Biding Time: Trip to a Bath House

For the last five months, I have felt that I must make the most of my time off from work. It wasn't planned that I should be unemployed. I've just been waiting, not very patiently, for things to come together at ol' SC. We have in fact been discussing the finer points of my new contract for at least 4 of the 5 months...but I digress.

At first I worked on making our house more of a home. I bought some old carpets, had broken pictures re-framed, and finally got some reading lamps after a year of oppressive overheads in the living room. After a month or so of that, I felt it smart to reign in the spending a bit, seeing as we'd become a one-income-family.

One place I'd been meaning to check-out but never made the time for was the bath house in the old part of the city. That area of Jabal Amman and the narrow, cobbled Rainbow Street have beautiful old houses clinging to the ridge overlooking the downtown market. There are interesting shops, art galleries, bookstores and bars. It's where our single friends live.

The bath house itself isn't old but is designed, at least to my untrained eye, in the Ottoman style with smooth domes pockmarked with tiny round glass through which a little light filters through. The great room we first entered was cool and refreshing with a fountain full of giant gold fish and people sipping tea behind plants in the corners. We checked in and got our personal bars of locally produced soap and loofas. From there we entered a locker room, and my friends and I had to sort out what to wear.

Unbeknownst to us, this bath house has a culture of conservatism about it, at least during the women's time in the morning. All the other ladies, though thankfully there were only a half dozen of them, were wearing bathing suits. My only other experience of a bath house was in Istanbul, and there it'd been full nudity, even the old ladies who worked there. Between my German and Palestinian friends and I, we only had our knickers, so there we were, a teeny bit embarrassed at not only being naked for the first time in front of each other but being in an environment that didn't exactly support our semi-nudity.

Luckily the grand dame of the place was kind and hospitable. She helped us on our way to do the done thing there. First to the shower (hmmm, group thing...moving on). Then to the steam room, a small, enclosed space, reminding me of an awful sweat lodge experience I'd had in college. Semi-nakedness hidden by the darkness and steam, I hunkered down with my friends and talked about the party we were planning. The grand dame shooed us into an even hotter area of the steam room, handing us cold scented towels for our heads and icy sweet hibiscus tea.

After that was the hot tub in the center of the room under the dome, where they left us for a while as they prepared the marble slabs. I went first (to get it over with?). I can't say that the scrub down was pleasant. It was in fact excruciating. I was clearly losing some skin, which is the point, I suppose. The Filipino in her biking shorts and tank top was not out to make me feel relaxed. I was stretched out on the wet marble like a fish being cleaned.

The next table was gentler, if more...invasive. One's limbs are soaped up, massaged, and rinsed, as are one's head and torso. Weeks before I'd already been mildly traumatized by the Arabic "bikini" waxing: think Brazilian to the extreme. So I was prepared for the worst, which it nearly was from a perspective of modesty - a modesty that simply had to be put aside for the sake of cultural exploration (am I not an anthropologist?), and hopefully, glowing, younger-looking skin (am I not pushing 40?).

After that, I made the rounds again, then waited for my friends with a few ladies in a lounge off the locker room. It would have been relaxing if not for a two-foot long shark swimming in a long tank that made up the back wall. The room was lined with long red woolen cushions atop low mattresses that made it impossible to do anything but recline in that extravagant Middle Eastern way. An older lady, her wet hair not yet covered in a head scarf, gossiped away with a Filipino still in her wet suit, apparently on a cigarette break. I had the local sweet tea; they had the Turkish coffee. The only thing missing was a sheesha pipe.

My friends and I still had an hour to kill before picking up the kids, and I was starving, so we had lunch at Wild Jordan, a cafe managed by the Royal Jordan Nature Conservancy. What it lacks in flavor, it makes up for in ambiance and healthiness. It's all glass, metal and polished concrete hanging on a cliff. The three of us were extraordinarily relaxed, even giddy like girls skipping school. It was a nice way to spend a morning.

Walking in Wadi ibn Hammad

A few weekends ago, I booked a hiking trip for me & David with an "ecotourism" company. We spent a full day exploring, without the kids. 

Usually, we do things on our own - I mean, with the kids but without a guide. We hit the interesting places, so we do end up going where the tour groups go. I envy them their guides who can provide a lecture on what it is we're seeing, its history. But for the most part, I appreciate the fact that I'm free....if that's what you call traveling with a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old. Yeah. Free to see maybe one-eighth of the world famous ruins of Petra for the fourth time while my kids play with the stones on the ground and ask for juice and pitifully look desperate for a nap and maybe later a swim in the pool. (pleasepleaseplease)

Still, we live here. We never get herded into the diesel fumes between enormous busses in the parking lot. I suppose I felt sorry for them, the package tour people. That is until we had our little day trip.

It's their business to know where we're going and what we need to bring, to drive us there, to even pack a lunch for us. Our only stress was making sure we got up early after a late night of lots of champagne. It was like being in college again. After kids, all the support of a group trip seems totally decadent. All I had to do was look out the window at passing scenery, perhaps write my cross-cultural musings in my journal. On the hike, I could walk at my own pace. I could even walk alone.

To get to the wadi, we drove south towards Karak, then off the barren plateau into a deep canyon. For scale, you can see a bus on the road here and even farther away a car. 

At the bottom was a shallow little creek. There were palm trees hanging from the cliff sides and huge bushes of oleander. We bouldered creek-side or just walked in the water. My boots were heaven: comfortable & sturdy when wet. The water was refreshing, not too cold. In the shade of canyon walls with clean running water all the way, this looked like the best place for desert hiking in the summer.

The others in our group were 2 Jordanian girls, a Dutch guy and a couple of Jordanian guys with the company: one of whom was the guide. He was an ex-UN peacekeeper type who'd been in all the worst places in the world and at the worst times. He told us a bit about the nature, but was more skilled in having a meaty hand ready to help a girl crawl over a slippery rock. (Not me though! - Adventure Girl!)

...and yes, I'm carrying Miles's school backpack.

Limestone stalactites form on the canyon walls that seem to lean together. They even connect in some places forming bridges. Water from the springs drip from the bridge and down the canyon walls through the ferns and flowers. There are bright red streaks on the face of the rocks where iron bleeds out. One feels like Indian Jones - if only I'd had my whip! (It might have been filmed here, since they definitely filmed in Petra). 

There's David on the left getting his back massage from the rapids.

On our way back home, this tiny, nice lady grabbed me tightly around the shoulder to take some photos together as we looked at the view of the reservoir. Of course the one of her by herself is much better!