Finally – A Journey to the Middle East

Hold your breath. I am probably one of the very first Malaysians to have ever written about their experiences in the Holy Land.

But before I proceed further, let me make it very clear to you that my trip to Jerusalem (and beyond) was a Christian pilgrimage which is permitted under the Malaysian Laws, green-lighted by the Home Ministry of Malaysia and under the consent of the Prime Minister of Malaysia as how he himself had declared some time before the General Election earlier this year.

As a Christian, or rather a Catholic, setting foot on the soil of the chosen land had always been a dream. This year is the Year of Faith in the Catholic Calendar so I knew it was just about the very right time to make it come true. And I knew, if I had to go there, I had to go with my mom. Then it would be a perfect dream-come-true for me. Aye? Thank you. 😛

Of course we did not fly directly to Tel Aviv from Kuala Lumpur. Instead, we flew over to Amman in Jordan first, with a 45 minutes stop-over in Bangkok.

Thanks God we did not fly on Air Asia. Otherwise I would have died of boredom. I mean, 11 hours on a flight is not something that you would want to do unless you really really have to. Thanks God it was Royal Jordanian so I had the screen to be so thankful for.

It was small, but it was enough to pass the time with all the things that it offered. I could even monitor the distance traveled and the distance to go on that tiny winy little thing.

Good thing about being on a not-so-budget airline is that they wouldn’t let you go hungry. I don’t even remember how many times we ate within that span of time but I do remember saying ‘no, thank you’ in the end.  I must have had enough of the food – which was quite rare. LOLz.

Touching down at the brand new Queen Alia International Airport in Amman, it would mark my very first step onto the Middle East soil, the region that I had heard so much about and watched so much of on TV.

I actually had mixed feelings. With all the news on the Middle East that I grew up watching, the first thing that came to my mind was wars.  I couldn’t help but thinking that I was in a war region, that a torpedo or a bazooka might come through anytime any minute.

To tell the truth, that thought had stayed in my head for quite some time. In fact, it took a couple of days before I could finally assure myself that I was perfectly safe, that we were all in good hands and there was nothing to be worried about. He.

The first thing that I quickly noticed when I first stepped out of the airport was that – it was brrrr! I mean, all the while I imagined that the largely deserted region was so damn hot, that the people there could not even go out in the open without getting burned by the sun. Instead, it was cold – not really cold but just nice – and I felt like I was in Europe in the late Spring or probably early Summer. I instantly liked the weather!

Of course the land was nothing like I had ever seen anywhere else before. There were patches of plants and half-dry grasses and farms which were probably the only sources of greenery in the otherwise bald Jordan.

The buildings were mostly double-storey at least those on the outskirts of Am’an and most of them looked somehow unfinished. Surprisingly, the houses were mostly oversized bungalows with beautiful gates and wall fences although they too looked unfinished or somewhat (still) under construction.

Our very first destination was Mount Nebo. Mount Nebo is the place where Moses was shown by God the Promised Land – the land that he had spent 40 years of his 120 years life looking for, across mountains and deserts and of course an ocean when the Lord split the Red Sea into two to pave way for his people before merging it back and engulfed the Egyptian soldiers in the process.

It felt surreal to be there.  Looking down over the mountainous land of Jordan and even Israel in the far distance, it was easy to throw myself back to the Moses time.

The spread of mountains really was beautiful that for I moment I wished desperately I was there as a backpacker and not a member of a tour group so that I could come down to the mountains and do a little bit of trekking like what a real traveler would do. I could imagine how wonderful it would be. But of course that was all I could do – to imagine. Uhuks!

To tell the truth, it would be my very first time joining a tour group in full – so it really was a new experience for me. I had to remind myself over and over again that I had a schedule to catch up with and that there was always somebody waiting for me somewhere in the corner or at the bus. It was so painful that I could not selfie as much as I’d usually do. Uhukss!

Of course, we all know that Moses never made it to the Promised Land as God did not want him to. He died searching, at the age of 120. Despite all the theories, nobody knew where exactly he was buried. The Bible did give a little bit of hint but the exact location was never found to this day.

His pursuit was continued by his servant Joshua who in the end brought the people of Israel to the Promised Land marked by their march across the Jordan River which was of course one of the places that I was (excitedly) heading to later in the trip. Yippies!

Then we went down to Madaba, a very old town which was also mentioned in the Old Testament and we all know that whatever mentioned in the Old Testament is very ancient. We went to a church called Greek Orthodox Basilica of St. George which is famous for housing the just as famous Madaba Mosaic Map.

The Madaba Mosaic Map was discovered in 1896 among so many other mosaic monuments found buried beneath the town of Madaba. Consisting of 2 million pieces of colored stones, the mosaic map depicts a near-perfect map of the Holy Land including Jerusalem and its surroundings.

What makes the mosaic map so important is the fact that it shows the map of Jerusalem and the locations of places of interest including the Holy Sepulcher (Golgota Hill) where Jesus was executed on the cross 2000 years ago.

Since the map was ‘fabricated’ barely 600 years after Jesus time, it had become an important reference to all the locations of places mentioned in the Bible since Jerusalem itself had been destroyed several times after.

Just down the streets from the church was a famous restaurant called Haret Jdoudna. Boasting itself as ‘the best restaurant in town’, people from all corners of the country and its neighbors are known to come all the way to Madaba just for dishes that they serve at the restaurant.

Well, I do believe that they did serve very good dishes but then coming from a totally different corner of the world, it was not fair for me to judge the dishes that I was not familiar with. They were good alright, probably in their own right, but they just did not go well with our – or at least my Malaysian tongue.

Of course we would soon find out that it was just the beginning of our food disaster or at least mine. Arabic dishes can be very strange and weird at least to non-Muslim Malaysians like me. One time we eat nothing but raw vegetables which made me feel like a goat and another time we eat nothing but meat – all meat which made me feel like, I don’t know, a cat? A tiger? Heh.

Of course breads are usually there to complete the dishes although they seem quite out of place for those who are not quite used to eating bread as a substitute to rice.

Of course the day had to end. WE returned to check in at a hotel which was located right smack in the middle of Amman, although it was very difficult to know where exactly the city center was for such a sprawling city like Amman.

Amman did not really make a good first impression on me. There was so much rubbish lying half-buried in the soils I really thought that they were there for a reason, probably to protect their plants from the intensity of the sun or something. Of course I had to come really close to them to know that they were simply rubbish whose existence was merely a result of littering habit – something that Jordanians probably share with many Malaysians.

The people of Amman, or even Jordan consist mostly of Muslims. Only about 5% (or probably less) of them are nons, and most of these nons are Christians. I was quite surprised to see that they were so many liquor shops even on the streets leading up to the hotel alone. In fact I was offered by a bunch of teenagers to have a drink with them – to which I politely declined (I would have quickly said yes if I was there as a traveler. Gulp! ).

Contrary to what I had initially expected, the people of Amman are actually very friendly. Of course being a few yellows in a sea of browns (although some of them are cursed with Caucasian looks), we couldn’t go anywhere without drawing some sort of attention.

Some of them would slow down their cars and offered us a ride while some would simply blow their honks just to tell us that our presence was noticed. Of course it involved saying a lot of ‘no, thank yous’ but I have to say I did quite enjoy it. I mean, a little bit of attention doesn’t really hurt, does it? 😛

One night in Amman was enough especially when you are in a group tour. I knew Jordan had a lot of things to offer but we just did not stay there long enough to find out what they were or rather where they were. We did stop there for a little bit of a city tour on our very last day before heading back to Malaysia but still, it did not do Jordan much justice.

Of course, Amman did not excite me as much as our next destination did. I could not sleep all night long trying to imagine how crossing the border was gonna be like on the very next day. I had traveled to quite a number of countries and crossed quite a number of borders but this border that I was going to cross next WAS NOT JUST AN ORDINARY border.  No, it was not.

In fact, it was one of the most tightly-guarded borders in the world!

And most importantly, I imagined all the things that were waiting for us on the other side of it. o.O