It was 2011 and the holiday was supposed to be straight forward

Spend a week in Beirut in Lebanon and then get a taxi over the border to Syria

And then spend a week travelling the historical sites in Syria 

But there was trouble brewing in Syria, a civil war

I had applied for my Syrian visa

To travel I needed to give my details to the Foreign Office in case of problems

Beirut is a lovely place, friends there explained “the rules of the jungle”, where, as a western tourist I could go and places I should avoid

It was explained that during the Beirut civil war, there was an unwritten rule that a car bomb would only go off, every third day.  Locals stayed home on that day

A week is a long time in politics and trouble started to move fast in Syria as part of the “Arab Spring”

The point where the UK Foreign Office (FcO) deemed it unsafe for UK nationals to be in the country

The FcO were playing it safe, they thought I was already in Syria, hence the phone call

Plans were changed, rather than the taxi to Syria, I got a flight to Amman in Jordan and picked up a hire car

This week was spent, driving in Jordan with 3 nights at Petra and the onto Dead Sea (Jordan side)