Jordanian Taxis; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Our car arrived from Taiwan this week! Oh joyous day! We now have independence–which is always a good thing.

To mark the past eight weeks of taking Jordanian taxis on a regular basis, I am dedicating this post to the taxis of Jordan; the good, the bad and the ugly.

Let’s do the unconventional thing and start at the end with the ugly. When I Googled Jordanian taxis, about a thousand images of this popped up on my computer screen:

This is not the Jordanian taxi of which I’m referring. Instead, this is some sort of Air Jordan sneaker that has the word “taxi” in its name; not sure why. But suffice it to say, this is NOT a true Jordanian taxi. It is far too good looking. Instead, this would be an example of a Jordanian taxi:

And, experience shows that the inside of Jordanian taxis are generally uglier (and dirtier) than the outside.

Now for the good. Jordanian taxi drivers, in general, are very nice. They are cordial. They often speak English, which is appreciated. And when they ask where we are from and we admit that we are Americans (paranoid Americans claim to be Canadian), they always say, “Welcome to Jordan!” All good things.

And finally, the bad. About 50% of the time, Jordanian taxi drivers smoke; quite often lighting up just as we are getting into their cabs. Not cool! Also, Jordanian taxis have no seat belts in the back. The person riding in the front (which can never be a woman) is safely strapped in a seat belt, but those of us in the back take our lives in our own hands. Finally, Jordanian taxi drivers listen to a lot of talk radio and often, just as we get into their cars, they turn the talk radio up a couple of decibels. Now this is going to sound like a huge generalization, but usually the people on the Arabic talk radio shows are speaking in a rather angry tone and liberally use the words “America,” “Washington” and “Obama.” This leads a lot of people (foremost, Americans who speak no Arabic) to conclude that the subject matter might just be hate-filled American propaganda. Now, I realize that this may not be the case. But the combination of the volume, the tone and the few English words tends to give Americans the heeby-jeebies nonetheless.

So there you have it, the good, the bad and the ugly of Jordanian taxis.

And now, though it has nothing to do with Jordanian taxis, today marks the first time we have brought ill-gotten, infidel pork-products into our home in the Middle East.