Freedom

“At this point in my life I am positive some people were put on this earth to test my alcohol tolerance level.”

Saw that.

Loved it.

Had to share.

Now… if only I had some alcohol to really test out the theory.

Although alcohol is legal and served in Jordan… it can often be surprisingly hard to find. Many restaurants don’t offer it at all… and while it was widely available during our time in Aqaba, it has been much harder to come by elsewhere.

Perhaps that’s a blessing in disguise.

I really think so.

About a week ago, I posted on a few “Travel Jordan” Facebook pages, offering all of my camping gear to the first person who messaged me directly. Once the first message came through, I noted their name, told them where I’d be on January 19, and let them know the gear would be theirs if they showed up to collect it.

The response to my post was overwhelming, with almost a hundred messages flooding in. I stuck to my word and only dealt with the first person. Unfortunately, this individual seemed more interested in chatting and “getting to know me” than simply arranging the pickup. I made it clear I wasn’t interested in socializing… and because their messages didn’t stop coming in hot n’ heavy, they almost lost out on the gear. Thankfully, they took the hint, stopped pestering me, and agreed to hold off on any further communication until I arrived in Amman.

I don’t mean to sound harsh… but chatting with random strangers on social media isn’t exactly my idea of fun… and it can quickly become well-overwhelming.

You bug me… it’s a dealbreaker.

Our final camping day eventually came to a close, and I couldn’t have been more thrilled. As we drove toward Amman, our last stop, I felt an immense sense of relief sweep over me. This tour was finally wrapping up. Finally.

How long had I waited?

How long had we all suffered?

How long had I suffered?

Too long.

I had just ONE more night in a hotel with the crew before i was free and away… and I could not wait.

It was about a two-hour drive from our campsite to our final destination in Amman. I was sitting next to Mr. Meat, who, much to my relief, passed out almost immediately. Slumped over in his seat, he was snoring and slobber was dripping off the bottom lip of his open mouth.

Then I looked up to see Mr. Bean swaggering down the aisle of the truck toward us, his usual clown-like energy on full display.

Stopping right in front of Mr. Meat, he leaned down, nudged him awake, and started dangling the safety box keys in his face.

“It’s time for you to open the pub for the last time and give us our passports,” he announced.

*the safe is referred to as “the pub.”

“Hey!” I snapped. “He was sleeping! Why would you wake him up for this?”

Mr. Bean straightened up, startled, and defensively replied, “But I need my passport.”

“You’ve got two hours to get your passport,” I shot back.

Even Mr. Meat wasn’t impressed, giving him a sharp look and repeating what I’d just said. But Mr. Bean, oblivious as ever, just puckered his oversized lips and furrowed his brow in exaggerated confusion.

“But I need my passport.”

Clown.

When we pulled in, everyone eagerly grabbed their luggage from the truck and rushed into the hotel. Rosanna began assigning rooms… and lucky, lucky me… I was paired with Sue.

Seriously?

Hadn’t I already endured enough of this pain and anxiety, trying to rid myself of her?

My poor anguish. I was still stuck with an additional three more nights dealing with her after this, as I still hadn’t come up with a cunning enough plan to just kick her to the curb.

I’d pretended the hotel only put me in a double bedroom.

It didn’t work.

I’d asked Tania to intervene.

It didn’t work.

I’d tried cancelling my hotel.

It didn’t work.

Hell… I’d even considered a three day trip into Israel to avoid being in the same room with her.

It didn’t work.

Who goes against their principles and tries to plan a 3-day excursion into a war-torn country just to escape someone?

Me.

What was left?

Everyone said “tell her the truth”… but I couldn’t bring myself to admit, to her face, that she drove me up the wall and I wanted nothing more than to be as far away from her as possible.

So… I plastered a polite smile onto my face, took the room key… and headed upstairs… with Sue.

Lord, help me.

The moment we stepped into the room, she started her usual moaning and nitpicking. She rambled on and on about how unfair the room allocations were and how she had no idea how Rosanna figured out who was with who.

“Why was Marilyn sharing a room with Rebekah AGAIN?”

It didn’t stop…

“Surely Marilyn must have made a special request to not share a room with her.” “Why would she do that?”

THIS… all from the woman who grumbled incessantly about having to spend ANY time with Persnickety at all. I couldn’t take it anymore. Finally, I looked her square in the eye and asked, “WHO CARES?”

Clearly, she cared.

This couldn’t really be happening to me.

Please… make her stop!

I tuned her out to the best of my ability until she eventually fell silent.

We stayed in the room for awhile, waiting for our luggage to arrive. I hoped that Sue had worn herself dry on complaints, but the waiting game only fueled the fire: the delay of the luggage, the logistics of where the staff had gone with the bags, the order to which the staff had stacked the bags and the staff’s incompetence.

She stormed off to find them… twice… only to return in a huff each time that they were on another floor that wasn’t ours.

As I sat on the edge of my bed, relaxing and mindlessly playing with my phone, I joked about how we were going to be late for cleaning the truck and how “terrible” that would be.

Absolutely dreadful to be late for cleaning!

When the staff finally arrived at our door with our luggage, I felt bad for them because Sue was so incredibly frantic and rude. I tipped them generously, smiled enthusiastically and thanked them immensely. Sue, on the other hand, huffed and puffed and rolled her eyes, as she aggressively grabbed her pack out of their hands and threw it onto her bed. I did my best to ignore her and grabbed my own gear.

So rude.

It was time to clean the truck.

The elevator was taking too long, so I opted for the stairs. After all, we were only on the third floor. Sue followed… begrudgingly… yelling after me, “Do you even know where you’re going?”

Yes.

Down.

Then she started yelling again, demanding that I check the floor entrance doors to make sure we weren’t going to be locked in the stairwell. The thought of a locked fire exit was so absurd, I didn’t even bother responding.

I hopped out of the stairwell at the ground floor to find Mickey was in the process of unloading our tenting gear. I grabbed all mine and headed back toward the room to dump it in there. Sue trailed behind me with a couple of her bags. As we entered the elevator together, she made a snide comment, implying that I should have offered to take her things up for her.

With her typical exaggerated shoulder roll and exasperated sighs, she rudely remarked, “Guess we’ll BOTH go up to the room then.”

Yep… I guess so.

I was done.

I couldn’t go along with her weird mind games and passive aggressive expectations anymore.

I turned to her and said, “Sue, if you had wanted me to carry your stuff up to the room, you could have asked me. You didn’t. So yes… now we’re BOTH going UP to the room.”

She sighed dramatically, rolled her eyes, looked away and muttered, “Well… you just seemed to be in such a hurry to get to the truck to start cleaning, I didn’t want to bother you.”

Seriously?

Who in their right mind would ever be in a hurry to clean a truck?

Let alone… me.

I bit my tongue, ignored her, dumped my gear in the room… and again, made a beeline for the stairwell.

Sue took the elevator this time.

By the time we got to the truck to start cleaning, I’d already hit my limit. I hadn’t even spent 15 minutes in the room with her… and I wanted to fling myself… or her… out the window. And I still had THREE more nights to endure??

No.

I wasn’t sure how I’d survive.

Or IF I’d survive.

Cleaning the truck was a nightmare. We were split into groups and assigned various tasks. I was paired with Tania and Graham, which was fabulous… and we were responsible for cleaning everything that was the inside of the truck. This meant the seats, windows, walls, supplies, floor… everything. I started with the back, Tania tackled the chairs and Graham began on the windows. We made a great team… divvying up tasks without much fuss and working efficiently.

The Mr. Tongue himself, Lutz, showed up.

Apparently, his cleaning crew had told him that they had no tasks for him and pawned him off onto our crew. We didn’t want him… nor did we need him… and instead of asking how he could help, he immediately started whining about how he’d never had to clean the truck on previous trips.

Great.

Thanks for sharing.

Well… today you do… “grab a rag.”

We asked him to start cleaning the windows… and when he started asking why he should have to clean the windows, I suggested he should go help another cleaning crew. Perhaps the ones that were scrubbing all the pots & pans… or maybe the group that were organizing and cleaning all the food boxes.

Just go away!!!

He didn’t budge.

So… Tongue man started cleaning the truck windows. And then when he was finished that, he decided it would be a brilliant idea to mop the truck floor. He grabbed the mop bucket and started mopping before we’d even finished cleaning the rest of the truck. There was dust and dirt everywhere. I asked him… on multiple occasions… to hold off until we were ready for the truck to be mopped, but he either ignored me or stood there with the mop in hand, waiting for me to leave so that he could start mopping again. Eventually, we gave up… let him finish his silly mopping… and just planned to redo it after he was done… and we were done the rest of our cleaning. That didn’t sit well with him. He complained that nothing was ever clean enough for Tania & I… and then proceeded to spend the rest of his time sulking… and playing excessively with his tongue.

Without Lutz… the three of us could’ve had a fabulous time, but his crappy “I don’t want to be here” attitude dragged everyone down. To make matters worse, every time I looked outside, I saw the Geisha and Mr. Bean doing next to nothing… just standing around like they were supervisors.

Speaking of supervisors… Mickey was in fine form. As for Karen, still unwell, she made it abundantly clear to every single one of us that she had no desire to be there.

As if any of us wanted to be there.

She was her usual, miserable self.

When we finally finished… and we all thought we were absolutely done… the hotel kitchen staff showed up with stacks of soaking wet dishes that needed to be dried before they could be put away. So there we were, the whole lot of us, standing on the sidewalk in front of this luxury hotel, frantically flapping dishes dry while traffic buzzed by.

It was definitely a sight to see.

THIS IS THE VIDEO I HAVE MADE OF THE ENTIRE GANG… Enjoy 😉

Once the truck was locked up, I said my goodbyes to Marianna… and then I was more than ready for a big glass of wine. I tried to make plans with Tania, but unfortunately she’s one of those people who would apparently never indulge in a tasty beverage before the appropriate evening hour… so I was left with Mickey.

When you’ve been traveling for two months, through the Middle East, with the freakiest bunch of people you’ve ever met in your entire life… and you have just finished scrubbing the truck that rolled you into town… I don’t think there is any such thing as an appropriate time to start drinking.

There is not.

Definitely not.

So Mickey and I set off… walking about 15 minutes to a nearby hotel with a bar called ‘Rumours,’ on the third floor. We ordered beers, wine and some nachos.

The conversation with Mickey was… meh… I suppose.

Most conversations with Mickey are pretty underwhelming… so meh, at best. I don’t find her particularly well-rounded, well-traveled, worldly or very complex a character… so there’s not much substance to latch onto for an engaging discussion… if that makes sense at all.

We mostly vented about Martin… and how incredibly grumpy and downright awful he’d been throughout almost the entire trip and how he really hadn’t earned much of a tip… at all.  Mickey admitted that even Rosanna was frustrated with him. When I mentioned that I was seriously considering not tipping him, Mickey suddenly asked what I would tip her.

“Nothing,” I replied flatly. “You’re not my guide.”

Undeterred… she pushed further. “But if I was, what would you give me? What would I be worth?”

Are you kidding me?

Was I being punked?

I sighed a bit of an exasperated sigh… feeling much like Sue. “It’s hard to say. I have no idea how you’d handle passengers or situations in that role.”

I actually DO know… and she’d be crap.

She wouldn’t let it go. “I basically was your guide.”

You basically weren’t.

“I did all your bags!”

So? I reminded her that I’d pitched in with crew tasks too. Ya… she did back locker and barked orders at everyone. I helped with back locker, did cook crew and saved our asses from the mud fields of Saudi Arabia. Tip me.

This girl was too much.

I quickly changed the subject.  She was fishing for validation and compliments about how she should be a guide… and I wasn’t playing along. She definitely DID NOT want me to play along for this game…

Anyway… regardless…

One thing I found odd was that Mickey had been assigned to share a room with Karen, who was (apparently) incredibly sick. She… understandably… didn’t really want to stay there for obvious reasons pertaining to illnesses… and had tried to upgrade to a private room, but the cost was too high… and there weren’t enough rooms available. Mickey mentioned she was even considering switching to a different hotel altogether.

This girl has big taste for someone running out of cash.

What surprised me was that Rosanna hadn’t stepped in to financially assist Mickey in upgrading or figuring something out… especially considering the last thing anyone wanted was for the entire crew to get sick… or should I say… sicker.

I wasn’t even allowed to cut carrots when I wasn’t feeling well. Bizarre.

While Mickey was sitting there looking at prices for nearby hotels, I suggested she check with Judy first. Judy had just returned and had her own room at our hotel.

Of course, Judy said yes and everything was sorted.

With Judy there, the conversation eventually led to Dubai. Mickey actually brought it up… like she was bragging about it. I don’t quite understand how someone with no money can brag about flying to Dubai for a few hours to have a couple of pints of lager… but I guess I’m not always the smartest tool in the shed. At one point, Judy leaned across the table, grabbed Mickey’s arm, and asked, “Why did you really fly to Dubai for just one day if you don’t have any money?”

Mickey’s answer? “I had to get some American dollars.”

I hadn’t heard that one before.

Money- yes. American dollars - no.

Confused, I asked, “Why couldn’t you just get American currency at a bank in Riyadh?”

She insisted it wasn’t possible. It is.

When I pushed further, she shrugged it off as “too much hassle.”

WHAT? Too much hassle?

This girl is mental.

Flying internationally, dealing with customs, security, and airports… all to get some American cash… seemed utterly ridiculous and far more hassle than waiting in line at a bank or a local currency exchange.

I didn’t believe her.

I still don’t.

Later… I looked it up and confirmed that you CAN get American dollars at banks, money exchanges and even select ATMs in Saudi Arabia.

Her story doesn’t add up.

Something fishy is going on.

She also joked again that the trip was really ALL about the booze… but flying all the way to Dubai for a drink would hardly be commendable either. Her program was weak… and she really needed to work on her narrative.

I still needed to know where money was going to be coming from in 10 days. Though… it was more like 6 or 7 days now.

The drinks at the bar we were at were shockingly expensive and after a couple teeny weeny $20 wines, I had to cut myself off.

It was cold in Amman. Even though everyone mentioned again that I was Canadian and should obviously be conditioning for these frigid evenings, I froze. It was one of those moments when I truly regretted losing my jacket.

I needed to get a new one. Pronto.

Back in my room… with Sue… was proper fun again. I casually mentioned that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go to dinner that night because I was tired, cold and not feeling great.  She completely misinterpreted it. “Oh ya… I wouldn’t really want to go either if I’d been drinking all afternoon either,” she said smugly. Great… I could already hear her conversations with everyone.

“I was not drinking all afternoon,” I replied, coldly and blatantly annoyed.

She has a tendency to say things that just get right under your skin. How she manages to twist every situation into a passive-aggressive jab is beyond me.

It was our goodbye dinner… and I did go, despite not having a jacket and not feeling terrible great. I sat at the very end of the table with Mr. Meat, Vic and Tania. It wasn’t the center of the action, but I preferred it that way. Spending my last evening with Vic and Tania felt more meaningful than hobnobbing with a bunch of people that I had absolutely no intention of ever speaking to again.

Mr. Meat had his phone out, fully absorbed in watching videos about the upcoming inaugural preparations. Meanwhile, the heaters in the restaurant were blasting at full force. As the night went on, the heat in the room started to overwhelm me. It wasn’t just the temperature… it was as if the air itself was pressing down on me, making me feel claustrophobic and uneasy.

I had only ordered mozzarella sticks, having already eaten nachos earlier with Mickey and Judy, but as soon as they arrived, I realized I couldn’t stay. I wasn’t hungry… and I just couldn’t shake the discomfort. I had to get out…

Now.

I wrapped up the mozzarella sticks, handed Vic some money to cover them… and excused myself. I’d barely been there 35 minutes, but I needed to leave.

Maybe I genuinely wasn’t feeling well.

Maybe I was just exhausted, both physically and mentally, knowing that this chapter was finally coming to an end.

Maybe I was playing up my illness to give myself an excuse to kick Sue to the curb.

… or maybe I just needed some time alone.

Me. Time.

Who knows? It didn’t matter.

I was out.

Everyone else eventually made their way back to the hotel. Rosanna, Mickey, Judy and Martin stayed out drinking until around 2am… and the reason I know this is because, at 1:30am, Martin flooded me with over 100 photos and videos from when Marianna got stuck in the muck… and rescued. Clearly… someone was grasping at straws, trying to secure some goodwill… and maybe a tip or two… at the last possible minute.

He included a brief message thanking me for all my help and apologizing for not sending the photos earlier. I couldn’t help but think that perhaps past midnight wasn’t really the ideal time to unload all of his photo & video collection on someone who’d gone home sick… but what do ya do?

Part of me was slightly jealous not to be out with them, sharing a final night of laughter and camaraderie. But I wasn’t jealous of the financial cost… or the hangovers they’d inevitably face the next morning.

Plus… they weren’t really “my” people. Judy - yes… but the rest of them… hard pass. Sometimes, choosing a quiet moment alone is worth more than any party.

My sick plan had worked.

I should say that because it hadn’t really been a plan.  I still had a bad cold, a poor night’s sleep and woke up feeling clammy and yucky. As I lay there awake the following morning, I couldn’t help but think, “Let’s roll with this.”

So I did.

Why not?

None of my other plans had worked…

When Sue returned from breakfast, I put my best “feeling-rotten” foot forward, feigning reluctance. “I don’t want to inconvenience you, but I really don’t feel well. For both of our sakes, maybe you’d feel better staying with Rebeka.”

Poor, poor me.

I even invited her to touch my sheets to see how dank they were. I really played it up. Honestly… as much as my performance was A1, top notch, I think I might have gone and overdone it… because now I’ve actually brought my cold BACK for real.

Cue the hacking and wheezing and sneezing and coughing… all over again.

Karma for being so nasty about the Geisha.

Though… I do sneeze & cough into a tissue whenever possible and I always excuse myself and/or apologize for inflicting my illness onto others.

Sue, of course, couldn’t just leave it at that. She sat down on my bed and made a snide comment about how she knew I didn’t want to go to the dinner in the first place, so she wasn’t surprised I’d left.

I had to correct her: “I didn’t leave because I wasn’t having fun or because I didn’t want to be around those people. I left because I wasn’t feeling well. And once I got there, I felt even worse.”

But Sue can’t read a room to save her life. She can never take things at face value. Instead, she twists them into some version that makes sense in her own head… even if it’s completely wrong.

It’s exhausting.

But… the thing was… I didn’t care.

I WAS FREE.

Free!

Free!

Free!

Free!

PS- As she walked out the door with her luggage, she made another spiteful and unkind comment about Persnickety… and as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she admitted that Marilyn was in fact, her friend.

She followed it up with, “I just don’t like how nasty she can get when discussing other people.”

The irony was almost laughable.

Then she paused, looked me dead in the eye, and added, “Although Marilyn was never nearly as mean about the Geisha as you were!”

F$&K!!!!!

… to the moon. Straight to the moon.

I swear to God.

POW! Right in the kisser…