Baby on Auto-Tuner

So we took a cab to his house, met his family, and had great food. Syria is a great place for a vegetarian; lots of salads, lots of fruit. Especially on the streets there are many juice bars where you can buy fresh juices for little money. Later on we went with him to a café where we smoked some fruit tobacco in the water pipe, and had some drinks. However I did notice that he took a special interest in Iva; these people are too obvious.

This was a trend I also noticed in Latakia when we were with Faisal and his family. Now let me tell you something. Syria is a great country, but you have to watch your back, and more importantly yours girlfriend’s. When you’re careful, you’ll experience all the good things, but you just gotta know how the game is played here. I remember when we went to the Ruins of Ugarit, an ancient city near Latakia, we met a family from the UK there. Their son had been working in Saudi Arabia for a while and he spook pretty fluent Arabic, he talked to Faisal and asked if he could have a word with me.
The ride to Aleppo was smooth. We had a good lunch while on the road, because we bought these croissant kinds of things filled with nuts and honey; very good. It took us about 3 hours to get to Aleppo, and we weren’t even there for 2 minutes and we already got another taste of Syrian hospitality. A guy offered us to have tea as his house, he was about my age and he told me he worked for the police.

Oh, and one more thing about the bus ride. There was this TV with Arab music on it, but at one point you could hear a baby crying on auto-tuner! Maybe you can already imagine, but I promise that if you want to hear something really funny, get a recording of a crying baby and put it on auto-tune. Works the laughing muscles guaranteed!


Then he told me that in Syria the people are indeed very nice, but you have to take into account that there can be a hidden intention. It’s definitely true that there are people in Syria who will be happy to help you unconditionally, but he said that some people will be after your money, or other things. Now the people I’ve been staying with had plenty of money, but also plenty of sexual desires. One time I left Iva alone in Faisal’s house for about half an hour; I thought I’d be back sooner, but it was out of my control. His friend took me to a woman to see if she had accidently taken some of my clothes that I lost, and he told me we’d be right back.

Wrong. They started chatting and it took about half an hour to get back. During this time, I suddenly started to get a bad feeling. I wanted to get back to the house. Some part of me thought I was just being paranoid, that I shouldn’t be so cautious of these wonderful people, but my bad feeling turned out to be accurate. When I came back to the house, everything looked normal; Iva acted normal, so I figured I was just being paranoid. However, later on she told me Faisal was actually trying to make advances on her. I was furious; while I was going home I could already see myself kicking in the door and beating the crap out of him if I would expect anything like that. Iva probably knew this and that’s why she didn’t tell me until we left Latakia.

I really don’t care if it’s the president himself; nobody touches my girl. And they’ll know I’m serious cause I’ll teach them a lesson they won’t ever forget. I’ll make such a hard example that the whole country will know never to mess with a dutch guy’s girlfriend. It’s disgusting, disrespectful, and barbaric. Anyway, enough bad things about Syria, it is still a beautiful place to be, but like I said, you just gotta know how to play the game. Don’t ever leave your girl alone for too long in these countries. And I wouldn’t advice going on holiday into these countries alone as a woman, unless you’re like complete alpha female with kung fu skills.

I suppose there’s something good and bad to be said about pretty much any place on earth. I would say to appreciate the good, and avoid the bad. And even if it strikes you, don’t let it make you forget about the beauty that is always surrounding you.