Hilarious Syrian Air

Recently, Syrian Air ran a promotion giving 15% discount on selected routes. I could not resist and checked online if I could get a bargain.

Many of you know these websites where you are starting a query and are then asked to enter some hardly readable characters displayed on a photo. Now, this is the screen I saw when checking for my itinerary:

I almost peed into my pants. Literally. And I was lucky enough to capture the screen. Hilarious.

Damascus Airport Slowly Getting International

I remember how Damascus International Airport was a few years ago. Yes, the displays were in Arabic and English, yet most announcements were in Arabic only. It occasionally happened that foreigners asked me about their flight's status and the meaning of some announcements.

In 2010, a quality programme was introduced and you could see that people started getting trained on customer service. That means... not all of them, but at least some. Cleanliness was increased and more and more staff apart from the check-in people were able to speak English, including the shop agents. Nowadays most announcements are bilingual and understandable. However, the immigration officers normally don't speak sufficient English to handle incoming non-Arabic speaking tourists. Unfortunately, this has not changed yet.

So let me ask that inevitable question: how can an airport claim to be 'international' if key staff don't speak English? It makes a tourist's life quite difficult at times. One can only hope that with the increasing influx of travellers, this will change to the better.

Non-verbal communication à la syrienne

I just walked out of a small corner shop with a broad smile on my face. Not because I had bought a pack of cigarettes, but rather because of this typical Syrian non-verbal communication.

When I walked into the shop, I asked if they had yellow Gauloises. The shop agent did not even look at me but just clicked his tongue. Everything said & nothing to add. I bought a different brand then.

Syrian Transportation

Although there are national flights to various locations with Syrian Air and Syrian Pearl (a subsidiary of Syrian Air owned about 20% by them) as well as trains between the main centres, travelling by bus is the number 1 option within Syria and to neighbouring countries. I received a few questions about such services and therefore post some information about buses in Syria in this blog.

I can speak predominantly for the situation for departures from Damascus, yet each medium sized city in the country has a karaj (bus station) with departures in regular intervals.

If you want to travel from Damascus to the south (Deraa, Sweida, Amman, Jordan) and Lebanon (Beirut, Chtoura) you must go to Suomrieh karaj which is outside the city, about 2km after the end of Mazzeh Autostrade. Every taxi driver will know the place. Once arrived there, walk up the hill behind all the microbuses for about 300 yards and you will come to a security checkpoint where your luggage will be screened. Then get out of the building and turn right towards a huge travel market where all bus operators have small offices. Many of them are labelled in English as well. They have standard rates so forget about bargaining. If you are not a Syrian national you will have to present your passport for verification. All in all it is a pretty well organised karaj and English is spoken by some staff.

You can also take service taxis from there to major destinations, price to be bargained. They will leave as soon as four travellers are there. As a general input, calculate 700 SYP to Beirut, 500 to Chtoura, 700 to Amman and 250 to Deraa.

For trips to the rest of the country (Hama, Homs, Aleppo, Deir Ez Zor, Qamishli, Palmyra, Lattakia, Tartous), 'Pulman karaj' in Harasta is the place to go. Harasta is located about 7km north of the city centre on the Homs highway. All destinations north and north east of Damascus are served from here. It is much less organised than Suomrieh karaj, yet you do not have much choice anyway. The good thing about it is that the frequency of buses is very high and for just a little extra you can take a VIP bus which offers some pretty good amenities compared to the standard service.

Local transportation concentrates on the Baramkeh bus station near President's Bridge close to SANA news agency building, 4 Seasons Hotel and the National Museum. You will find microbuses and some modern green buses to all destinations within greater Damascus, yet the labels are in Arabic only. Ask your way around. A short trip will cost you 5 SYP on a microbus, a longer 10. No receipts will be issued. If you are taking a green city bus, the price will be 10 SYP and you will receive a small paper ticket you have to stamp immediately.

Tartous has a well organised karaj as well, just as you enter the city from the motorway coming in from Homs. You cannot miss it.

Lattakia's karaj is about 2km south of the city centre.

A Helping Hand

I am not a fan of the Lonely Planet, to be honest. Too superficial in my eyes and focussed too much on budget travellers. That said, I am aware that the Lonely Planet has been designed for this target audience so no hard feelings. Also I have to admit that they are covering some countries and places which appear to be permanently ignored by other editors, such as Iraq for example.

Now, there is one rather positive exception to my statement: the thorntree travel forum where readers can ask questions to the world, and generally receive responses of any quality under the sun. After posting my first question there about a year ago, I started to visit the Middle East forum regularly and also posted responses myself. It has become a habit for me to try and help a little.

Why? It is all about positive experience and valuable responses I could observe on personal basis. As an example I was looking for a car rental in a country where there is almost no tourism at all, and thorough internet research gave some results on a government website. However, all the companies stated there told me they would give me a car with a driver and were not willing to rent out a car just like this. Having posted my question on the forum, a contact with a small car rental agency was established within 48 hours. Since then, I hired a car at this car dealer with its small rental agency multiple times.

I do agree that many questions just start getting repetitive. The eternal question about an Israeli passport stamp, the best route through Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, or the visa on arrival question for Syria. They have become evergreens of thorntree, and have even been used as a running gag on the forum where the main link to the Middle East forum has a subtitle: "... and does anyone know about that Israeli passport stamp?" Another one is what to do on a stopover in Dubai, and every time I read these questions I am getting nervous, if not upset. If I was Lonely Planet I would introduce moderated forums in order to keep off most of the spam messages if I may call them so. One person per geographic area could make a significant difference, increase the overall quality and reduce the number of useless messages to a minimum.

Thorntree, a good invention. But please use it reasonably.

Syrian Bank

So there I went to my local bank branch in Abu Rummaneh to finally collect my ATM card, after opening an account about two months ago through a representative at my office. On almost daily basis had I received account statements via e-mail, unanimously stating zeros all over the screen, with the exception of my account number, the current date, and the bank's contact telephone number.

The mission was to collect the ATM card, deposit some Syrian money on my new account and exchange some foreign currencies before depositing them to account. It was 3:40pm when I entered the branch, took my waiting number and sat down on a sumptuously upholstered armchair. A few minutes went by and I was the only customer left in the branch, yet everybody seemed to be busy doing something. Then an employee approached me asking me what I was waiting for. I showed him my waiting number and told him my various requests.

The answer was devastating: no, you cannot collect your card today, it is already too late for that. No, you cannot deposit or exchange foreign currency now, it is already too late for that. No, we do not accept Jordanian Dinars, Turkish Lira or Omani Rials at our bank, you have to exchange them somewhere on Sha3lan Street. No, you cannot do anything right here right now. Wow.

After some discussion they allowed me to at least deposit some Syrian currency before I had to leave the branch. They explained to me that after 3pm they don't do anything but clean up and close their books for the day.

I can only wonder why they would still allow people to enter the branch, take a number and wait. And the fact that they do not exchange currencies from two of their neighbouring countries intrigued me very much. Lots of space for improvement I guess.

Syrian medicine

A long story told short: don't fall sick in Syria. For a variety of reasons. The WhySoSyria blog already gives a glimpse into the hospital system, although I have to say it does not necessarily show the full picture.

Going to a saydliyah (pharmacy) in Syria involves some courage, at least if you ask any locals here. Simply because you have to know the general rule: Syrian medicine tends to be as inefficient as coloured pills without any active components. Regardless of whether you are buying stuff produced under license of international companies or 'genuine' Syrian medicine. I would consider taking Syrian medicine as part of a healing process a very risky venture.

Having tried several times, I can confirm this is true. With two exceptions: there is one medicine against hay fever which is pretty good end efficient, and creams/balms produced locally appear to be rather fine as well. However all the others I have tried were useless, yet very cheap (usually between 35 and 100 SYP). But that will not help, will it?

If you want to bring it down to a simple suggestion: when you are sick in Syria, ask for international original medicine. It will be imported from Lebanon and tends to help. The price will be similar than in western countries though.

Syrian Bus Service

I was in Damascus and booked a relatively cheap flight from Beirut recently. Given the short distance between Damascus and Beirut there are no direct flights and you have to take a bus or rent a taxi. Renting a taxi is an easy venture but I was travelling on a relatively low budget which is why I decided to take the bus instead.

Suomrieh is the bus station serving southern Syria and Beirut, located near the south-western Damascene outskirt of Ma3dhmiyeh. After passing the security checkpoint with its impressive x-ray, I went to the '2000' office to buy a ticket for as little as 400 SYP. Time till departure: 75 minutes.

I sat down in the shadow and checked my e-mails, sent SMS, watched people running around and buses coming and going. Every few minutes some young guy would pass by and try by all means to sell me chewing gum or coffee, or clean my shoes. Being used to this, it was not a big deal for me. But I could spot some tourists who definitely felt offended. After about half an hour, a guy travelling to Amman sat down next to me and we reminisced about travelling in this region.

15 minutes before scheduled departure I spotted the '2000' bus in the distance, waiting to be admitted into the precinct. Soon I would be aboard sleeping, reading, playing Sudoku and listening to music... 15 minutes later, I started getting a little nervous and walked to the bus. The driver explained to me that the 11am bus was cancelled following an engine failure and that his bus would only leave at 3pm. I was not mad at him but I was mad at the bus company. No information was published at all and people were losing time because of this failure. Ahla w sahla - welcome to Syria.

I walked back to the company's office and got my money back, then went to the taxi stand and shared one with 3 other guys at a reasonable rate of 700 SYP. Had I known about this hassle before, I would never have waited over an hour for the bus!

As you can see, quality of service in Syria is not high end till now. Day after day you can see some promising attempts and developments, yet the mass of services you will receive will not be satisfying. Neither for the Syrian national nor the visitor or expat. I see that the European Union is trying to help us implement better standards. The website www.qualitysyria.com is only a beginning though, and 12 million Euro will not help creating anything sustainable in termns of quality here. Much more effort will be needed, and as we all know such investment will pay off. Time to think. Time to change things.

Customer Service Experience in Syria

There I was, with my recently purchased 3g mobile internet SIM card from Syriatel. And pretty happy I should say, given that since then I have full coverage and good transmission speeds in my apartment. Before, it was a disaster to say the least. With MTN I sometimes had slow coverage barra (outside) on my balcony. But only if I went towards the far end of it and put the 3g dongle into a certain direction. 'Bismillah' was my standard utterance before I clicked on the connect button.

All these experiences have now been exchanged in favour of relatively stable and speedy internet even inside my bedroom. Can't complain.

Now the mission was to cancel my former MTN 3g subscription before the end of my current bill cycle which turned out to be a real venture, giving close insight into the local customer service mentality.

Act 1: getting a number and counting

So I went to the MTN outlet on Autostrade Mazzeh, made my way through the thick crowd and got waiting number A089. A view on the dashboard showed me the deplorable reality; there were almost 60 people waiting to be served before me. I got outside and walked back to my car, getting my mobile in order to spend my time surfing through WAP but after 15 minutes and still 52 people waiting I got bored.

Act 2: alternative location

Which is why I decided to go to a smaller outlet near Baramkeh. Having passed it multiple times I could rarely see significant crowds waiting, which was exactly what I was counting on now. Apart from that, my bladder was starting to call.

Once arrived, I had to wait less than 5 minutes until I was served by a young and friendly lady... who unfortunately had to inform me that this was an MTN franchise offering limited services only. Her recommendation in order not to loose too much time was to check out the outlet on Baghdad Street.

Act 3: travelling

Despite relatively dense qaj3 (traffic jam) it only took me a bit more than ten minutes to get to Baghdad Street and Najmeh Square where the MTN outlet is located. I parked in a side street, paid 100 SYP at the meter and happily walked to the shop. But then - at 7:30pm the blinds were closed and a note in Arabic stated that from December 4 to 8 they were closed for renovation.

My bladder had not gotten its relief in the meantime.

Act 4: back to the roots

I had it! And I hate it! This is what I thought more then an hour after the beginning of my Odyssey. So I got back to my car, rushed to the Mazzeh outlet again and checked for the waiting number. But they were already at A102 which means I had to take a new number. A140. Gosh, my urge to pee associated with my anger made me think for the fraction of a second that I should simply pee inside their waiting hall. After some deliberation I decided to behave and stay cool. Instead I walked out and found my relief in a mini park some 50 yards from there in the dark. Back from there I got to MTN's neighbour: Syriatel.

Excursus: Syriatel visit

I am not saying that Syriatel's customer service is really much better. However at the service centre my experience is better than with MTN. I never had to wait for more than 10 minutes, however the call centre appears to be a different story. There were 5 people waiting and I was served within 4 minutes.

Act 5: done!

25 minutes later, back at MTN, it was my turn and I was finally able to cancel the 3g line. Needless to say they took 2 copies of my ID (after taking one less than two weeks ago) and asked lots of questions. But when I studied the document in the end they did not even mention the actual reason why I cancelled the line. I could not care less, though. Did it really matter to me? No. As long as I am out of this. I am really done with them. Well, not quite. Some spice likely to come up within a month when they are supposed to give me the refund of my deposit: the enormous amount of 1,000 SYP (equals to 21 US$). Which can only be refunded by cheque, and of course they promised me to call once it is ready. That will be fun, with me travelling shortly.