27 MARCH, 2019 

Things are really getting away from me and I will end up writing stories after I am home – which is what I do not want to do.

We are staying at the Ascott Sathorn in Bangkok – a lovely apartment with heaps of room: a large lounge room, separate bedroom, a kitchen – and the ultimate blessing – a laundry with washer and dryer. My little carry-on bag has been bulging with unwashed clothing while our suitcases have got progressively lighter. We stayed at an Ascott hotel in Singapore last year and really appreciated the generous rooms at a reasonable price. Great location, with the SkyTrain only metres away, and lots of nice restaurants close by.

Anyway, I am getting ahead of myself – I am still supposed to be in Israel!

Our flight to Bangkok was 11.00pm, so we had a full day to explore. Jen had the brilliant plan to get as far away from Tel Aviv and the airport as we possibly could. I mean, what ever could go wrong! As it turned out, everything was fine, and we had a wonderful outing.

Rosh HaNikra is as far north as you get without placing a foot in Lebanon. This is part of Israel’s north coast and has some enormous grottos, carved out of the limestone where the mountain meets the sea.  It certainly sounded interesting, and despite a couple of moments of apprehension, we thought we would capture a train and check it out.

We climbed into our taxi and asked to be taken to HaShalom train station. Our driver thought it best to go to another station a bit further away, but easier to get to because of peak hour traffic. Tel Aviv taxi drivers love to talk – a lot – leaning around and chatting loudly about wanting to come to America in Australia. Yeah. Meanwhile he is surging in and out of traffic lanes, blasting his horn at the less adventurous drivers, yelling abuse. One bit of intelligence he had was that as it was Sunday, the trains would be very full as soldiers are going back to barracks all over the country. Half an hour and 60 shekels later he swung into the Savidor Station, and sure enough the place was pulsating with young soldiers carrying enormous backpacks and most armed with deadly-looking machine guns. I had taken the precaution of arming myself with a walking stick, not because I expected trouble, but it is sometimes a good way to get a seat on a crowded train. And yes, a couple of soldiers gave way to our advanced years, perhaps persuaded by the walking stick and a Clint Eastwood-like glare – “make my day.”

We got a day pass with unlimited travel within Israel for 45 shekels and thought that was a good deal. The train motors along at a cracking pace and there are just a few stations to get to the end of the line at Nahayira, just north of Acre. The passengers were mainly soldiers, deep in conversation on mobile phones, or sleeping, and multiplying in number as we advanced north.

The instructions on the tourist brochure gave pretty good direction to the taxi rank, but the bust station was not so evident, so we decided to take a cab for the price of 60 shekels.  This driver was even more insane than our first cab experience of the day. And this chap had the benefit of country roads and limited traffic.  These guys just want to talk and pay more attention to passengers than to the roads. Maybe they don’t get many Australians. He offered to come and take us back, but as he only gave me 20 change from the 100 shekels I gave him, we were not so keen on the idea.

Anyway, we had arrived at Rosh HaNikra. There was a cable car down to the grottos, and we spent about an hour exploring the caves and getting some history of the site. As well as having interesting geology, it also has some interesting human history. At one stage, a railway line went through the mountain, linking Lebanon to Israel as part of a Cairo to Istanbul link. Part of the set up was a railway bridge linking two parts of the cliffside adjacent to the grotto, but this was destroyed in 1948 to hinder Lebanese arms shipments to the Arab forces opposed to the Partition of Israel. The tunnels are now sealed, but parts of the track still remains.

Above the grottos, there is a restaurant on the clifftop, with the Israel-Lebanon border post a few metres away. We enjoyed a simple but delicious meal and wandered up to the border fence. It was heavily guarded, but I managed to put a few fingers into Lebanon. With military people being a bit jittery, I did not want to test this any further.

We decided to get the bus back to Nahayira, as our day-passes covered this cost as well, and we did not want to try the taxi again. The bus driver was worse than the taxi. I was barely on the vehicle before he lurched away, leaving me scrambling for a seat. He flung the bus at a mad pace around corners in the manner of a drunk behind the wheel of a Porsche – not an old man behind  the wheel of a city bus. Still, for all the recklessness, we got to the station okay and were lucky enough to have a five-minute wait before the train departed. (The trains run every half hour.) This time the train was mostly empty, and I think we slept. At least I did, as Jenny woke me just as we pulled in to the HaShalom station, the main station in Tel Aviv.

The cab ride back to the Metropolitan was incrementally worse than our previous rides., but nevertheless, got us home safely even if our nerves were a bit on edge. Jonathon had returned from his adventures at Masada and had video of his paraglide flight to prove it.  Not something we would do.

We had arrived back at about 5.00pm which was excellent as we were to be picked up at 7.00pm for our transfer to Ben Gurion Airport for our flight at 11.00pm. There was something of a scramble, as our transfer which was booked as part of the tour, did not arrive. As time slipped by, we were getting more anxious, as the extra security at Ben Gurion means that you need to be at the airport three hours ahead of flight time. Jenny eventually got the hotel staff to contact the travel agents, who arranged for a driver to pick us up. This taxi driver defied our expectations. He was polite, an excellent driver, patient and took nice little short cuts to avoid the heavy traffic through the city – and he got us there right on time, despite us giving up half an hour of stress-laden waiting.

The El Al flight was fine, though the plane, a Boeing 747-400 was fully loaded. It was interesting surveying the range of passengers on this flight – conservative Jews with black suits and hats, a couple of older men who looked like Albert Einstein, animated and chatty Thais, couples with children…  There were the seasoned travellers with bored looks and the new travellers, their eyes bright with excitement. It would be an interesting photographic essay to capture the faces of people in airline queues.

We were quite exhausted after our day, but it was difficult to sleep even though the seats were okay if lacking a bit of leg room.

So now we are in Bangkok. We are being tourists here for a couple of days, but keen to get home and get back to a normal life for a while.

Shalom again.