Since I last wrote, just about to leave Petra, my friend Cameron and I decided to go for a Turkish bath to aide our aching muscles from all the hiking and climbing around Petra. It was great…I had never been to a Turkish bath before, but I highly recommend it. First they put you in a steam room for a while to get your skin all soaked. A big burley guy then takes you and scrubs you down everywhere with this rough cloth. The cloth basically removes the top layer of skin from you. Sounds painful, but you feel so clean after. Then he soaps you down with this rough pad and rinses you off. After that you go to the next big burley guy and he gives you a pretty rough massage and moves your limbs around to stretch them. In the end, my muscles felt like they hadn't climbed the thousands of stairs, hundreds of boulders, and walked the dozens of miles I had just done in the last few days.

At this point the group split up, Cameron and Kester had their own plans to visit the Wadi Rum desert, I stuck with Yanyi and Maria. While in Petra making friends with the Bedouin we met one of them who occasionally did tours of the Wadi Rum Desert. It was understood that he was going to take us to the Protected area (where the sights are) and we were going to spend two nights in the dessert outside of the giant tourist camps. We took off with him in the afternoon for Wadi Rum.

It turned out to be a bad drive, too fast on the highway, him talking on his cellphone all the time (although not unusual for this part of the world), and he stopped off to visit his friend en route. When we got to Wadi Rum, we didn't end up in the Protected Area, and we were going to be staying at a big tourist camp. So we asked him to take us to the Visitor Center at the entrance to the Protected Area to get some information, and he just went insane at that point. He did take us to the Visitor Center, but he was upset, ranting about this and that, and in the end him and us had a really really big falling out. We spent about an hour of Yanyi and I arguing heatedly with this Bedouin guy, Ait, about what we agreed on, and then finally the price we were going to pay him for bringing us to Wadi Rum, and sending him on his way back to Petra. Despite him promising that if we weren't satisfied, we didn't have to pay him (which of course we all knew was not actually true to begin with), he wanted a lot of money for the "taxi" ride he gave us to get there. The tourist police tried to help out but we didn't get anywhere, and he ended up storming off without us paying him in the end. We felt really bad that things ended up that way, but we were definitely not sorry for parting ways with him especially after that display.

In the end it turned out better, for only a little more money, we got a really nice desert camp in the middle of the protected area, and the next day got a full 8 hour tour of the area by 4WD with an awesome Bedouin guide.

The first night we spent most of the night under the stars until the moon was just too bright to actually sleep, and we moved into the tent. That night there were about 10 people staying at this camp in the middle of nowhere. We had a great Bedouin supper and just relaxed for the rest of the night. The second night the camp was quieter with only 4 of us staying, the two girls and I along with an air traffic controller from Frankfurt.

The tour we got for a full day was amazing thanks to the wonderful guide we had. Muklug (sp?) picked us up at our camp in the morning, and we went off seeing various sights in the desert. The whole place was just beautiful everywhere. After visiting a few sights, he let us go for a walk while he set up tea. We came back and he had made a little fire from twigs and had made some excellent tea. We sat for about an hour just chatting with him (he had very good english). We learnt a lot about the Bedouin, how there seem to be two different kind, one who still only lives off the land and trades goats and charges people for crossing over his land, and the enterprising kind that gives tours to tourists, and make a great deal of money. I had the impression that they weren't too well off since some lived in caves, and the rest in dingy houses, however he explained that most do quite well. His father made well over 2000 Dinars (about $3000 a month), and we talked about how he wanted to go to London, and that the cost of a ticket, about 400 dinars ($600) was dirt cheap.

After the tea break we visited some more sights and stopped for a nap and lunch, it was getting to the hottest part of the day so we set up a picnic and a blanket to rest on and slept in the shade, it was quite nice. I got up when he started to make tea, and he took the opportunity while the girls were sleeping to discuss women. He thought they might be both my wives or girlfriends, and he told me that he did after all have three wives and 7 kids (he told the girls earlier that he wasn't married because he was too busy with his job). We had noticed that many Bedouin have western girlfriends or wives (often from Europe like France and Germany who we had met, but there is a famous one who wrote a book about marrying a Bedouin from New Zealand), and he explained it was because the Bedouin women were just too difficult to deal with.

We finished our tour of the desert with a stop at a pile of stone bricks known as Lawrence House (Lawrence of Arabia lived in this area), and climbed up a giant red sand dune and tumbled down (my shoes still have loads of sand in them). After getting back to the camp, we had to start thinking how we would get to the Dead Sea from there (transportation around Jordan is far from easy), and luckily the German Air Traffic Controller that was staying there had his own car and was driving up to Amman the next day where we could catch transportation there.

The three of us, Maria, Yanyi and I, made our way to the Dead Sea and Yanyi and I checked into a hotel (Maria was going back to Amman that night to visit another site early in the morning). We quickly went down to the beach for a swim, it was so incredibly hot and humid. The Dead Sea is not only the lowest point on land on Earth, but it's the saltiest body of water. It's so salty that you can see 'swirls' in the water from being so saturated, and there are signs everywhere suggesting you keep your head out of the water. When you first go in, you quickly realize where every single cut and scratch is on your body, it all burns so much. Then as you get in deeper, it becomes really difficult to walk because the water is just trying to make you float. So you just fall back, and you float on top of the surface as if you were on an air mattress. It was so strange.

I did a good job keeping my head out of the water, but a small splash sent a couple of salt water drops my way, and hit my lips, and they burned like crazy, and my automatic reaction of wiping the water from my lips got my lips more wet from the water that was on my arm, and I got the nastiest tasting water ever…far worse than any ocean or sea I had been in before. Then one drop ended up in my eye, and that too burned. But despite the pain, it was worth it to be able to float in the sea, and feel so refreshed afterwards.

The next day Yanyi and I went for one more dip and made our way back to Amman to eventually meet up with Maria again. When we checked into our hotel in Amman, we coincidentally ran into Cameron and Kester again, it's such a small world when you're backpacking. They had already eaten, so Yanyi and I found an incredible restaurant overlooking the city from the top of a hill, and met up with the others for a drink later on. We were all going our separate ways the next day, so we all said our goodbyes.

I took off for Abu Dhabi for a couple of nights, where I found myself quite tired from all the traveling and a serious lack of sleep, but still enjoyed the UAE nonetheless. I grabbed some dinner in Abu Dhabi and just had a quiet evening. The next day I caught the bus down to Dubai. It was so hazy and hot I decided just to stay inside for most of the day, so I went to this giant mall, "Mall of the Emirates" where there is also an indoor ski hill. I went snowboarding for a couple of hours which was quite neat. It was surprisingly cold on the hill, although maybe it's because I've acclimatized to 40 degree heat now. I spent the rest of the afternoon just wandering the mall before making my way back to Abu Dhabi for dinner and one more shisha before I leave the Middle East.

Now I'm back in Saudi, in Dammam for the day. I'm just hanging out at our crew house until my flight late late this evening. Expecting to be back in Ottawa Tuesday afternoon, I can't wait! It feels like it's been forever since I was back home!

I've now added pictures from my trip to my facebook here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2171669&l=51851&id=121505785

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2171664&l=d9c94&id=121505785 I will add higher quality pictures to my proper photo website once I'm out of Saudi, they Kingdom blocks internet access to my photo website!

I have been quiet lately I know, so I figured it's time to fill everyone in!

I've been hard at work in Saudi for a while, flying pretty much everyday and haven't had much time for much else which is why I've been so quiet. Basically other than flying I've been exploring possible other opportunities, and setting up my upcoming holiday. Once in a while we had some good evenings out, most notably our driver cooked us up a traditional Pakistani dinner, Dahl and some sort of bread pudding like dessert. He rented some carpets and we ate out in our driveway. It was quite good!

Regarding possible upcoming opportunities, I won't say too much yet except that things are quite up in the for the month of June and after. However it's all good things. There is a possibility of an opportunity with another company, or moving quasi-management with SGL. But we'll see what happens, and I'll be sure to keep everyone up to date once I know more...

For my upcoming holiday, I'm quite excited about my trip to Jordan. On Friday I leave here for Dammam to spend the night with our crew there. On Saturday morning I fly to Amman, Jordan via Bahrain, and arrive in the late afternoon. I plan on spending the night in Amman, then getting a hotel tour van to take me down the King's Highway down to Petra. Along the way I'm expecting to stop and several sites including a giant mosque that used to be a church, with a mosaic floor that is a map of the middle east with all the religious sites highlighted, made in ancient times. There's also the mountain where Moses stood to look upon the promise land (where a church now stands), and a beautiful gorge. I am expecting to be in Petra for a couple of days to explore the ancient town there.

After Petra I'm planning on going down to a place called Wadi Rum which is apparently some of the most spectacular desert in the world. There I'll be on a tour with some Bedouin visiting sites in the desert with some camels, and spending the night in the desert. After that I head back up to Amman for a couple nights and do day trips to the Dead Sea and an old roman town named Jerash.

After Jordan I head down to Abu Dhabi on May 24th for a couple of nights. From there I'm planning on heading down to Dubai to explore for a day, before I head back to Dammam to catch my flight back home via Abu Dhabi and New York. Once back home, I am expecting to be very busy with catching up on my to do list that has gotten long since X-mas, and sorting out these opportunities.

I'll be mostly out of touch while in Jordan because I won't have my computer with me, I'm going to store a lot of stuff in Dammam with our crew there while I'm out exploring. But I'll try to send bried updates from internet cafes now and then when I'm able to.

The last month has been the usual busy time of getting back into the routine of work. Now I'm settled into the daily flying (except Fridays of course), and enjoying the new place I'm in. For my third round in Saudi Arabia, it has been nice seeing a new place other than Jazan, this time in the larger city of Taif. Taif sits in the mountains about 50 miles East on the other side of Makkah from Jeddah. It's a nice place to be in the warmer months leading up to the excruciatingly hot summer months. Due to the higher elevation and being inland, it's cooler in the evenings, and much dryer than sitting on the hot, humid and sticky coast. Let me fill you in on the happenings of the month.

I finally got my passport while I was waiting in Auckland with Pete, and Pete and I left for Saudi at the same time. However despite going to the same place, and leaving Auckland at practically the same time, we were on different flights to get there. We did meet up in Dubai for a coffee before getting on different planes again to then meet up in Dammam. We arrived in Taif in the evening and got settled into our rooms.

We're staying at the Intercontinental Hotel, which is very posh. We aren't staying in hotel rooms though, we have a better arrangement, staying in three neighbouring villas. Each villa is basically a large house all to ourselves, with 5 bedrooms (each with a full bathroom), two living rooms, a kitchen, dining room and servant's quarters which we don't use. Outside we have a wall around us, and we have a garage with an attached bedroom with bathroom and kitchen. Our drivers use those rooms. We use the garages mostly for storage except one has our gym set up in it. However we do have access to the hotel's VIP gym complete with pool tables, gym equipment, pool, saunas and steam bath. As I said, all very posh. I lucked out and have ended up with a nice big room with a large balcony with couches and a table, where some of us hang out after a flight.

The flights out of Taif are interesting, very scenic flying through mountains and canyons to get down to sea level from 10 000' to our survey area over the Red Sea. We also get to fly amongst military aircraft like F-15 and F-16 fighters and blackhawk helicopters. We get a nice breakfast buffet every morning, and I usually take a few items for lunch in the plane. I also have my daily fruit cup from a place called Alhan Wasalhan, fresh fruit topped with a yogurt/cream type topping. We store them in our freezer and a few hours into the flight it's a perfect way to cool down.

The crew has been a bit different here since I left. Everytime I come back it's like a whole new project just because of the change in people on the crew...every group has a different feel. This time is was right after the stressful move to Taif, causing a lot of friction amongst everyone, but in the last couple of weeks things have improved significantly.

Last week I ended up with a pretty large gash on the top of my head...I went to the airport in the morning, put my coffee on the ground, and opened the aircraft door to throw my bag into the plane. I closed the door, bent down and picked up my coffee, and as I stood up the door had swung open and I put my head straight up into the bottom of the door. Luckily despite the large amount of blood gushing through my hair, it wasn't serious enough to require medical attention. I disinfected it several times and since it has healed quite nicely. Luckily I was wearing my baseball cap otherwise I think the cut would have been much much worse.

Other than that I've been busy flying almost every day, and in the evenings sometimes going into town for dinner. We have found a really good shawarma and pizza place, and last night an excellent chinese food restaurant. Tonight I am trying out the cafeteria they have set up for employees of the hotel (their employees live on the hotel property with their families, it's a huge complex), the hotel manager has allowed us to join them for Indian and Pakistani food for a really cheap price, and it reportedly excellent food. Last night I also visited the souq (market) to see what they had. I picked up a pot to make Turkish coffee in, and I'm on the look out for a shisha.

I'll be hanging out in Saudi most likely until mid-June. I plan on taking a couple of extra weeks totaling 6 weeks off over the summer. However on my way back home I plan on stopping in Jordan for a week to go visit Petra and the Dead Sea, I'm quite looking forward to that. Next week is coming up to a month in Saudi already, requiring me to leave the country for a night for my visa, so I'll be going to Bahrain with Pete for a night. It'll be a nice break.