Syria

In our haste to leave the dodgy hotel we caught a taxi to the bus stop to try and catch a bus to Krak des Chevilliers but found that there were no ATM’s in town or any money exchanges at the bus depot. Once again we got harassed at the bus stop by haggling bus reps wanting our money.

We ended up being approached by a taxi driver that spoke English and wanted to take us to the castle. We managed to get his price down and he took us back into Homs to change some of our money.

We finally got to the castle and decided to get a guided tour. The castle is massive and would have to be the most impressive I have seen so far, as you will see from the photos. We found something new and beautiful every time we turned around.

Well where do we start. We had a lovely first couple of hours in Syria and then it all went down hill. Homs is not rally a great memory of Syria but we lived to tell the tail. The bus dropped us off near the bus station and we got mobbed by taxi drivers that didn't speak English. We finally found someone that spoke English and he supposedly translated where we were supposed to be staying for us. We got in the taxi and got taken on a wild goose chase. He took us tot he wrong hotel and then wanted to charge us more to go to the one we asked for. Well needless to say we put up a fight but still ended up paying more money. Got dropped of where we were going to find out that the hotel no longer existed. By this time we were so tired and had had enough of it all we found the closest hotel available, which turned out to be the dodgiest hotel I have ever seen. We stayed the night, sleeping on our sleeping bags and on our camping mats, as the beds were really disgusting. We got out of there ASAP in the morning and flagged a taxi to the bus stop. Got dropped to the same bus station from the night before and worked out that we got totally ripped off, we payed 3 times the amount we were supposed to pay.