Bonus Rant: Dumb People at Historical Monuments

This is a public service announcement for Dumb People at Historical Monuments, written in anger during a long bus journey:

Dear Dumb People at Historical Monuments,

Just like YOU, WE want photographs of the historical monument. However, the difference between YOUR photos of the historical monument and OUR photos of the historical monument is the WE do not need YOU in OUR photos. Therefore, when YOU are done taking YOUR photos at the Historical Monument, kindly get the f*ck out of the way so that WE can take OUR photos at the Historical Monument without YOU in them.

For context, the famous monument in Petra (the one at the end of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”) is called The Treasury. The crowd was quite light when we got there, which meant that everyone could get their own, un-crowded photo of themselves and/or a loved one in front of it. At least they could, if not for the murderer’s row of Dumb People who somehow managed to feed themselves, tie their own shoes, and get a day pass from the insane asylum so they can show up at Historical Monuments worldwide to ruin everyone else’s photos.

Dumb People at Historical Monuments: Case 1

Here’s me giving the stink-eye to the first example Dumb People, who had set up camp in front of The Treasury:

It seems innocent enough, except that they had been there for ten minutes and had taken approximately 97 selfies plus enough combination of people and poses possible. (“Let’s do another, but this time Curly should do the peace sign while Mo should act like you’re picking your nose.” In fact, notice that in the above photo he's doing that stupid "love heart with your fingers" thing - so original!) If we still used film for cameras, Kodak shares would have risen 15% on news that these three who approaching the photo mat.

Worse, they didn't seem to understand how to use the mobile phone they were using for photos (because, you know, if you’re going to spend a small fortune and travel thousands of miles to see an ancient wonder in a remote part of a distant land, no point in bringing a real camera with a zoom lens and proper optics). Worse still, they somehow managed to FORGET how to use the mobile phone in between every photo, meaning they had to relearn each and every time.

They didn't speak English, and neither angry looks nor calls of “Enough!” and “Good!” even registered in their thimble brains that it might be time to move along. I've often said that dumb people are like dogs, in that they are not evil but just have no awareness of what’s going on around them or ability to understand how their own actions affect others. If this is true, this was a trio of inbred purebred pugs attending a bacon convention after suffering major head trauma.

However, I’ll give Dumb People 1 some credit because at least they were trying to get photographs of The Treasury itself, which leads me to… 

Dumb People at Historical Monuments: Case 2

Dumb Person Example 2, seen her ruining what would otherwise be an idyllic photo of Jessica at The Treasury:

While in the same spot as our first group, Dumb Person 2 has foregone all interest in The Treasury itself (he’s NOT talking a selfie here) and instead is taking photographs of the rock wall opposite. While I suppose it was a nice enough rock wall, I've never heard of anyone saying “I saw the third Indiana Jones movies and I simply MUST go and see that plain rock wall that was behind them during the exciting finale!” Furthermore, I’m sure for every hundred people who enjoy looking at the “Mona Lisa” or “Starry Night”, there must be one or two whose tastes lie more in the direction of staring at the unpainted back of the canvas of said masterpieces.

However, what makes Dumb Person 2 truly special is that he has decided that the only place he could possibly capture the grandeur and majesty of the plain rock wall is FROM DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF THE TREASURY, thereby ruining the photographs of dozens of people, as well as NOT looking at the reason he presumably was there in the first place. This is the functional equivalent of purchasing front-row tickets to a One Direction concert at Wembley Stadium, then picking up your seat and placing it on the front-centre of the stage staring out of the audience with ear-plugs in; you're missing the show and annoying the rest of the audience.

To be fair to him, from his perspective all the rest of us are standing around ruining his photo of the plain rock wall, so while our photos only have one person ruining them, his are being ruined by dozens of people. Furthermore, he was probably already in a bit of a mood having realized that if it weren't for those selfish ancient Nabataeans and their propensity of turning plain rock walls into marvels of engineering & culture, he would currently be standing in a canyon with two plain rock walls to gape over.

However, even Dumb Person 2 is a novice in the burgeoning field of ruining other peoples’ photos of Historical Monuments, because like a rank amateur he actually bothered to use a camera, which leads us to our grand champion…

Dumb People at Historical Monuments: Case 3

I’ll confess that Dumb Person 3 didn't ruin any of my own photos. We were finishing up at The Treasury, having worked around the inanity of Dump People 1 & 2, and were ready to move on, but then I noticed him setting up camp and had to go back to snap a few shots of this Nobel laureate. (That’s right: I was at Petra, a two-thousand year old wonder and the highlight of our trip, and I got so annoyed at Dumb People I started ignoring the archaeology and instead starting documenting human stupidity. Future generations need to know about this stuff, if only as a warning.)

Here he is:

Seems innocent enough: just a fellow having a rest, taking a load of his feet after a busy day. Nothing wrong with that, right?

But consider: he has chosen to do this at the foot of the The Treasury, and with no interest in it whatsoever, having chosen a seating arrangement that sets his field of view down and away from the wonder. At one point I thought I saw him look up towards the plain rock wall that so enamored Dumb Person 2, but then when its sheer complexity overwhelmed him his face bore the same expression as my dog has when I do that “fake throw the tennis ball” thing and he averted his eyes. It’s a shame, because if he glanced up for just a moment longer, he might have noticed there were several dozen benches arranged across the canyon that might have made for a more suitable spot for him to have a rest, many of which were made of materials softer and more pleasing to the buttocks than two-thousand year of chiseled sandstone. One wonders if he might have puzzled over why these benches were all oriented in the same direction, as if the people who sat themselves in them might have been inclined to all look in the same direction for some reason.

Mine is not the only camera trained on Dumb Person 3; he is staring out at a sea of camera lenses pointing at him, not considering for a moment that the people looking through those lenses might not want him in the field of view. He might even be thinking they are specifically taking photos of him, and wondering if his “potatoes that look similar to other potatoes” collection has suddenly made him into a famous celebrity without him realizing it.

He doesn't even have a camera!

Did he have one but forget it back at the pre-school, along with his finger paints and the blue crayon he once got stuck up his nose and had to go to the hospital to have removed? Or perhaps he found its overly-complicated instructions (I.e. “Point it at something nice and push a button”) to be too much and decided to stick to electrical devices whose complexity was more appropriate for his intellect, like egg timers and garage-door openers? Or perhaps he is so dedicated to his craft of sitting aimlessly in front of Historical Monuments that he knows that all he has to do is sit there a while, then return home and Google “Can you believe this idiot decided to sit in front of [HISTORICAL MONUMENT] and ruin everyone’s photos?” and he’ll find that hundreds of kind, generous people took his photo for him and therefore there’s no reasons to spend his precious money on a camera of his own?

So congratulations Dumb People at Historical Monuments of the world: you've inspired my longest blog post ever; you've collectively become my muse. This trip is not yet done, and I look forward to seeing you at future sites: at St. Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai, where I’m sure Moses’ view of the burning bush was obscured by one of you standing around eating a sandwich; the Pyramids of Giza, which probably could have been built in three weeks had they had not had to drag every rock around one of you staring at the Sun in the middle of the road; or my cousin’s wedding in London, where I fully expect the wedding photograph to feature you standing between the bride and groom with a furrowed brow, furiously trying to figure out what the substance on your pinky is that you just managed to dig out of your left ear.

Dec 25 - Christmas in Jordan

Owing to our mud treatment and bathe in the mineral-rich Dead Sea yesterday, we start Christmas morning with supple and soft skin. Owing to the sulfur bath we took at the spa as well, we also start the day smelling like the Devil’s armpit and two showers haven’t made an impact yet.

(On a side note, can we please step up our efforts on the War on Christmas?!? We’re in a Muslim theocracy and still as we ate breakfast we were surrounded by Christmas decorations and listening to “Oh Holy Night” & “Jingle Bell Rock”.)

We joined a group tour of about twenty people in Jordan, feeling much less adventurous that our armed, private escort that we had in Israel. Unfortunately, during the two hour drive to Petra we figured out that the tour we were on did not include Wadi Rum as I had thought. A quick review of our paperwork revealed that at some point when I was negotiating the itinerary and schedule with the tour operator, Wadi Rum had been dropped to accommodate our need to get back to London by Dec 30. (In hindsight this was necessary since we didn't get to our hotel that night until 11PM, having had to manage two border crossings into Israel and then Egypt.) Disappointing, so in the end we had to settle for a quick snapshot of the edge of Wadi Rum from the bus window:

The disappointment wore off rapidly a few hours later because HOLY MACARONI, PETRA IS AMAZEBALLS!!!

Unfortunately, we only had three hours there which gave us only enough time to walk less than half the diameter of the city. If we ever find our way back to Jordan, we will be sure to book ourselves two or three days here next time.

Bonus Post: Artsy-Fartsy Israel

Dec 24 - Palestine and the Dead Sea

With our early morning start our guide took us on a driving tour of the Hasidic neighborhood of Jerusalem that rejects modern values. "Welcome to the seventeenth century", he said, and, yeah, it was a total dump.

After a brief stop on the Mount of Olives for a view of the old city, we headed east towards the Dead Sea and our guide decided to take a short-cut through Zone B of the West Bank to save time. "Most tour guides are too afraid to go through here, but these people are not all terrorists and we've saved thirty minutes." (We did mention that our guide is packing heat, right?)

A few hours later we were at the mountaintop fortress of Masada. Unfortunately we didn't have time to take the Snake Path either up or down, since (as you can surely tell from these blog posts) the day's schedule was quite full.

After Masada we headed for a Dead Sea spa, and anyone who knows me knows I just don't feel myself if I don't get my mud treatment:

And finally another "box is ticked" with a float in the Dead Sea:

(Another nice "bookends" moment (though unplanned this time) is that we've been to the highest place on Earth and the lowest within almost exactly a year of each other.)

Afterwards we had several hours snoozing in the car as we made our way down to the Eilat-Aqaba border crossing into the Kingdom of Jordan. We thought our tour representative was joking when he told us to keep our passports out because we would need them "seven or eight times". After having them checked four times on the Israeli side, he directed us to cross "No Man's Land" to Jordan on our own because this was as far as he could go. No Man's Land was indeed just that: 80 meters of bare road with barbed wire on each side with mine-fields beyond. We dragged our bags across the bleak space, alone and in the dark, wondering if it would be quite so easy to make this trip the opposite way tomorrow. Reaching the other side, we had our passports checked four more times and thought we were free in clear until at the very last security post the guard told us to wait and disappeared inside his guard post for unknown reasons. He returned moments later with baklava for us, and explained it was his first day back at work after getting married, so please share in his happiness and welcome to Jordan!

We had quite a chuckle about the whole thing as we were having cocktails at the Aqaba Hilton thirty minutes later.

(And of course, now we find out that right on cue Jordan is mixed up in an international incident just as we've arrived.)

Dec 23 - Jerusalem

On the way to Jerusalem this morning we were able to stop by Alyn Childrens' Hospital, for which my aunt and my late grandmother have done a great deal of volunteering over the decades.

The hospital helps kids of any religion and denomination, and on the short tour we were able to see that there are some truly wonderful people on this Earth who dedicate their lives to those who need it most.

Later our guide took us to old Jerusalem for one of the "main events" of this trip, starting with an extended visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This site proves that "Life of Brian" did not sufficiently mock the ridiculous situation humanity has cornered itself into when it comes to organized religion: a few hundred chapels and relics across a few dozen mutually-exclusive religions, all packed within tens of meters of each other. "The Armenian, Left-Handed, Orthodox Calvinist Protestants believe this is the spot where the Roman soldiers played dice during the Crucifixion", explained our guide, "But of course the Armenian, Left-Handed, Reformed Calvinist Protestants regard this to be the HIGHEST BLASPHEMY, and instead believe the actual spot was fifteen feet over there." (Something like that - it all got blurry after [immediately].)

For the most part, old Jerusalem felt somewhat fake in that it was very clean and almost completely empty:

Our guide said that the previous year had been extremely busy and this years lack of crowds could be attributed to fear about the tension with Gaza, which as an Israeli citizen he found odd since it's a admittedly constant yet very remote threat in their day-to-day lives. He then explained that he was watching Belgian news earlier (he's from France) and they were warning people not to go to the United States because currently the cops are openly killing citizens and citizens openly mowing down cops, which seemed equally odd to us (though apparently not to the esteemed journalists at Fox News).

While there was too much covered in Jerusalem to cover here, the highlight was certainly the Western Wall. I was somewhat annoyed that we hadn't gotten there until nearly sundown so the light was not great for photographs...

... but my annoyance didn't last long: As we were preparing to leave Jessica noticed a rabbi crossing the square with a large, heavily-armed military escort. Our guide explained it was the chief rabbi for the state of Israel (Shlomo Amar, we think) come to light the final candle on the menorah since it was now sunset on the final night of Hanukkah. The square erupted into celebration and joyous music as first a pyrotechnic menorah was lit atop a nearby building and then a more ceremonial (though comically oversized) menorah was lit in front of the western wall. "Nobody is allowed to call this 'The Wailing Wall'", exclaimed our guide, "this is a place for celebration!"

Afterwards it was too late and dark to see much of the Armenian quarter so we just had a nighttime stroll around the old city wall to get back to the car. But I did find a moment to take this photo, which is awesome:

Dec 22 - Old Jaffa

More "meh" weather this morning (cloudy and light rain) as we found our way down to Old Jaffa and signed up for a guided walking tour.

(Link to the tour operator's Facebook page: The tour is free, but they ask that you link to their page to drive up more business. How do they make money under this model? Volume.)

The smallest functional social group on "Tel Yafo" is the tour group cluster of 20-30 people, and about two thirds of them are Israeli Army soldiers on leave for the weekend. Given their age, they look like high-schoolers playing dress-up on a class field trip, except for the fact that maybe one in ten is carrying a high-powered, assault rifle. (Perhaps high-schoolers from Texas playing dress-up?)

Tomorrow we should be picked up by our tour operator who will take us on to Jerusalem and beyond, so no more figuring out how to do things on our own.

(FWIW it's the seventh night of Hanukkah, but you really couldn't tell from anything we've seen here. I guess the War on Hanukkah is going much better than the War on Christmas.)

Dec 21 - Tel Aviv Death March

Every tip has to have at least one "Death March" for food, where we can't find a restaurant that is just right for us to have the next meal in. Reasons for rejecting any given restaurant are legion:

• Too fancy.
• Not fancy enough.
• Too crowded.
• Too empty.
• No shade.
• Too dark.
• Too touristy.
• Seems "locals only".
• etc.

The difference on this trip is that normally we wait until the end of the holiday to do our death march; this time we managed it on the first day.

Arriving in Tel Aviv at 5AM, we couldn't check into our room until 3PM and therefore had the entire day to kill, so we did a walking tour around the city. We wandered the seafront promenade, had a coffee and pastry in Carmel Market, walked the entire crescent of Rothschild Blvd, then as lunchtime approached we marched several miles up to the Port of Tel Aviv, which the guide book described as "warehouses transformed into upscale restaurants, cafes, and clubs". Quite a letdown, as the Port somehow managed to be both empty and overcrowded at the same time: some wind and rain had moved in meaning the expansive boardwalk was mostly empty, yet what few restaurants were open were packed with large families fighting for few tables to get shelter from the weather. In annoyance we gave up and marched back into the city and eventually found some decent Arabic cuisine.

After lunch we managed to get into our hotel room a bit early and settled in for a short five hour nap. (Two nights sleeping on a plane followed by a 10 km hike can take it out of you.)

Dinner was much easier, as we were happy to wander the neighborhood near our hotel for some simple shawarma  at a sidewalk cafe.

So in summary, here's how we spent our first day in Israel: we walked for a bit to find some breakfast, then we walked some more to find some lunch, then rested and walked some more to find some dinner.

Dec 20 - Good Driver; Not-So-Good Jew.

The anchor for this vacation is my cousin's wedding in Bushey, London on New Year's Eve. To that end we were connecting through London both ways, but had a lengthy, ten-hour layover in Heathrow on the way east, We decided to use this time to drop off our wedding clothes in Bushey so we didn't need to drag them around the Middle East with us.

Renting a car for eight hours turned out to be more convenient (and cheaper) option than trying to get around by train, though all I could get was a stick shift. This worked out to be a perfect storm for an accident: I was jet-lagged, sleep derived (Economy seats for the overnight flight), driving on the left side of the road from the right side of the car and working the stick with my left hand, hadn't driven manual in years, in a car that was fresh off the factory floor (only 11 miles on the odometer) with not a scratch on it, on the M25 in London winter weather... so of course I declined *all* insurance options... BECAUSE I'M A BADASS!!!

In a small coincidence, Bushey is where a few members of my family is buried so we figured we'd make a stop at Bushey Jewish Cemetery while we were in the area. Before the trip I spent a good deal of time figuring out how to get there and where each family member was buried. We rolled up at the gates of the cemetery and found them firmly shut, and then slowly we both arrived at the same conclusion: neither of us had done the math that I can't visit my relatives in a Jewish cemetery on Saturday afternoon!

Clearly I am not in very deep, meaningful contact with my ancestral Jewish heritage.

(At least we were successful in dropping off our luggage for the wedding so the outing was not a complete waste.)

As an aside, a lot of people have been questioning our decision to head to Israel given the conflict that has been going on there this year. My response has been twofold: (1) if you want to visit this area of the world when there is no conflict going on, your best timing option is roughly 20,000 BC; and (2) the truce between Gaza and Israel has been holding steady since August, some four months ago. Right on cue, when we returned to Heathrow the news ticker on the monitor in the car rental shuttle let us know that the truce between Gaza and Israel that had held since August had just been violated. Perfect timing.

On the plus side, we lucked out and got an unrequested, free upgrade to Premium Economy. (The flight got overbooked and I was the first frequent flyer to check in - a day ahead of everyone else due to our long connection.) This was much needed since a second consecutive night attempting to sleep in Economy sleeps seemed unfathomable.

On to Israel...

P.S. Happy third annual Whale Day to all.

Dec 19 - Middle East Teaser Post

Oops - I forgot to enter an "introduction" post for our current holiday, so here it is. We're going to the Middle East and then to my cousin's wedding in London on New Year's Eve.

Posts soon...