Dec Holiday - Day Five

Done w Bfast.

First stop of the day: King Abdullah's Mosque

Inside

We walked past the mosque first.

A sign. Looks like opening hours but the rest is a mystery to me.

Beautiful

We had to wait for a bit till 2 groups of people already in the cave came out. Inside, I was feeding T some food so my hands were dirty and couldn't take any pictures. There were like 3 sections, the sleeping area, and the grave itself. The resident guide explained that they received sunshine from a chimney like hole and sunsets at the entrance of the cave.

Outside, T fell down on rocky ground when a girl accidentally shoved him and she was soo apologetic she gave him a chocolate.

Another sign w Hannah and Umair

It's like and R&R of a Malaysian highway

This is what I (from the above pic) was looking at.

Hummus lunch for T.

Kebab and rice for me. It's 1 chicken, mutton and beef each.

Chicken is the best. I even packed mummy's share in case T gets hungry cause again, he was distracted and didn't eat much.

After this, the kids were playing with my phone and even though a few min ago I saw it was 50%, the next min it turned off flat. HATE iphone! After that I knew already I had to charge overnight or at least 2 - 3 hours and not take the percentages seriously.

The rest were off praying and T and I surveyed the shops. The shopkeeper suddenly called out to T and gave him a chup-a-chup lollipop. I wanted to say no because I was afraid I would hafta pay for it and I don't have a single cent on me. But he gave it for free really. I was amazed at their generosity. We had a guy giving postcards to children for free at Jericho's sycamore tree yesterday. And there was another old man wanting to give toys to T at the mosque but T didn't want.

But the lollipop was wasted on T. I've never given him sweets before and other people rarely do. Even then only the chewy ones and never lollipop. So T was a bit at a lost at this food contraption. When I opened it and gave him, he actually sucked / bit the other end of the sweet! LOL. Even after I had shown him how and he'd tried it, he still insisted on biting the stick. In my heart I was saying, "Ok good. Please don't like sweets, its bad for health. Mummy will finish this for you."

We are now on the way to our hotel in PETRA. 5 hours journey!!! For the first 2 hours T slept. And then we dropped off 7 people from our group to go back home as they had started the tour earlier. We also stopped at another R&R for toilet break and T got to stretch his feet.

I also saw a souvenir toothbrush. After I paid, T grabbed it from me and threw it into the in-house fountain!!! and then cheekily said, "O Oh jatuh (dropped)" There was a lady sitting there who wanted to help looking at my desperate expression. But one of the staff said its ok I could just go and take a new one. Phew!

Before we set off again for another couple of hours' drive, we saw the sun setting on the horizon!! It was magnificent! Firstly, my mum pointed out how round the sun was when we were already in the bus and we all cooed. And then a few minutes later, Hey the Sun just got lower! and in about 3 - 4min it was totally gone! Gosh! It was my first real sunset experience. What a shame it was so... incidental.

Anyway, I was really very happy when I managed to entertain T in the bus for the rest of the journey all on my own without anybody's help and without him sleeping either. We drew on our magnetic doodle, we played some games on iPod, and we peered out at the night sky for the moon and star and sang... Before we knew it, we had pulled up at Amra Turkish Hotel at 6pm.

The lobby was modest but with an attraction for kids: wooden rocking horse! The kids were fighting for that and though T mostly looked, I kept him near in case his foot got under the horse!

Dinner at the hotel in an hour's time. Lift was miniscule even withOUT our luggages (porters sent to respective rooms), it took several trips to transport everyone of us to our rooms. They had wireless internet but at a cost =( Nevermind, I suppose I won't die not checking my email.

Entrance.

Where my mum stood is where our room ends, a narrow corridor and dad's room.

My bed's the one next to the window

At least there was one comfortable seat.. to put our clothes!!

The room was very crampy, I didn't even combine the two single beds together. Instead I just pushed it to the wall and we slept with the windows open but curtains drawn because there was no air-con? only heater which we left turned off.

The bathroom though small was somewhat better than Larsa's because it actually has a bathtub and HAIR DRYER!!! Too bad, I didn't have the energy to take my evening shower nor wash my hair. The room may be crampy, but it was possibly the best bed / night I had.