Friendship through the Ipod Touch

(Edits/Pictures to follow)

The tiny size and simplicity of the Ipod Touch has made it the perfect travel companion for our trip. When there is wireless internet it's a fully connected mini-laptop capable of Skyping, Facebook'ing, Blog'ing, emailing and surfing. Offline, saved web resources and travel guide PDFs have been infinately useful for finding locations and learning about key attractions on the fly. During the afternoon downtime when temperatures in Egypt and Jordan get too hot to bare we've been able to talk to friends and family, catch up on the news back home, play games, and download episodes of 30 Rock.

Now, before you say this little toy of ours is denying us the full travel experience, I'll share a story about a friendship the Touch helped us forge in Aqaba, Jordan during our visit to see Petra.

Our hotel there had WIFI, so after dinner we parked ourselves in their laid back Bedouin louge and logged on for some desert-style surfing. We were heading to Dahab next and wanted to book some accomodation.

After a brief chat about where we were relative to key Middle East locations we were on Google Earth to confirm what we already knew. And just as we did that, the smell of cigarette smoke strengthened from behind us and a soft voice asked how we were, where we were from, and with a widening smile, what we were doing.

I remarked that we were on Google Earth, checking out the area. The soft spoken man removed his sandals and sat down next to us in the lounge. Over the course of the next two nights we would learn that he was the hotel owner, a long time resident of Aqaba, a loving grandpa and very involved in Aqaba development projects.

He leaned in closely to see the satelite image and recognized the area as Aqaba and the Red Sea. He leaned in even closer and was visibly excited at the touch screen feature that enabled me to move around the map and zoom in and out with ease. At this point it was clear: he wanted on.

He called the waiter over and in Arabic asked for three mint teas. By the time the teas arrived he was familiar with the touch screen feature and had shown us where his house was in town. Next, as we sipped the teas, we travelled over above the hotel. on the screen the older satilite image revealed only his hotel and desert all around, yet now all around us there were several other inns. He remarked that for years he was the only hotel in the outskirts of the city but recently things had changed; Aqaba was booming, hoping to become a top destination on the Red Sea - Jordan's answer to Dahab or Sharm. Before his hotel the sand East of town was all Saudi territory, now it's Jordanian, but flush with Saudi development dollars.

At this point he was resting on his side supporting his head with his hand and all three of us were fixed on the screen.


He scrolled over to another spot on the edge of the city where there had been some development and then told us all about his involvement with a US Aid funded water treatment plant. He asked us where we leaved relative to Chicago and Las Vegas, two cities he had visited to gain more knwoledge related to water treatment.

At which point he handed back the Touch and I flew us over to the West Coast of Canada. We showed him Vancouver Island, our community James Bay, and Beacon Hill Park.

After a brief chat about Petra he was up and gone. The next evening after touring Petra via a special deal orcastrated by our friend we returned to the same spot for some more mint tea. Within minutes he was back, this time with his young grandson.

His grandson was visibly excited. The grandfather sat close and quickly lit his first of many cigarettes. He was pleased to hear that we enjoyed Petra. By minute 2of the Petra conversation the grandson was basically climbing all over the Bedouin coushins and his grandfather. Both sets of eyes were firmly fixed on the Ipod,they didn't need to say anything; they were there to check out Google Earth.

I handed over the Ipod and the grandfather proceeded to show his grandson all the landmarks we had seen the night before. Once that was done Steph and I leaned in more closely to see what was going on. Just then we were whisked eastward out of town towards the Saudi border.

They spoke in Arabic, everything was moving too fast. With the passing of a thick yellow line one thing was certain: we were no longer in Jordan. A foreign, but known name appeared on the tiny screen. We stoppoed breifly in Jeddah, but the grandson was uninterested. He interupted the steady travel we had grown used to from his grandpa by touching the screen and jerking us Eastward further into Saudi territory.

The grandpa regained control by lightly nudging the excited child away. Under his control we steadily arrived in the holy city of Mecca. Once we were above the Haj - the most holy site in the holy city - he demonstrated his mastery of the touchscreen by instantly zooming us in from what appeared to be 60,000 feet to just above the buildings. We saw the people gathered around below, the grandfather and grandson were visibly excited. Though the grandfather had previously made the pilgramig to Mecca, this was clearly a first. It's very cheesy to say, but we had basically all connected around Google Earth on the Ipod Touch.

Next, the grandson asked if he could show us a video on YouTube of his favourite actor, when no videos were found of this Egyptian star he resorted to looking up Mr. Bean. We finished the evening by laughing at the antics of Rowan Atkinson.