The thing about traveling

Is that you never know just what you are going to encounter. Sometimes it is the highlights you remember, and sometimes it is the lowlights.

Years ago Jay and I took my parents, in Israel for a visit, down to Jordan to visit Petra and Wadi Rum. We engaged a private guide who took us on the most wonderful adventures, the kind of trip that you remember for a lifetime. Everything went perfectly. He had us hike to Petra through a deserted back entrance, not a tourist in sight, coming upon the city just as the setting sun turned it to gold. We had tea in the desert with some of his Bedouin friends, who even went so far as to make up my mother and me with traditional Bedouin makeup. We finally ended with a picnic in the desert and then it was time to head for the border and return home.

En route, we stopped at a roadside stand for a icy cold cold lukewarm drink. Never ones to miss an opportunity for a pitstop, after finishing our drinks my mother and I headed around the back of the building looking for a bathroom. We found what may very well have been the very foulest outhouse on the face of the planet. I'd have preferred to just go behind a bush, but unfortunately tall bushes are in a bit of a short supply in the middle of the desert, so it was this vile hole in the floor or nothing, and we had a long way yet to travel. To make matters worse, the signs on the doors were only in Arabic. Which door to choose? In desperation, we finally split up, one going one way and one the other, determined to get in and out quickly enough that we wouldn't have to draw a breath inside.

When we finally made it back across to the Israeli side of the border, I was in a big hurry to get to a clean toilet. Unfortunately, that was the day the security people chose to train new employees. I stood there dancing from foot to foot as the woman asked her trainee "look at that shape, what does it look like to you? How about that one? What about the square one?" The trainee was having terrible trouble with the square shape and my situation was becoming increasingly desperate. After three fumbled attempts by the trainee, I couldn't take it anymore. I finally yelled to her "it's a soapdish! A damn soapdish! Now can you FINALLY let me through so I can get to the freaking bathroom already???" Needless to say her trainer was less than amused, but she finally stopped glaring long enough to let me through.

Yes, all the glory of Petra, the magesty of Wadi Rum, and it's the bathrooms that stand out the most in my memory. I'm nothing if not sophisticated.