We drove to the southern most border of Jordan to see Saudi Arabia. After Jordan, Palestine, Israel and Egypt, this is the fifth country we got to see this trip, up, close and personal!

It was hot as heck (as in 100 degree F). We get out of the AC car. The sun hits us immediately. What do we do?

In India, we have hot tea at a street side stall.

In Jordan, we get Omar to make us some hot Turkish coffee!!

Getting a wee bit inspired to set up a traditional Arabic coffee making set up at home.

… try this – a sunken tank!!

All I wanted to know is the aerial distance from Aqaba, Jordan to Taba, Egypt. I figured if I found out the road distance, I could estimate from it.

I certainly had not bargained for Google Maps asking me to driving ON the Red Sea to a city way down south of Taba and then drive back up north on the highway like driving on the sea was no big deal!

BTW, the real answer is about 12 km. No thanks to Google Maps.

Edit: Have to edit this for Ram Narayanan – he thinks Google Maps is the original reason why Moses had to do it the way he did!! I have changed the title in honor of Ram’s comment!

“Brother Mahmoud, what happened to the star?”

Mahmoud looked up in the sky wondering why was I looking for a star in broad daylight. He realized I was pointing to the Jordanian flag at the port.

He was a bit confused too. Without the star, that looked like the flag of Palestine.

“Perhaps it is on the other side?”, he said.

“Unlikely”, I said. We checked. There was no star on the other side either.

Mahmoud was as curious as I. He went around asking the local folks at the port. He finally came back with the answer – “This is our old flag.”

I was a little confused. What do you mean – old flag? The star got washed away during the rinse and repeat of the old flag?

Wikipedia to the rescue. This is indeed the prior flag of Jordan – more accurately that of the “Hashemite Arab Federation”!

Again, learnt something new.

On that note, for all the things that are great about Jordan, one big setback is people just do not take care of their waters. We saw numerous plastics floating in the water and many a bright Pepsi can in the reefs were mistaken for a short time as a bright blue fish! That is a real shame. The city has all the potential of being a great tourist haven in the Middle East. I hope they will focus on this problem.

No! It is an airplane!! There is an airplane sitting at the bottom of the sea bed!! This is when we were expecting to see corals and fishes!

Our first reaction was that it was a plane crash. But the plane was laying down too nicely on its bed (not a sign of crashing in) for that to be true.

Turns out that in an effort to boost tourism, the government lowered a plane last year to attract divers. The water is so clear that you can see the plane from the surface without any effort.

According to the internet, in some dark humor, one of the tourist divers has set up a artificial skeleton at the pilot’s seat too!!