Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, should bring some excitement to us. But the hotel certainly didn’t and at USD 60 it was a shame for the tourism ministry of Syria. I found used underwear under the bed; water was seeping through some crevices and wet the floor of the bathroom. When asked for drinking water during breakfast, the waiter wanted to give us tap water! We were certain that there is two tier systems in the hotel rates, one for locals and another for foreigners. We decide to check out and decide later on what we should do after visiting the Old City.

I did manage to contact the Embassy and spoke to Encik Hussein who told me that the Ambassador was away in KL undergoing a course. He gave me the Charge D’afairs mobile number but I had to give up calling as I couldn’t get through.

The taxi driver we had to take us to the Old City just took us in without knowing where we wanted to go and jokingly quoted us some ridiculous amount. But he used the meter and took us round almost the entire city of Damascus I believe, until I told him to stop and asked someone to tell him where we wanted to go. After all the driving around, the meter still showed only 128 SPnd when we got to the souk of the Old City.

The souk gave a certain kind of excitement to us and this one more so as there were not many tourists around unlike the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul. We visited the Umayyad Mosque (built AD705 by Caliph Al-Wahid 1) one of the earliest and most important Islamic religious structures in the world, located at the far end of the souk. It was erected over the Byzantine Church of St John the Baptist and incorporated the earlier Roman-era pagan temple dedicated to Jupiter-Hadad. Unfortunately Alison could not go into the mosque but I wouldn’t miss an opportunity presented and went in while Alison waited outside. It was a fascinating sight with high columns supporting a designed roof with stained glass windows running on either side in the main prayer area.

We next went to the Azem Palace, now the Syrian museum of popular arts and traditions. The Palace was built by As’ad Al-Azem in 1749 when he was Pasha or Governor of the regions of the Ottoman province of Damascus. It represent one of the best and earliest Damascene domestic architecture on a grand scale. Within its 5500 Sq Meters there is a Haramlik (the family area), Samalik (the business area), Khadamlik (servants quarters) and of course the Hammam. By this time my stomach which had been playing up since last night forced me to look for the nearest loo. Forutnately it was clean and all I can say is not many people has left a deposit at the Azem Palace.

As breakfast was nothing to shout about we were starving by 1300hrs and had a good lunch at one of the outlets in the souk. We decided that Adrian had enough walking for the day and took a cab back to where we left Tuah. Only then we realized that the Old City was not more than 500 meters from the hotel we were in. Alison stopped to ask the rate at Al-Medina hotel and was quoted USD75 while yesterday I was quoted USD70. That made us decides to leave Damascus and head towards Jordon.

On nearing the border we bought some mandarin and bananas which were cheap, from a stall whose owner appeared grateful that we stopped. Alison spotted the Rest Hotel and we stopped for the night and this time we were quoted a rate in SPnds. 1000SPnds (around 17 Euros) for the night, never mind the squatting toilet without flush but it had hot water, tv and most important of all a heater.