Author Archives: Jill

This is basically just venting… So read at your own peril.

I left my hotel at 5am in Jaipur to make my flight to Muscat, Oman (layover on my way to Cairo).  My experience trying to leave the country epitomizes my experience in India.  Keep in mind that this was a relatively nice hotel I stayed in, (about $20 USD / night, which in India gets you western accommodations, as opposed to the $4 / night variety…) and employees act as guards or maybe for lack of a better place to sleep, they reside in common areas.  Anyway, I had to wake up the employees sleeping on the floor in the lobby because the taxi that I had had the hotel set up didn’t show up, so I had to prod the hotel manager to call.   Ten minutes later one showed up and proceeded to try to convince me that I had to pay him extra because I was flying internationally and it was a different airport that was further away, when in fact it was just the other terminal.  Always trying to scam…

So I get to the airport, after only paying the original fare, and am not allowed in the door.  I didn’t have a printout of my ticket or a PNR number (whatever that is) and they didn’t accept my confirmation email on my kindle, so I wasn’t allowed to enter any part of the airport.  Some guy disappeared with my passport for 15 minutes before he finally came back after going to the ticket counter to verify that in fact I didn’t just show up at the airport as some tourist attraction…  I proceed to the Oman Air desk and hand over my passport, and what a surprise, I’m actually booked on a flight and they didn’t have any purpose for some printout.  I think the lady felt sorry for me, so I got upgraded to business class.  I had platinum status on American Airlines for nearly two years and never once got upgraded; I love middle eastern airlines!

After checking in for my flight, I am directed to the departure form desk.  I wait in line for at least ten minutes to have some guy fill out an immigration form containing only the basic information including name, passport, and flight numbers.  Something I could have filled out in 45 seconds, someone got paid to do.  I advance to the immigration desk and of course have to join a long line.  I am waiting for about ten minutes and am second in line when the officer stands up, counts his forms, apparently decides he has met his quota and simply walks off without explanation, leaving me and the probably eight people behind me scrambling to join another line.

After finally making it through immigration I move to the security check point.  A lone bright spot of the Indian airport experience was not having to remove my shoes.  I proceeded to be frisked quite aggressively by hand.  I have no idea why anyone in the US complains about the new security scanners in the US, standing in a chamber for five seconds is far better than being groped to the extent that a lone ten rupee note in my back pocket was felt and subsequently removed.   After I received my three stamps on my boarding pass signaling that I had successfully completed the security check, I was allowed into the boarding room.

When they announced my flight, there was the typical Indian herd of people literally elbowing their way through, as if the seats weren’t pre-assigned or the plane was going to leave without them.  I hang back to avoid this completely useless chaos and get stopped by the guard leading to the tarmac because my travel pillow’s luggage tag wasn’t visible.  He didn’t check my passport or boarding pass, but the fact that my pillow’s documentation wasn’t in plain sight was cause for alarm…

Luckily the flight goes off without a hitch and I arrive in Muscat to an amazing airport full of western facilities!  I had basically gone vegetarian while in India, despite my body’s craving for meat (in my unsuccessful attempt to avoid food poisoning after seeing meat being chopped on tree stumps).   [My beloved, failsafe McDonald’s even caused problems.  And by the way, if you have heard the rumor that McDonalds in India serves ham burgers, like ham on a bun – not beef, it’s not true – no beef or pork, just a couple varieties of chicken.]  So when I saw a Subway in the airport, I was in heaven.  I think I paid about $12 for a 6-inch sub that included ham, turkey, and “beef strips” (bacon), and finally my stomach lessened its attacks on me.

Overall, now that I’ve made it out alive, I’m glad that I ventured to India despite many peoples warnings and general questions of “why in the world would you want to go there?”.  With the amount of travelling that I’ve done, its hard to find a place that is completely different than what I’ve already experienced before.  India fit that bill, though I can’t say that I’m going to hurry back anytime soon…

The Good

The Taj Mahal: a New 7 Wonder of the World.  I made it to Agra and found a hotel that had a really good view of the Taj from the rooftop.   I only paid about $8 USD / night for that hotel.  In nearly all other countries a drink in a restaurant with that type of view of what is widely described as the most beautiful building in the world would cost more that.  Which leads to the second good thing; the general cost of everything in India is extremely cheap: hotels, food, trains, and private drivers are all extremely affordable for any western standard.   The irony of me reading my Forbes magazine on this rooftop, wondering if I remembered to max out my IRA contribution this year, while surrounded by such massive poverty is not lost on me…

The Bad

Most of the reason for such low costs is the extremely low cost of labor in India.  I’m sure that part of this stems from the fact that there are just too many people in a small area.  According to Wikipedia, there are 1.2 billion people living in India, while there are (only) 1.3 billion in China, which obviously encompasses a much larger land mass.   Because of this competition for jobs, whether it be rickshaw drivers, shop owners, etc. they can get extremely pushy.  Being a solo white female traveler I have to assume that I was more of a target than average, but let me assure you that I bargain and negotiate with the best of them.  Negotiating or simply walking away from rickshaw drivers that were trying to take advantage of me, probably only saved me about $15 or $20 in the end, but it’s not about the money, it’s about a sense of not being ripped off and taken as a stupid tourist.

The bureaucracy in India is astounding.   I have read articles in my dorky business magazines about the notorious red tape associated with India.  One of the most widely used statistics is the number of procedures it takes to start a business.  In Singapore, that number is 3 which can generally be accomplished in 3 days and costs a mere 0.7% of per capita income.  One the other hand, in India it takes 12 procedures, an average of 29 days, and costs a whooping 47% of per capita income to do the same thing.  I travelled from Singapore, one of the most business friendly countries to India, one of the least.  Is there possibly a connection to business friendliness and general wealth/ standard of living perhaps????  Sarcasm? 

I had assumed that as a mere tourist that the extent I would encounter the government bureaucracy was the visa application and fee.  So wrong I was.  In order to check into a hotel I had to fill out information regarding my passport, my visa, my home contact information, where I was going in India, where I had been in India, etc.; in total about 15 fields needed my attention, all times three for three different sets of record books, and for some reason they don’t believe in carbon paper.  This was in addition to copies of my passport and visa that had to be sent to some government office for every single hotel I stayed in.  What in the world some public sector employee is going to do with a dozen copies of my information, I have no idea; hopefully there isn’t some black market set up for foreign passports…

Another consequence of massive government involvement is that they control the power supply.  Even though private enterprise has built many power plants, the other parts of the supply chain are government controlled, and the public sector is not doing a good job.  Power outages are the expected norm in India.  You can always tell the tourists who just arrived in India because when the power unexpectedly goes out, they go and yell at the front desk.  There isn’t anything the hotel can do, other than get a generator (which some have), all just part of the “experience of India” I guess.

The Ugly

The low costs obviously don’t come free.  The general sanitary conditions in India are by far the worst I have seen, including Eastern Africa and Southeast Asia.  Despite my precautions of drinking only bottled water from straws I lugged from home and other seemingly overly cautious measures; It took only 12 hours for me to get sick.  I got a very severe case of “Delhi Belly” and had a very bad reaction to the horrible pollution.  I basically was in my hotel room for over a week.  If you want to lose some weight quickly, I don’t recommend the India diet, but it is very effective for shedding pounds…   Not to be graphic, but to illustrate how bad the problem was: I got food poisoning three times while in the country for only two weeks.  And that includes the week that I basically didn’t eat anything…

My personal opinion on the matter, but maybe the government should eliminate some of its excess paperwork and maybe concentrate some man-power on garbage collection and disposal.  You are very hard pressed to find garbage cans anywhere, on the streets or even in buildings.  I’m not sure if that’s because the culture dictates that you just throw everything on the ground and people wouldn’t use them, or if people are forced to haphazardly discard refuse because they’re not available.  Chicken or the egg I guess.  But either way, the garbage situation is appalling.  I watched a little kid at his mothers suggestion just throw his water bottle out the train window to fall where it may.  And its quite obvious that the entire population takes the same approach, as there are literally mounds of garbage on the sides of roads.  Some shop owners actually try to clean up their section of the street by sweeping the garbage up around them.  Awesome first step, but then they make a pile and burn it creating a further problem with pollution.

I arrived in Delhi at the airport and had arranged for a private driver to pick me up. For the convenience of not having to deal with touts, I paid the steep price of about $10 USD for the half hour journey into the city (metro would have cost less than a dollar). I nearly died in that taxi. The drivers in India are crazy to put it mildly. Cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, bikes, and cows all share the road and of course no one is patient or uses the lanes. They drive wherever there is an opening honking basically continuously. It’s a terrifying experience and my first introduction to what I’ve gotten myself into entering this crazy, chaotic country.

I get to the hotel that had received decent ratings on the booking website. Clearly those statistics were being manipulated by the owners. It’s very scary and dirty for so many reasons (see pic to left)… The owner immediately jumps at the opportunity to make some commissions for himself or his friends when I (so stupidly) say that I don’t have trains to get around the rest of the country booked yet. He claims that its too hard for me to book anything myself online and I must use his cousin because he’ll “give me a good deal”. Thinking possibly it would be easier to just pay someone a small fee to do everything for me, I go to the travel agency and hear the guy out. Instead of just giving me prices for trains, he goes through a whole story about how much better and safer it is to hire a private driver. I tell him that I have no interest in paying for that, especially after my experience in the taxi from the airport, politely at the first one. I had hired a private rickshaw driver to take me around Delhi to see the main sites because its huge and my preferred method of walking wasn’t an option. But the rickshaw driver left me no choice to go to multiple of these agencies that all had the same sales pitch. It reminded me of time-share presentations… By the fourth one I was no longer polite to the travel agent or the rickshaw driver who insisted on dropping me off at these places. I went to my hotel and booked everything online without any trouble on my own using third party websites and paying less than 40 cent commission for each train ride.

And then I got sick… On day seven of my illness I bravely ventured out to the Taj Mahal because that is something that I obviously couldn’t skip. It was really pretty, as expected. It was highly suggested to get up early and go when the gates open at 7am to avoid the masses of tour groups that emerge about two hours later. What they fail to mention is that while you avoid the crowds, you also deal with the combination of fog and pollution that hasn’t cleared that early. I think the weirdest part of that whole visit though was an Indian guy asking me to take a picture with him while shaking hands. Is this some famous picture he was trying to recreate??

Finally, on day eight I felt much closer to normal and was able to make my train to Jaipur. The train system in India is pretty much the only infrastructure that works reliably in India, leftover from British rule. (Other public works projects don’t usually function properly, roads, electricity, internet, and even water service goes out on a regular basis). Trains are cheap, even in the luxury classes. Despite the warnings that Indian train stations are a daunting challenge for even seasoned travelers, once you wait for the departure boards to switch to English (from Hindi which is obviously unreadable for me), they function the same as in Europe or Asia, though as expected are much dirtier and more crowded. I didn’t see anyone hanging off the sides or on top of trains. For an extra $5, I booked higher class tickets to lessen the chance that my luggage would go missing. One of my trains was delayed by four hours, so I bought a “general” ticket for the train leaving immediately and mixed with the locals for that two hour train ride. A much more interesting experience than the A/C classes… Two transvestites came through trying to drum up prostitution business, or at least that’s what I gathered; no one around me spoke English to explain it to me.

Jaipur is the “Pink City” because of all of the pink buildings. I ventured to the typical sites of the City Palace, the Water Palace, and the Hawa Majal. But probably the most interesting thing I did was view the craft demonstrations of block printing, embroidery, and jewel cutting of the Mughal People (pronounced like the Harry Potter verson of muggle). I also wanted to see what all the buzz was surrounding Bollywood movie industry. I went to the famous Raj Mandir theater, which looks like a giant pink cake on the outside. The inside is a pretty opulent with chandeliers and velvety couches in the lounges. Though it was built a long time ago and hasn’t been up kept very well, it was cool to see a Hindi film from the balcony, though I had absolutely no idea what in the world the movie was about. The best I could tell the big prisoner-looking white guy was the villain…
In Ranthambore National Park I went on a Tiger safari. In this cooler weather, they claim that there is only a 25% chance of spotting a tiger because they don’t hang around the watering holes as often, but I saw one! I was hoping this park would be similar to my experience in African game parks that you see a bunch of the “cool animals” (in Africa this means lions, elephants, rhino, leopard, cheetah, etc.), but other than the one lone tiger, it was only lame deer or monkeys. I’ve been spoiled apparently and don’t feel the need to take pictures of what appears to be the same deer that hunters in Michigan look for, or unfortunate drivers hit in their cars…

I left Southeast Asia earlier than I had planned. I hesitated booking a scuba diving trip to the island of Sipadan (supposedly one of the best places to dive on earth) and then the flights to get to and from dramatically increased. And if I want the fancy-pants apartment overlooking Touchdown Jesus next year, sacrifices have to be made somewhere. So anyway, I was off to India.

I had talked to several people who had been to India and done some research about it, so I thought I was prepared for the poverty and general grunginess factor. Afterall, I have been to Eastern Africa and some pretty poor countries in Southeast Asia… I wasn’t at all prepared; India is on a whole other level.

I knew that I was going to get sick in India, I have the weakest immune system and stomach out of anyone I know, so it wasn’t a matter of if I get sick, but when and how many times… Well, a mere 12 hours into the country and I was room-bound. And seven days later, unfortunately I haven’t been able to venture very far yet…

Singapore is known as the “fine” city/country because of all of the things you can supposedly be fined for (littering, eating on the subway, etc.).  You may remember an incident involving an 18-year old American citizen that was caned in Singapore in the early 1990’s for vandalism.  Or you may be familiar with the notion that chewing gum in Singapore is illegal.  For all of the hoopla surrounding the supposed police-state, I didn’t notice anything really different than any of the other three Asian Tigers (South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan), well I’ve never been to Taiwan, but the other ones.  I got through immigration checks without having my gum confiscated and there was still miscellaneous trash on the streets.  However, it was infinitely better than the situation in Kuala Lumpur, which I’m guessing is closer in comparison to the garbage situation in India.  But it was nowhere near the manicured traffic islands complete with rose bushes, similar to Monaco, which I had been expecting.  It’s all about expectations I suppose.   Rules or not, they must be doing something right though because their per-capita income is higher than that of the US…

The city-state of Singapore is made up of approximately 74% Chinese, so missing the Chinese New Year (in the year of the dragon, no less) by a couple of days was similar to showing up in Times Square on January 1 (I stayed in Chinatown in KL and was expecting something to be going on, but nothing interesting did).  But alas, there were a few remnants of the festivities.  Meandering through an outdoor market I hear a loud drum beating and of course had to go check it out.  I wander over to the raucous scene to find a chorus of drums and a Chinese lion undulating through the crowd (to be clear, a person in a lion costume).  The lion then lies on the ground for about 5 minutes, but the crowd (all Chinese), stays, so I follow suit.  The lion then stands back up with a tray of peeled oranges; I felt like I was at an elementary school soccer game…  Apparently he was on peeling oranges while on the ground and then presented the offering as a sign of happiness and prosperity in the coming year.  These lion dances are believed to drive away ill-fortune and evil spirits, so now by witnessing this all will go well with my travels (directed at you, Mom). 

The “fish spa” was an interesting experience.  For anyone that knows me and both my hatred of feet and my allergy to seafood this was a big act of bravery for me to do this…  The idea behind the fish “pedicure” is that you stick your feet in a tank of fish and have them bite off the dead skin.  I won’t eat fish and hate having people touch my feet, but for a once-in-a-lifetime thing, I let fish feast on my feet.  I saw it on the Travel Channel Show “Dhani Tackles the Globe”, so I had to try it, even if it was only for 15 minutes.  After cleaning my both feet, I put them in the tank of fish and immediately the little (probably about an inch or two long) buggers came right up and started munching.  It tickled, a lot.  They also had a little tray for your hands, so I could see up close what these things looked like.  Their mouth area looked similar to the snail mouths that you get to clean the sides of fish tanks, kinda creepy to realize they were attacking my skin.  I don’t think they really did what they were advertised to do, and it most likely was just a tourist trap, but oh well, I experienced my first (and probably last) pedicure.

There was an episode of the Amazing Race where the teams had to sell blocks of ice cream wrapped in bread.  I ate one of these literal ice cream sandwiches, not as bad as I was expecting it to taste.

Seoul was about 15 degrees on my last day there, so meandering around in only two fleeces and a raincoat (I elected to not pack a down coat for only a few days of extreme cold), I was freezing.  Hopped on a six hour flight to Kuala Lumpur and was greeted with temperatures in the mid-nineties with VERY high humidity.  Needless to say, I thawed out quite quickly.

Malaysia is an Islamic country.  I have been to other Muslim countries before, so it wasn’t too much of a culture shock. However, that does translate into having to dress more conservatively than elsewhere in such extreme heat.  Not that I have any problems whatsoever with covering up, but wearing pants and having my shoulders covered in heat indexes of low 100’s and walking around all day is quite hot (luckily ice cream cones were only 30 cents!).  Though a lot of other western girls choose not to follow local customs, I feel it is disrespectful to be wearing short-shorts and tube tops amongst burkas, but we all must make our own choices…  Anyway, I went to the National Mosque, and non-Muslims are allowed inside if properly dressed in the provided attire, a hijab and abaya (head scarf and robe).  I just about passed out walking around in the polyester garments for 20minutes, in January no less; I have no idea how the women do that all day in July!

I took a mini side excursion to the Batu Caves just outside Kuala Lumpur.  These are a series of Hindu Temples built within caves.  It turned out to be exactly as described: nothing too spectacular, but definitely something different.  I still haven’t been able to figure out why they built temples in a cave though, maybe for the cooler temperatures inside.  The macaque monkeys that also reside in the caves are very territorial, and I actually saw one go up to someone and bite their shoe while another one attempted to grab a Gatorade bottle out of someone’s hand, funny because it wasn’t me…

The Petronas Towers (probably the only thing about KL that you’ve seen before) were pretty cool to look at, while the Somerset-type mall inside provided a nice reprieve from the downpour outside.

After over 30 hours of travel (including layovers in Chicago and Tokyo), I finally made it to my hostel in Seoul, after midnight local time.  You would think I would be ready for much-needed sleep, however because it was 10am eastern time, I was wide awake.  This messed up sleep schedule continued for several days, slowly easing into the new time zone, 14 hours ahead.  It’s amazing what you can get accomplished by going to bed at 8pm, waking up at 3am, working on construction drawings for a few hours before heading out for a day of sight-seeing…

Overall impression of Seoul:  it’s well organized.  The airport is amazing, and apparently there is a golf course somewhere inside…  The subway, one of the most extensive in the world, as expected for the second largest metropolitan area (behind Tokyo), is extremely easy to use with well-planned numbering system and is the cleanest I’ve ever seen, and for less than a dollar you can get around to most sights.  They even organize pedestrian crossings with arrows on the ground to keep traffic on the correct side.  There are maps everywhere showing nearby attractions and where you are, which certainly helps me out until my sense of direction develops since the GPS on my phone won’t work internationally, and still puts me at O’Hare airport…  However, Seoul gets major bonus points because I put extensive effort into finding Notre Dame stuff in Michigan, which was a fruitless attempt, and a shop a couple hundred yards from my hostel, proudly displayed theirs.

DMZ Tour
The highlight of Seoul for me was the USO led tour to the DMZ (demilitarized zone between North and South Korea).  They took all of us to Camp Bonifas (US military base near the border) and the private did a brief intro into the politics behind the divide.  Then was the joint-security-area, which is what you’ve seen in pictures, guards staring each other down over the concrete dividing line.  It wasn’t nearly as tense as I had imagined, especially because Kim Jong-il just recently died, leaving power to his youngest son, a situation that created a lot of uncertainty for the south.  Anyway, it was still cool because technically I was briefly in North Korea (center of a conference table is the dividing line), though no North Koreans are allowed in the conference building is the South (or US) is occupying it and vice versa.
They then pointed out from a distance “Propaganda Village” which is the North Korean village located within the DMZ.  Apparently it includes a 525 foot long flag weighing 600 pounds and a bunch of Hollywood-type facades that look nice from the outside but don’t actually house anyone.  They also broadcast pro-North Korean messages for six to twelve hours a day over loud speakers that at night can be heard from the South.  I guess when your government installs jamming towers to prohibit cell phone, radio, and tv signals from coming through you need to listen to something…

Apparently the North has been digging tunnels in order to try to attack the South.  So far four such tunnels have been found, and I got to walk through the third one.  Just a normal tunnel: wet, smelly, and claustrophobic.  You would think that government that is dealing with mass famine would reposition some of its massive military to more productive pursuits than burrowing underground for a mile, pretending it’s a coal mine.   But when you put people in labor camps or jail for not “properly mourning the death of your leader”, you have different priorities.

Miscellaneous Sight-Seeing
I went to the National Museum of Korea in an attempt to become more cultured.   Unsuccessful attempt; I even paid for an audio guide (something I would definitely not ordinarily do) to try and make me pay attention, but ceramic bowls and tiny bronze spears just don’t interest me, and probably never will.  The one exhibit that I was interested in, about when the G20 summit was held there in 2010, didn’t have English subtitles and since I know exactly zero Korean, I got nothing out of that hour I spent there…

A much better use of my time, because I actually learned something, was the War Memorial of Korea – a museum dedicated to the ROK (Republic of Korea) military and its history.   I think I spent close to four hours learning all about the Korean War, which despite getting A’s in history in high school, I knew nothing about.  I had seen a bunch of huge displays in the subways touting travel to Norway, and didn’t see a connection, though they are definitely very pretty pictures of glaciers and whatnot.  Then it became clear why they have such a “deep relationship” with Norway: the UN secretary general was Norwegian when North Korea attacked South Korea in 1950, and he supported UN intervention, even though Norway itself only sent medical supplies.  The US, unbeknownst to me, once again shouldered the lions share of the support, while the rest of the world sat back.

We ended up waiting at the Amman airport for about an hour and a half in order to take the public bus, to our executive suite at the Le Meridian – how about that for an oxymoron?  You can imagine how utterly ridiculous we look walking in, where formal wedding receptions are taking place, with our backpacks…  Once again, Matt’s days as a consultant proved beneficial when we were able to not only stay at a nice hotel, but get upgraded to an executive suite with all the benefits that the room affords.  One of the privileges included access to the Royal Club Lounge, which again we looked very out of place among the executives in business suits in our raggy t-shirts and shorts. 

I can describe the process to get into the hotel now because I’m back home and won’t have to go through the process of allaying my mom’s fears.  Because of the terrorist bombings at hotels that took place almost three years ago, to get into our hotel we had to go through metal detectors and have our bags x-rayed.  Not to mention the unnerving sight of the well armed (automatic rifles strapped across their chests) guards in military fatigues pacing around the hotel perimeter. 

Unfortunately, staying in a nice hotel doesn’t come without drawbacks. Apparently the average guest doesn’t take public buses to tourist sites, so the concierge desk is pretty useless when it comes to budget options. Deciding not to get charged twice as much as it should actually cost to hire a driver for a day through the hotel, we decided to rent a car to drive toPetra – three hours from the city of Amman.  I did do some research into self driving, and everything I read said that it was pretty easy to get around; well maintained roads and the locals pretty much adhere to driving laws, so it seemed like the best option to get around for a reasonable price.  With all the accounts I read of driving through Jordan, not one of them managed to mention the important fact that a lot of the road signs are only in Arabic… 

After a few “minor” wrong turns we arrived at Petra, one of the new Seven Wonders of the World.  It is basically an archeological site of rose-colored stone and was used in ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’.  From the entrance to the furthest point is about five miles, and allegedly only about five percent of the site has been excavated so far – basically it’s huge.  We wandered around on foot to the major sites, despite the locals numerous attempts to get us to hire a “taxi” (donkey or camel). 

Matt boycotted shaving in an effort to look “more middle-eastern”, complete with his blonde hair and blue eyes… It was a good thing it didn’t actually work though, because on the highway leading to the Dead Sea, we got stopped by one of the military checkpoints and didn’t have our passports.  Luckily a Michigan driver’s license and the fact that we were obviously tourists allowed us to pass through without the guards’ use of the automatic rifle’s strategically placed barrel right by the car window.  The highway also had people riding camels on the road shoulders…

Getting through the checkpoints and the brief associated scare, we arrived at the Dead Sea.  The water has a salinity of about 30%, which is about 8.5 times saltier than typical oceans.  Because of the high salt content, no plant or animal life can sustain life – hence the name.  It is quite a weird sensation to float in the water; it is impossible to sink, though very difficult to move around.  Trying to “stand up” in deep water, you still pop up so your shoulders are above the surface, then your legs gravitate to the surface as well until you are laying down comfortably as if on a raft.  The water doesn’t even really feel like water; it’s closer to a gelatin type texture.    

All in all the Middle East was unlike anything I have ever witnessed before.  I knew that women weren’t necessarily seen as being equal to men; however I had no idea to what extent it was still practiced by the general population.  A good example was when Matt and I were in the taxi going to the airport: the driver asked what airline we were flying.  I replied ‘Royal Jordanian’.  The driver again asked what airline and added the preface ‘sir’. Apparently, my word wasn’t good enough for him…  I also have never been anywhere that I didn’t dress conservatively enough in my regular clothes.  Being among the veiled Muslim women, I felt that wearing capris might have been showing a “little too much skin”, but it was simply too hot for jeans.