Before starting our Jordan diaries, I decided to dedicate a post on general planning for Jordan visit. Like lots of other touristic destinations, it might look easy to visit Jordan. There are lots of information available online, the country infrastructure is improved significantly over years for tourism. But to us, it just makes it harder to see the real soul of a country or even having a personalized experience. It takes more time and effort to plan for something different in destinations like Jordan. Besides that Jordan can be expensive as well. One Jordanian Dinar was equal to 2.1 New Zealand Dollar when we visited Jordan and just a single entry ticket to Petra will cost a hefty price of 70 USD so it’s essential to plan before visiting Jordan just to avoid bankruptcy 😉 Here I share, our experience on logistics planning for Jordan.
Flights:
Living in New Zealand, the biggest portion of our travels cost is flights. So normally I constantly search for the most efficient and cost effective way of travelling as soon as I got an idea where our next trip will be. Travelling to Jordan wasn’t an exception. In the draft plan, I was thinking we will see Jordan, Israel, Palestine and Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. Searching for tickets, it appeared that Amman is such an expensive destination from Auckland, New Zealand, comparing to Europe and even Morocco. I kept searching for a while and couldn’t find any good deal. So tried to change the strategy and focused on flying to Istanbul and from there to Jordan which looked way cheaper and it gives us an excuse to stay for few nights in Istanbul again. Then digging more, I noticed that instead of flying directly from Istanbul to Amman, it will cost the same if we fly to Beirut and then Beirut to Amman. So just like that, our plan for travelling to Jordan has changed to Istanbul, Lebanon and Jordan with a better airline and cheaper ticket and a chance to visit few more places too. We flew Qatar airways to Istanbul and then Middle Eastern Airlines to Beirut. MEA has daily flights between Istanbul and Beirut. I booked it online without any problem and the quality of the flight was really good as well for 100 USD including 30 kg luggage allowance and seat selection included in the cost.
From Beirut to Amman, we booked our tickets with MEA too. Well you might think the flight from Beirut to Amman should be cheaper but no it is almost double the price. Why? hmmmm well, welcome to the Middle East, nothing is straight forward in here. Istanbul, Beirut distance is almost 1500 km versus 300 km distance between Beirut and Amman, Jordan but the fact is because the current situations in Syria and the fact that Israel won’t allow other airline to fly over Israel, the flight from Beirut to Amman route looks like this:
Well, it justifies paying 160 USD for almost 2 hours of flight to cover 300 km distance between Beirut and Amman. For this route, you can pick between Royal Jordanian Airline and MEA for this flight. MEA was cheaper and I got another leg of journey with them so we booked our trip with MEA. When we got to the airport, we noticed that we are flying Royal Jordanian, so we paid less with MEA and flew Royal Jordanian. No complaint! It’s always good to try different airlines. They were equally good.
So in terms of flights, check different routes and destinations instead of focusing only on your final destination and you might be awarded with more places to see and less money to pay.Â
Visa:
As mentioned, earlier, Jordan infrastructure is improved for tourists, and it’s really easy to get on arrival visa for lots of countries. If your country is not on the list you need to apply prior to your travel. In terms of visa, it’s easy to get it in the airport, we got there around 10:00 pm and it wasn’t any queue in front of the visa booth but most of the people on Beirut-Amman flights were locals.Â
We didn’t apply for on arrival visa though. As you might heard of, Jordan offers a package called Jordan Pass. It included Jordan single entry visa for one month plus one day entry to Petra and allowance to see more than 40 other sites in Jordan. Well I think it definitely worth it because the single entry visa for one month to Jordan cost 40 USD and one day ticket to Petra costs 70 USD. So 100 USD is a good deal for the Jordan Pass.
Things to Know about Jordan Pass:
We still believe that Jordan pass is a good way to combine Visa and Petra visit costs but there are few facts to know about that:
- When you got to the Amman airport, you cannot walk to the passport control with Jordan pass. It is still required to visit the visa booth before the passport control. It didn’t take that much time bust still required.
- Again, it’s not possible to get into ticket control in Petra and avoid the ticket queue with Jordan pass, which is really annoying. You need to stay in the queue, show your Jordan pass and passport, get the ticket, walk to the ticket control and there’s they ask for your Jordan pass and ticket again! We found it strange and annoying.
- It is mentioned on Jordan pass, that more than 40 attractions in Jordan. Well, we only tried one, Mount Nebo on our way to the Dead see and it wasn’t included!
Accommodation:
We had a week in Jordan, and we planned two nights stay somewhere in the middle of nowhere in a village in Jordan, Anywhere but not Wadi Musa close to Petra for another two nights and two nights in Wadi Rum. There’s no shortage of accommodations in Jordan. You can find cheap hostels to all 5 star resorts at Dead Sea and Wadi Musa and fancy Martian tents in Wadi Rum. But surprisingly, there are not that many mid-range accommodations available. There’s also lack of authentic local hostels and it makes it hard to find accommodation types that we prefer in Jordan. So I’ve done our research, found the places that we really wanted to stay and planned the rest of the trip around it.Â
We stayed 4 nights at different airbnbs, one of them was the best that you can imagine, the other was the worst experience but I’m still glad that we’ve done it and stayed in the rural Jordan for few days and for both we paid 100 NZD per night. It’s not cheap at all but enabled us to see rural Jordan and experience village life in Jordan and also experience the other aspect of Petra.Â
For Dead Sea, you can find lots of Vloggers, putting gorgeous videos on amazing hotels by the dead see and how much they enjoyed the sunset, but looking at the prices, there’s no mid-range or budget accommodation available to stay at Dead Sea or even to soak in the water for free. I’ll add a separate post on how to enjoy the Dead Sea without getting bankrupt. We managed to stay on our way south from the Dead Sea in an Airbnb close to Kerak with an amazing rooftop that we managed to see the sunset over the Dead Sea from.Â
For Wadi rum, the options are endless and in each price range, the qualities are more or less the same. But having said that, we paid 30% less than other travellers that stayed with us in the same camp in Wadi Rum.
The trick in Wadi rum is the tents price per night is really cheap, and it quickly adds up by the time that you add a jeep safari or traditional dinner to your package so be careful about the final price.
I’ll add the details of our stay in our Jordan diaries.
Transportation:
We haven’t used public transportation so I won’t comment on that but we did use rental car and we definitely recommend it. Roads quality is very good and they are not crowded at all. The main reason that we wanted to have a rental car was driving off the beaten path, choosing home stays and Airbnbs out of main cities and towns more often and be more flexible with our plans. We will do the same if we visit Jordan again. It definitely costs more than using public transportation but it definitely worth it. We used Triffty , they were really nice to deal with.
