Jordan Guide
Petra and around
Wadi Musa
WADI MUSA is an anomaly, a dusty southern Jordanian town given an unfamiliar twist with lots of signs in English, a huge number of hotels and a noticeable diminution in the usual hospitality towards foreigners. In sharp contrast to the rest of Jordan, where decency and respect are the unswerving norm, Wadi Musa shows a distressing tendency towards rip-offs, wheedling and outright hassle. Businesses and individuals all too often overcharge and under-deliver. It's a badly run, seedy little place.
If you stay for a while you may pick up on the town's rather sad air of powerlessness. This is epitomized by the local farmers and small-business people who are well aware that their hands are tied (either by decision-makers who don't always put local interests first or by regional instability that can decimate the town's income for months on end), and exemplified by the substandard hotels serviced by bored, lonely guest workers from Egypt and northern Jordan, who see little of the whirlwinds of cash that blow into town with every tour bus.
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