Adventures in Amman

Let's agree that I travel a lot. To some pretty weird places. Weird, dangerous places. This has made me an observant, wary, and -- I like to think -- pretty savvy traveller.

None of which was in evidence last night.

I think maybe I was lured into complacency by the relative safety of Amman, and the fact that everything had gone so very smoothly on Day 1. So when evening arrived, and it was time to return to my rather distant hotel, I was pretty confident that I could ask the front desk of my colleague's hotel to call a cab for me.

Wrong-o.

Turns out the Ibis hotel doesn't call cabs. Let's not dwell on the WTF-ness of that. Point is, it was well after dark, and I was being told I had to hail a cab on the street.

Pop quiz: what's the #1 piece of advice given to new staff in any security briefing in any country? If you guessed DON'T HAIL A CAB ON THE STREET, ESPECIALLY AFTER DARK, give yourself a big ol' pat on the back.

As I stood in the lobby puzzling over my options, a twenty-something American girl with a VERY LOUD VOICE ambled over. "I overheard you say you're going to Rainbow Street. I was just going to hail a cab. Wanna share?" As I mulled this over, she added, "This is my first day in Amman, so I don't know shit."

Well that makes two of us, sweetie. I couldn't decide if this made the situation more or less dodgy. I must have concluded the latter, because we went out to hail a cab. The first one we found had no metre and no seatbelts. He wanted five JD. We waved him off. After a few minutes, during which no other cabs drove past, and no other fares walked up, both parties re-thought their positions. We settled on three JD and took off for Rainbow Street.

The American girl, Coco (yes, really), kept up a steady but not unpleasant prattle as we drove. She was from the States, of Pakistani origin, living in UAE. She spoke just enough Arabic to keep the driver happy. (It helped that she was cute, with playful bangs and a lot of makeup.) He gave her his card, which she added to a deck of taxi driver cards she'd accumulated over the day. I suggested she could trade them, with bubble gum.

At the head of Rainbow Street, there was a massive traffic snarl. Somehow, I let the affable Coco talk me into walking the remainder of the way, in spite of the fact that I did not have the address of the hotel on my person. (Pop quiz: what's the first thing you do when you arrive at your new hotel in a new city, especially one where you can't even read the language? If you answered WRITE DOWN THE FUCKING ADDRESS, give yourself a gold star.)

As we walked up Rainbow Street, Coco asked several policemen and passers-by if they knew where my hotel was. They all did -- not that any two of them agreed. My hotel was variously "three hundred metres up the road", "downtown", or "way, way, over there". We could have despaired at that point, but things were starting to look familiar to me, so we pressed on. Eventually we came upon the source of the traffic snarl: a movie shoot involving an active fire hose and a woman squealing on a balcony.

Past the water and the floodlights and the rubbernecking, we found a tourist information booth. Hallelujah! Except they didn't speak English, didn't know where my hotel was (despite it being somewhere on that very street), and couldn't figure out the address, which I had found via Google on my blackberry. "Tourist info fail," Coco declared, loudly, and we moved on.

We found the hotel on our own. Coco wanted to grab something to eat, but I'd already had dinner, so we parted ways with a warm hug. I should have taken her details. She was a lot of fun.

I got away with several silly things last night, and as so often happens, it made for a very amusing evening. More importantly, it also served to remind me why all the little precautions matter, and can't be overlooked. Even the safest cities are still cities, after all