

after checking in to the hotel spectacular view, i set out for some sightseeing with my guide and driver.

first stop was the international mountaineering museum

then i was brought to a cave with a hindu temple in it and photography was not allowed. anyway, nothing really much to see there lar. i think our batu caves is more interesting.

next was devis fall, a very rapid waterfall that got its name when a swiss woman named mrs. devis who died after being swept away while bathing there with her husband. you can see how rapid the waterfall is if you click on this link.

next, i’m brought to see this suspension bridge

and the last place for the day was this seti river. the water is white in colour, because this river runs through a series of limestone caves before arriving here.

as you can see, there’s not much to see in pokhara. that’s why at every small attraction also we need to pay an entrance fee.

back at the hotel in the evening. the room has a nice view of the fewa lake, the lake that made pokhara a popular getaway destination for tourists and locals alike.

as it was still early, i decided to venture out on my own, as well as to look for some food. other than the breakfast at the hotel, i’ve only had the packet of peanuts the whole day and i was starving! chatting with the young nepali guy at kathmandu airport earlier, i found out that the typical nepali meal is the thali. so i set out in search of this.

i wandered into this 4 or 5 star hotel with a nice restaurant and ordered this, a chicken thali. and it’s not expensive at all, considering it’s a hotel restaurant. i think it’s only npr 280 (≈ rm 11.70), with an additional npr 50 (≈ rm 2) for a glass of lemon soda.

walking along the fewa lake (some spelled it as “phewa”) on the way back to the hotel. as nepal has no sea, this lake is the main source of seafood for the people in pokhara.

pokhara is very different from kathmandu in the sense that it’s less congested, has less traffic, not so polluted and less noisy.

as it was still early, i decided not to go back to my hotel yet and was taking a longer walk when i stumbled upon this concerto cafe. so i went in for some desserts… superb rum raisin gelato!! a few moments after i took this photo, the electric power went off and plunged the whole town into darkness. but it seems like the people here are used to this, as they quickly cranked up their generators and its business as usual. the power came back on quickly tho’, much to my relief, coz i was starting to worry about having to take my shower in the dark, with cold water!

back in my hotel room, the wi-fi signal sucked, so i turned in quiet early. might as well, coz i had a very early start the next day!