(posted from Beirut, Lebanon)

25 January 2009

Damascus, Syria

Yes, Facebook and Blogspot truly are blocked here. When you try to access them a message comes up saying "Access Denied" in English. This post was written on the date indicated above and posted whenever and wherever indicated on the header. Getting to Damascus from Amman was no big deal. There are only 2 buses per day, so most people travel by service taxi. This means a small company with an office somewhere near the bus station that owns a few cars. You show up, say you want to go to Damascus, pay 11 JD. Then they wait for more people who want to go to Damascus. Once they have 4 or 5 passengers to fill the car they leave. The border crossing was very easy. For anyone considering doing it and wondering how things work, here goes. Everyone in Jordan calls it the Ramtha border crossing after the nearest town, but the signs on the highway all said Jabir Border Crossing, which I guess is the official name. There is a control point at the entrance to the border complex, but our drive just drove through it. Then he exits towards the "Departures" section. Here he is stopped at a barricade by an official who checks everyone's passport. Then he pulls into a large covered area with the immigration windows. You have to get out and first go to a window to pay the 5 JD departure tax, and you are given a postage like stamp saying you paid. Then you go to the immigration window and the official puts the departure tax stamp in your passport and gives you the actual exit stamp. Then you get back in the taxi and there's one more checkpoint a few feet ahead where passports are checked for exit stamps. Then a few feet later you go over a little bridge over what appears to be a tiny dry river bed and I assume that this is the actual border. At the next checkpoint a Syrian official hands everyone in the car a blue immigration form which you have to fill out. Then you drive a few more feet and pull over at the very large immigration building where you again get out. Syrian immigration is neatly arranged into six different series of windows: 1)Foreign Arrivals 2)Diplomat Arrivals 3)Syrian Arrivals 4)Jordanian Arrivals 5)Arab Arrivals 6)Women Arrivals. They stamp your passport and the immigration card which they hand back to you. The other guys in the taxi warned me that this immigration card is very important and that I must turn it in when leaving Syria. There is also a large duty free shop here. Then you get back in the car and the driver continues onto customs, where we were just waved through. Then one more checkpoint where passports are checked for propper stamps and you're completely in Syria. From the border to Damascus there were no more checkpoints, only many pictures of Bashar. We were in Damascus about 3 hours after leaving Amman. It's a very easy trip. Damascus and Alexandria are the two most beautiful cities I've seen so far on this trip.