Jordan- Day 1

List of places:
- Ajloun Castle
- Jerash the Roman Ruins

I arrived in Jordan at around 10am after a 10 hours flight from Jakarta. The weather in Amman was a bit chill, but with a bright sunshine. I got the visa on arrival with only 20JD and a kind agent that help to queue and talk to the immigration officer. First impression of Amman: so far so good...

This impression apparently continued through out the day. 

Our driver, Mohammad (a big kind guy) brought us to Ajloun Castle. It is located slightly outside Amman. The castle itself looks just like a typical castle. The special thing about it is the location being on the higher ground. And therefore you can have a clear view of the town surrounding and also the hills surrounding the castle. You can tell the ground is not flat. There's a lot of evidence of the existence of natural processes in the area. This is confirmed by the sight of geology expert (or at least looks like one) from Germany on top of the castle roof. They carried a geology map with them and kept pointing at the specific hills.

The interior of the castle feels like a maze. There's always an opening from many direction towards something else. And we also experienced that people there are very very nice, especially the girls. They always say hello and hi to us. 

This is a special coffee that we tried. Its coffee with cardamom. Very strong cardamom, I might say. It was hardly taste like coffee, more like a herbal drink. Very sweet with a strong fragrance as well.
They add the cardamom from the top of the pot/jug. 





Our second destination was Jerash. What can I say about Jerash? Hrmm let me think... Jerash is just AMAZING. The Romans are just AMAZING. Why? I had a very low expectation on Jerash. I thought Jerash would look like a typical ruins with series of columns on top of a meadow. Yeah, my bad that I didn't do a deep research before hand. Jerash is actually a large complex of Roman ruins. It's like the whole city.

The temples is Jerash focus on Diana/ Artemis, and the give of fertility. There are 2 main temples there, one for Artemis, and the other is for Zeus. The temple for Artemis look very much grander than the rest, with a perfect 7x7 steps to show coherence and perfection in landscape design. Now we can only see 25% of the original Jerash (that's what our guide told us). But, if we come back in 50 years time, we can see the whole Jerash rise once again. cool eh..

About the Romans, they have precision in building technology. The water system is Jerash is so advance. Not only the water system amused me.., the other would be the amphitheater. The Romans built it with precise calculation that the sound system can work perfectly until now, without a single electricity.

 Showing people praying on the field during the afternoon pray time