So, the previous part ended with us meeting a souvenir-selling lady. She chatted briskly in pidgin English, asked where my wife was, and almost without waiting for an answer informed me that her husband had died and left her with two children. Sounds sad, of course, but in a place like Petra they'll tell you enough sob stories to fill a whole book, so I didn't buy it. Seeing that she wasn't going to get any hard coin out of us this way, the lady pulled out a piece of metal pipe, which turned out to be an improvised flute, and started playing a two-note melody.
When my soft-heartedness finally cracked and I gave her two dinars for her efforts, she demanded three! I handed over the money, but swore off dealing with local extortionists in the future: let the inhabitants of old Europe share their income with the poor, we aren't exactly rolling in it ourselves.
Doing stretches again, without them my back hurts all the time, and with them — only sometimes
When we climbed back down to the main road of Petra, a local woman intercepted us and offered to buy those exact same coins we had already seen at Shobak Castle, and frankly, everywhere around here. She soulfully recounted how she had found the coins in the sand near the cave where she lives, pointing to the exact spot. By that time, however, I was already filled with distrust toward the locals (see above) and so I started haggling to the death. I couldn't knock the price down below three dinars per coin, and I was barely willing to part with one — my bar of trust had dropped that low. The woman tried to keep us there, apparently ready to settle for two, but by then I had already lost interest and didn't even look back.
When we returned to the hotel in the evening, I finally remembered the whole coin situation and decided to look into it. First, Sasha checked eBay, where sellers from Israel are pushing similar coins for 50-100 euros! You'd think you could make quite a business out of it, right? Buy in Jordan for 2 dinars, sell for 40 euros! A gold mine!
Fortunately, I had the sense to google it properly and found out the following. If anyone actually does find real coins in the ruins of Petra, they are immediately confiscated by specially trained people to be sold straight to collectors. In turn, the local, dim-witted merchants are handed fakes that arrive by the tens of thousands from Lebanon, Bulgaria, and other countries. For a layman, it's impossible to tell the coins apart, but for an expert, the signs are obvious: the edges are too smooth, the metal is too soft or too hard, the patina has the wrong structure and color, and the design is way too crisp and perfectly preserved for such an ancient coin (around two thousand years old). As it turned out, in the antique world, fakes make up an unbelievable percentage of all artifacts: for instance, when sets of uncleaned coins are sold on eBay, over eighty percent of them are usually fake. Candlesticks, bowls, bells, and other household items don't escape this fate either: almost all of it is fake, made in this very region, like in Egypt.
Thus this curious detective story was resolved. If it's worth buying the coins at all, it's only as a novelty, and you shouldn't give more than one or two dinars for them, which is what I intended to do anyway.
Eventually, already pretty exhausted, we reached the place that could be called something like the center of Petra. As you can see, I had acquired some headgear along the way. Right there was a canteen and a restaurant. Sasha decided to try the local cuisine and took from the canteen exactly as much as he was ready to eat, hoping he wouldn't pay too much. It came out to 10 dinars! Not exactly cheap.
As it turned out, such modesty was a mistake: later I googled that the canteen operates as an all-you-can-eat buffet, and Alexander could have piled up enough grub for two. Well, meanwhile I had my Joylent for lunch, which drew some questions from our curious table neighbors.
The locals sleep right where they work
Wanted to buy it, but this awesome souvenir probably wouldn't have survived our subsequent travels, plus it was heavy
The info boards were gifted by the American people, the gorge was set up by the French, the excavations are being done by the Swiss. The question then is, where does the entrance ticket money go?
Even though there are posters warning tourists that children should be in school, not manning a souvenir table, even a three-year-old kid is selling rocks. Unfortunately, no matter what you do, it only makes it worse for him: if you give him money, he'll just stay here, and if you don't, he'll get a beating in the evening.
Petra is very clean everywhere, the restroom being no exception. The coolest restroom I've ever seen in my life, with such a beautiful wall!
Cats in Jordan are very friendly and are constantly coming over to socialize. Sasha is allergic to them, but there's no shaking them off: the cat climbs into your arms all by itself.
The currency exchange is coolly decorated with banknotes from different countries, there are even Lithuanian ones
Near the exit of Petra I decided that I needed to grab some more souvenirs after all, and bought a couple of traditional Arab scarves, like the one Yasser Arafat wore. On the left are the simpler ones, and in the photo I'm looking at the fancier ones — made with camel hair. The female colors, by the way, are traditionally blue and light blue, while all the other scarves are male, or at least that's what the seller assured us. In the era of globalization, though, it's completely unclear how to buy such things: you can always get the same thing cheaper on eBay. The seller tearfully swore that the scarves were made right here in Jordan. Okay, I'll take comfort in that.
We made it to the exit surprisingly quickly, by around three o'clock. Sunset was still a long way off, so we decided to stroll around the town and grab a bite to eat while we were at it. While we were walking, a sign almost fell on our heads; luckily, some specially trained people shooed us away to a safe distance.
A letter fell off, nobody cares!
We approached the task of choosing an eatery responsibly, used our mobile internet to check TripAdvisor for a nicer joint that wasn't too expensive, and headed towards it. It turned out to be Bedouin’s Bite, which a young Bedouin had opened with his brother. The reviews were generally positive, though when we arrived, it turned out that the prices here were standardly high: a decent meal cost us almost ten dinars a head. For some reason, we were served by a girl of Asian descent, which is completely uncharacteristic for Jordan. When I questioned her a bit, it turned out that she was Japanese, had been in Jordan for over a month, and was thoroughly losing her mind over how everything here is so not like it is back home.
The furniture is pretty worn out because of the strong sandy winds
We snacked on a traditional Bedouin dish: rice with some kind of tomato sauce and spices. Sasha also had a piece of chicken lying on top. Not bad, but nothing special. I also had some pea soup, which was tasty.
Then I asked where the post office was — I had to complete another quest — to which the owner explained that the post office had been closed for a long time, but we could buy stamps and an envelope in the village shop across the street, and the mailbox was just nearby. The postcards looked like they had been kept outside since the dawn of time, their condition was appropriate. I asked for stamps to Europe, stuck them on, and only after that did I realize that the postcard was prepaid to any country in the world. Despite the double price paid, the postcard still hasn't arrived. We wait.
Minimalist
We decided to walk to the hotel, nothing else to do anyway. And for good reason — a majestic sunset was waiting for us.
A skull with little eyes
It wouldn't be a sin to Instagram a photo like this!
The local cemetery is rocky, the tombstones are small and modest
The AC units are falling off, but nobody gives a damn
Near the hotel, we stopped by a village shop, where an aggressive boy behind the counter thoroughly ripped us off: he charged us twice what our groceries were worth, although between our exhaustion and a hearty lunch, we only realized this after we had left the store. The boy decided to mock the suckers a little more, and as a bonus, gifted us a handful of gum. This was one of two unpleasant incidents (the first being with the restaurant in Karak) that left a really bad taste in our mouths, even though technically we weren't robbed, just slightly scammed.
The gum, although very low quality, was quite exotic: cinnamon, sage, and so on. At least some kind of compensation.