Let me preface this story that while this was certainly my worst travel day to date, had I been well-rested, I could have avoided the situation entirely or dealt with it in a more sensible way.

It was 7 am when my flight from Bangkok landed in the Amman airport.

I had not slept for a moment of the 9 hour flight over the 4 hour time difference between Thailand and Jordan. I had spent the night in a tense silent stand-off with my seat neighbour, a large man who decided that the leg space in front of me was fair game for him to take over. The constant pushing to-and-fro to defend my floor territory meant I could not sleep.

So I was going into hour #27 of being awake when I arrived in Amman, and was not at my sharpest wandering around the airport looking for my next departure gate.

If you saw an arrow pointing down and a staircase next to it, would you not assume that the sign was directing you to go down the stairs?

Photo c/o morguefile.com

In this case, it did not mean ‘go down’. It meant ‘go straight’, through the duty free shop (the other departure gates were located on the other side of the shop).

As you may have guessed, I went down.

Down did not lead to my departure gate for the connecting flight to Milan. Down led me out of the transiting passengers zone to the far side of the customs and immigration desks on the lower level. Down meant that I had technically entered Jordanian territory without an entry stamp or a visa of any kind in my passport.

Has your mind ever gone blank because you cannot fathom what to do next? That’s approximately what happened to me the moment that I realized this predicament.

I braced myself and began a lengthy conversation with the man at the immigration desk. Here is the a paraphrased short version:

“Hello, I got lost and am in the wrong part of the airport. I am trying to find the gate for the flight to Milan. Here is my passport and my tickets from Bangkok and to Milan.”

The man rifles through my passport and tickets and back to my passport, checking all the pages.

“No stamp?” he asked.

“There is no stamp. I just arrived from Bangkok and got lost. I’m going to Milan.”

“No stamp?” he repeated several times, with me explaining the situation several times back to him.

My heart sunk as I saw that this gentleman did not speak much English and did not understand me.

I’d like to say I problem-solved this obstacle in a mature and calm manner, but I didn’t. I burst into tears. This man had no idea what to do with a blubbering girl who didn’t speak Arabic so he ushered me to his supervisor’s office. His supervisor didn’t speak much more English than him. They had a fast-paced conversation in Arabic with many gestures at me and my passport pages with no stamp, during which panic swamped me again. This made me cry even more, which made them even more uncomfortable. I was in every possible way lost in translation and it was awful.

As much as I am mortified by the sheer amount of weeping that I did at that airport, my noisy tears rescued me from this impasse. Another traveller passing by the office overheard the commotion and popped his head in the door to offer to translate for us. He was an American businessman who spoke fluent Arabic and English, and helped resolve the situation in a matter of minutes.

The airport officials were incredibly nice and helped me find my gate to make sure I didn’t get lost again. They also asked that I not hold this one bad experience against Jordan and urged to come and visit their country on a better day in the future. To have received such understanding, sympathy and graciousness from these three strangers on a day like that made me tear up in gratitude. But we had all had enough of me crying for one day, so I suppressed the tears and smiled instead.

I wish I could remember their names. I will never forget their kindness, and I hope to do get to go back to Jordan on a better day to explore their beautiful country and see Petra.

Petra in the deserts of Jordan. (photo c/o morguefile)