Venus & Ulysses 2004

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Home » Archives » May 2004 » America No Good! 100!

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05/21/2004: "America No Good! 100!"


I got Ray a digital SLR because his other digital camera was dying, and digital SLRs got affordable this year. Today we discovered their dirty secret -- they get dust on the sensor, probably more so in the desert. It probably happens when you take advantage of their lens interchangeability (one of the whole points), which lets in a little dust, and after a few pictures with the mirror flapping around, that dust settles on the "low-pass filter" in front of the sensor. We'll have to get some compressed air or something so we can keep it clean. Meanwhile, Ray will have to Photoshop some dark blotches out of many of the sky shots he took today. After one cleaning with a tiny blower he took a test shot of the sky and there was a new dark spot -- we examined the picture on the computer and the dark spot fortunately turned out to be an airplane.

So we continued with the day as scheduled, checking out many of the ruins in Palmyra, the top tourist destination in Syria. It started out as an independent city between Persia and Rome from about the 13th century BC until the third century AD. It fell to Rome in 267 AD, to the Muslims in 634, and to an earthquake in 1089. It was rediscovered in 1678, and excavations began in 1924. There's a main colonnade with enough columns reconstructed that you can get an idea of the extent of it; lots of temples large and small, and some pretty interesting sarcophagi.

Ray observes: "We finally ran into a rude person today, and it will surprise no-one who has ventured farther into the world than his bedroom that the person was a French tourist. Where do they mint these guys, anyway? It seems that anywhere you go, you are going to run into some middle
aged pompous asshole who is insulting and berating everyone in a particularly French way, and cannot be pleased. He will be yelling at a waiter or a bellhop --- in the case of today he was yelling at us, or more particularly "people like you" which I found difficult to parse since there don't seem to be a lot of people like us in Palmyra judging by the way children flock around saying something like "Baba Nuit" which may either be Syrian Arabic for Ali Baba or for Babi Yar, I don't know which. When you go on an eclipse expedition you run into children that haven't a lot of experience with tourists, in the southern Philippines or rural northern Chile; but Palmyra is one of the world's destinations, a UNESCO World Heritage site, about as untouristed as Disneyland. The buses pile in every hour of the day and you're hard pressed for a camera angle without a cheerful Italian in khaki shorts whistling and shouting Buon Giorno! Where do they mint those guys, anyway? Speaking of mint, the big tea here seems to be chamomile."

Like most tourist destinations, touts are everywhere. Here there's lots of touting from people's storefront -- the owner of the place we ate dinner tonight followed a couple of Eurotourists down the street, and sure enough, hooked them and sat them down in the restaurant. We had lots of touts with "hospitality dates" which led to us buying a kilo of them (there are lots of date palms here). A few people were selling T-shirts with various Syrian alphabets (including Palmyrene) on it; Ray hoped that his wearing one today (besides being his only clean shirt) would preclude further offers to sell us more, but alas, one guy tried several times. But the number one category of touts around here are boys selling postcards. Packets of 20 postcards are sold in museums for 50 Syrian pounds ($1.00) but these boys will ask for 200 ("OK, 100"), and rarely even offer them for 50. One of them today, perhaps having decided that he was doing me a favor (leading me to a toilet someone else had already pointed out) or imagined that I had promised to buy some, kind of lost his temper when he became too frustrated with my continued refusal to buy any more postcards. "200! OK, 100!" "No, I don't need postcards" ... then he suddenly switched into "America No Good. America Fights Iraq. America No Good. 100!" but I still didn't buy any.