Dead Sea – the funnest place ever!!

Being in the Dead Sea is probably one of the most fun things in the world.  The salinity of the Dead Sea is 31% which is about 9 times higher than the ocean; as a result everything is very buoyant.  I was looking forward to floating around in the water because I could never stay afloat by sitting and extending my legs out like most Europeans you see on the Mediterranean.   And Eug planned to take Christine and I to a spa by the Dead Sea, which we found out later wasn’t just any spa, it was the Zara Spa at the Movenpick, justifiably renowned as one of the best in the Middle East.  It was quite a treat after a few nights of two star hotel stays and camping out in the desert.

We drove our trusty but not so powerful Toyota Yaris from Aqaba to the Dead Sea in three hours on the Dead Sea highway.  The landscape turned from all desert to a body of smooth oily blue water.  It kind of resembled the road in Hawaii without the tides, and Israel was just on the opposite shore.  The Dead Sea is the lowest spot on earth at 408m below sea level, and when we passed by the marker on the highway that indicated we were below sea level I started to get excited.  We were ecstatic when we saw the Movenpick sign emerging on the side of the highway.  We first went to the private beach at the back of the hotel and self administered a mud wrap by covering ourselves with mud from a big clay pot next to the water.  The Dead Sea mud contains high concentrations of minerals including calcium and magnesium, which have health-giving properties.  It was funny seeing everyone patting and rubbing mud on themselves.  It reminded me of Mystique in X-men but in mud colour.  Even Eug got into it.  He covered his face with mud too which Christine and I didn’t dare to.  Then we all jumped into the Dead Sea.  It’s so amusing when you just can’t sink in water!  The very first thing I tried was extending my legs out and sitting in the water like the Europeans.  I could finally do it!  We also tried to stand straight holding a pencil dive pose but it was impossible to hold that position for long.  We ended up bouncing awkwardly sideways back to a floating position, kind of like that inflatable toy with a weight in the bottom that keeps reverting to its starting position after you punch it.  We also tried sitting crossed legged, which was fairly easy to do.  Christine and I tried some synchronized swimming poses, but it turned out Eug was the best at that (jk).  I tried the Bikram airplane pose, super fun.  I couldn’t stop smiling and laughing the whole time.  If you haven’t been to the Dead Sea yet, you must!  It is 3 million years old but it has shrunk by 30% in recent years, about half a meter per year which means it’s disappearing.  I must give credit to Christine for being a real trooper.  She had all kinds of wounds on her body from the days before but she sucked it all up and spent as much time in the salty water as we did and had a blast too.  It must’ve stung like hell for her.  One of the life guards (not sure why they were there since you couldn’t possibly drown in the Dead Sea) even called her to the side at the end and bandaged up her wounds.  We then tried all the spa pools.  There were three indoor Dead Sea pools, one aqua-pressure pool, foot-massage pool, and one gorgeous infinity pool with a view of the sunset.  We spent about 4 hours in the spa altogether, it was a relaxing haven.

We headed back to Amman after the Dead Sea spa.  Christine’s friend hooked us up with a pimp suite at a very reasonable rate, which wrapped up our Jordan journey very nicely.  She decided to stay in Amman for one more day to hang out with her friend and meet us in Israel the next day.  So Christine’s story continues.  Thankfully Eug and I had a very boring border crossing to Israel (we were told we would have trouble since we had Syrian and Lebanese stamps in our passport) compared to Christine’s.  The next day, we were waiting for her at our hospice in Jerusalem when we received an email from her saying ‘You guys go ahead and don’t wait around for me; they evacuated the entire border crossing building, it might take awhile’.  I thought ‘uh oh… that doesn’t sound good’.  Because when we were in Aqaba, a Taiwanese mom restaurant owner told us that three Taiwanese boys were scared out of their minds when they couldn’t tell the custom officer what was in one of the bags their friend asked them to bring back for him.  The next thing you know, they blew up the bag without trying to find out what was inside.  When Christine finally made her way to us, we found out that they evacuated the building because of the purse her friend gave her in Amman.  It was a Thomas Wylde purse with tons of studded metal skull heads.  I guess the border security people couldn’t identify what they were looking at through the x-ray machine, so they called Christine in after evacuating and questioned her for awhile.  Luckily they didn’t blow up her purse.  

Christine should really write a book about her 2 week adventure with us.  I hope it’ll be smooth sailing for her from now on.