Best Craft Beer Bars in Aqaba for Serious Beer Drinkers

Photo by  Juli Kosolapova

28 min read · Aqaba, Jordan · craft beer bars ·

Best Craft Beer Bars in Aqaba for Serious Beer Drinkers

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Words by

Nour Al-Ahmad

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Best Craft Beer Bars in Aqaba: A Local's Honest Guide to the City's Growing Scene

Most visitors come to Aqaba for the Red Sea coral reefs, the Wadi Rum desert excursions, and the duty-free shopping along Al-Sahel Street. Fewer people realize that this port city on the northeastern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba has quietly developed a craft beer culture that surprises even seasoned regional travelers. Over the past half-decade, a handful of bars, restaurants, and independent spots have started pouring legitimate craft taps and stocking bottles you would not expect to find on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula. I have spent the better part of three years systematically visiting every establishment in this city that pours something made in small batches, fermented with intention, and served with the kind of care that makes a pint taste different from what you get at a standard hotel lager push.

Let me be upfront about something before we go further. Aqaba is not Portland or Berlin. The best craft beer bars in Aqaba are not always dedicated craft beer destinations in the way that term might suggest if you are used to cities with twenty-tap growler shops. What you will find here is a handful of passionate hotel bars, a couple of neighborhoods with restaurants that rotate specialty taps, and a small but real community of homebrewers who are pushing the boundaries of what Jordanian beer culture looks like. This makes the scene more intimate, more experimental, and honestly more rewarding when you find the right bartender on the right night.

The broader context matters. Jordan as a country has a complicated relationship with alcohol. There is no prohibition, but cultural norms mean that most drinking happens inside hotel lobbies, licensed restaurants, and a small number of bars concentrated in Amman and resort cities like Aqaba. Aqaba's special economic zone status means the city operates slightly differently from the rest of the country. The rules around alcohol sales are more relaxed, the tourist corridor along the southern beach area is packed with European-style resort hotels, and the expat and maritime workforce that cycles through the port brings a more international drinking culture with it. This combination is exactly what has allowed the local breweries Aqaba scene to emerge in ways that would be harder to imagine in, say, Irbid or Madaba.

What follows is not a ranked list. It is an honest, street-by-street, bar-by-bar breakdown of where to go, what to drink, when to show up, and what most visitors walk right past without knowing what they missed.


The Aqaba Craft Beer Scene: How a Desert Port City Built Its Own Beer Culture

Understanding how craft beer took root in Aqaba requires understanding the city itself. Aqaba sits at Jordan's only coastal point, a narrow strip of land pressed between Israel to the west, Saudi Arabia to the south, and the rust-colored mountains of Wadi Araba to the north. For centuries, this was a port town. Ottoman, Arab, and British hands all shaped what stands here. The Mamluk fort at the edge of the old souk, the crumbling Ottoman customs house near the marina, the rusted railway tracks from the Hejaz line buried under sand near the port, all of it tells a story of a city that exists because the world kept moving goods through this one sliver of coastline.

That mercantile identity never left. Today, Aqaba's economy runs on tourism, the port, and the ASEZ (Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority), which makes it a magnet for international business travelers, dive instructors from Southeast Asia, maritime logistics workers from across the Middle East, and European holidaymakers on package resort deals. Every one of those groups drinks, and they drink differently. The German tourists at the beach resorts want pilsners in large glasses. The Filipino port workers and expat dive masters drink whatever cold beer is cheapest at the nearest liquor store. The younger Jordanian professionals, the ones who studied in Amman or abroad, they are the ones asking for something different, something with hops and malt character and a story on the label.

The craft beer conversation in Jordan really kicked off in Amman around 2014 to 2016, with the emergence of smaller operations experimenting with styles borrowed from European and American traditions. That energy has been slow to reach Aqaba, partly because the licensing and distribution logistics for a population of roughly 150,000 are very different from serving a capital city of over 4 million people. But Aqaba's hotel infrastructure, especially the international chains along the southern beach strip, has been the bridge. These hotels import and pour regional craft beers because their international clientele demands it. And over time, that demand has trickled outward into smaller bars and restaurants that might serve as a gateway to the broader culture of microbrewery Aqaba experimentation, even if some of those taps are still technically part of the Amman supply chain.

The scene now is real but fragile. There is no single dedicated craft beer bar in Aqaba in the way you would find in a Western city. Instead, what exists is a network of hotel bars, rooftop lounges, and a few independent restaurants where at least some of the taps or bottles represent genuine small-batch fermentation, and where the staff actually know what they are pouring. Finding them requires knowing the city, and that is exactly what this guide is for.

Local Insider Tip: "Do not ask the front desk at most hotels for 'craft beer.' Ask the bartender directly. In Aqaba, about 60 percent of the time, the front desk will either say no or point you to whatever Heineken variant is on sale. The bartender usually knows what is in the back fridge or what the manager ordered last month that has not made it onto the printed menu yet."


The Marina District: Where Port Workers and Hotel Guests Cross Paths

The marina area, technically running along Al-Muluk Street and its extension toward the Aqaba Marina proper, is one of the first places to investigate if you are looking for anything resembling craft beer taps Aqaba outside the full resort hotels. This stretch is where the city's maritime economy and its hospitality economy physically overlap. Dive shops, yacht charter offices, fish restaurants, bars, and mid-range hotels all sit within a few blocks of each other.

The bars here tend to cater to two crowds that do not always mix: the younger Jordanian and expat dive professionals who spend their days underwater and their evenings looking for something cold with actual flavor, and the European tourists who wander down from the resort strip looking for a "local experience." The best nights here tend to be Thursday and Friday evenings, when Aqaba's small nightlife scene comes alive. You will find a couple of spots along this strip that rotate specialty taps, particularly during the high season from March through May and again from September through November, when Aqaba's weather is bearable in the evening and the tourist flow is at its peak.

The specific streets to walk: start at the intersection of Al-Muluk Street and King Hussein Street, then move south toward the marina promenade. Check the bars closest to the dive shop cluster first, because those are most likely to have owners or managers who are themselves beer drinkers with opinions about what they pour.

What you will notice immediately about this district is that everything is walkable but feels disconnected. You will walk past a high-end lobby bar, then a hardware store, then a bar with a chalkboard outside advertising "live sports." The craft beer offerings are scattered, and the venue with the best selection on any given week might change depending on what shipments arrived. This is not a curated beer district. It is a working port city where beer happens to exist.

Insider Tip from a Regular: "There is a bar on this strip, two doors north of the main marina fish restaurant everyone photographs, that keeps a cooler behind the bar with about six specialty bottles that never go on the menu. If you are friendly and look like you know what you are asking for, the owner will pull them out for you. He stocks them personally from a distributor he knows in Amman."


Al-Saadah Street: The Heart of Aqaba's Restaurant Quarter

Al-Saadah Street and its immediate side streets form what most locals consider Aqaba's central restaurant quarter. It runs roughly parallel to the main coastal road in the center of town and is dense with shawarma shops, Arabic grill houses, seafood spots, and a small but growing number of restaurants that cater to the Jordanian middle class's appetite for international dining experiences.

This is where you are most likely to find restaurants that have added a craft beer or two to their drinks list, even if it is tucked into a wine-and-cocktails menu rather than being advertised front and center. A few spots along Al-Saadah and its side streets have invested in proper tap systems or at least maintain a refrigerator stocked with imported regional craft labels. Do not expect a twenty-line draft list. Expect two to four taps that represent the best of what the Jordanian craft scene has to offer, possibly supplemented by a microbrewery Amman lager that has made the trip down to Aqaba's distributors.

The character of this neighborhood is humbler than the resort strip. Families dine here on weeknights. Students from Al-Hussein Bin Talal University order here on weekends. The bars that do serve alcohol tend to keep a lower profile, with frosted windows or discreet signage. This is the Aqaba where most Jordanians actually live, drink, and eat, and the beer culture here reflects that grounded, everyday energy rather than the imported party atmosphere of the beach resorts.

The best time to explore Al-Saadah Street for a drink is after 8 PM on a Thursday or Friday. Midweek, the restaurants that serve alcohol will have it, but the atmosphere is quieter and some smaller places may not bother keeping specialty stock out. Thursday night is when this street really wakes up, and you might have the chance to talk to a bartender or owner who is willing to tell you what they have behind the bar that is not on any menu.

Local Insider Tip: "On Al-Saadah, look for the restaurants that display bottles in a refrigerated case near the entrance rather than just listing drinks on a menu. The ones with visible bottle cases are the ones that actually curate their selection. If the bottles are hidden in a back cooler, you are probably getting whatever the driver delivered that week."


South Beach Hotel Bars: Imported Quality, Resort Prices

I debated whether to include the south beach hotels because "hotel bar" is not exactly what people want to hear when they are searching for authentic craft beer culture. But here is the reality: the best physical tap installations and the most consistent access to genuine craft beer in Aqaba are found inside the international hotel bars along the southern beach strip, south of the main city center toward the port border area.

Hotels in this zone, including several large international chain properties, serve clientele that is overwhelmingly European, particularly German, Italian, and Eastern European. These guests expect a minimum standard of beer quality, and the hotels have responded by investing in proper draft systems that include at least one or two craft options alongside the standard lager lineup. You will find Czech and German-style ales, occasional Belgian imports, and yes, sometimes Jordanian craft microbrews printed on the tap handle with a local label.

The prices will hurt. You are paying resort premiums that can be two to three times what you would pay for a beer at any independent bar in the city center. A pint of craft beer in one of these south beach hotel bars can run 8 to 12 Jordanian dinars, which is roughly 11 to 17 USD. For Aqaba, that is steep.

But if you are staying anywhere near the south beach area, these hotel bars are a reliable fallback. They have climate control. They have clean glassware. They have staff who can actually describe what is in the glass. On a Tuesday or Wednesday night in low season, you might have the bar to yourself and end up in a genuine conversation with a bartender about what the local distributor network looks like.

Local Insider Tip: "If you are not a hotel guest, go to the hotel bar that is not on the ground floor. In most of these south beach resorts, the lobby level bar is the tourist trap. The rooftop or upper-floor bar is where hotel staff and local after-work drinkers actually go, and the beer selection is the same but the crowd is different and sometimes they pour more generously."


The Ayla Development Area: New Money, New Taps

Ayla is Aqaba's most ambitious mixed-use development, a sprawling lagoon-side complex of residential villas, retail spaces, restaurants, golf courses, and hotel accommodations built on reclaimed and developed land along the coast north of the marina district. It is Jordan's answer to a Dubai-style lifestyle development, and like most places with that kind of money behind it, it has attracted restaurateurs and bar operators with more cosmopolitan ambitions than what you find in the old city.

The bars and restaurants within Ayla are among the most likely spots in Aqaba to feature well-curated beer menus. The clientele here includes wealthy Ammanis with holiday homes, Gulf tourists, and international business travelers attending events at the Ayla conference facilities. The operators who run F&B outlets within Ayla know that their customers have been to Beirut, Istanbul, Dubai, and London, and they pour accordingly.

You will find a few spots within the Ayla commercial area that maintain tap lists numbering between five and ten at least during peak season. The microbrewery Aqaba connection here is usually indirect, most of what you drink will be imported Jordanian craft from Amman operations, but the pouring infrastructure and the staff knowledge in this area is noticeably better than almost anywhere else in the city. Ayla has something else too: late-night energy. Because the development operates somewhat independently of the city center's rhythm, its bars and lounges stay open later, past midnight on weekends, creating a social atmosphere that feels disconnected from the conservative energy of the surrounding governorate.

Bring your wallet. Ayla is premium-priced by Jordanian standards. Expect cocktails starting at 8 dinars, craft drafts at 9 to 11 dinars, and the kind of service charge that quietly appears on your bill. But the tradeoff is comfort, cleanliness, and a beer list that someone actually thought about when designing the menu.

One Thing Most Visitors Do Not Know About Ayla

Most tourists who visit Ayla see the lagoon, the golf course, and the retail shops. Few realize that the residential portions of the development have attracted a population of longer-term expats, including a small but growing number of young people from Amman who are working in Aqaba's tech and logistics sectors. These residents drink at the same Ayla bars but on different nights and at different times, and if you show up on a Tuesday evening instead of a Saturday, you might find a quieter, more local version of the place where regulars actually talk to the bartenders about what is on tap and what just arrived.

Local Insider Tip: "Ayla-restaurant best-kept secret: order beer at the bar first to get the bar menu, not the table menu. The bar menu at several Ayla spots has specials and seasonals that never make it to the printed table menus, and it is updated weekly."


The Local Breweries Scene in Aqaba: What Exists and What Is Coming

Here is where I need to be honest. As of now, Aqaba does not have a fully independent, production-scale local brewery Aqaba that operates its own facility within the city and distributes to multiple outlets the way you might find in Amman or across the border in Eilat, Israel.

What Aqaba does have is a network of homebrewers and micro-scale producers. Some of these people are Jordanians who picked up the hobby during years living abroad, often in Europe or North America, and brought their equipment back. Others are expats, European dive instructors or maritime workers, who started brewing in their apartments out of boredom during the off-season and slowly built something shareable. A few of these homebrewers sell or trade their product informally to restaurant owners they know personally. A couple have approached the ASEZ about the possibility of a small licensed brewery but have run into the same bureaucratic and licensing headwinds that face any alcohol-related business venture in Jordan.

The closest things to a local breweries Aqaba presence are two fold. First, a couple of Amman-based craft breweries have extended their distribution into Aqaba, particularly to the hotel bars and Ayla-area restaurants. These Amman microbreweries produce IPAs, wheat ales, stouts, and pilsners that represent the best of Jordanian craft beer right now, and finding one of their taps in Aqaba is a small victory. Second, there are occasional pop-up events, usually held at private venues or within hotel function rooms during high tourist season, where local homebrewers pour their own creations for a paying audience. These events are rarely advertised outside of Instagram posts and WhatsApp groups, making attendance largely a matter of who you know.

The potential is clear. Aqaba has the international demographic, the relaxed alcohol framework, and the tourist infrastructure that a small microbrewery needs to survive. What it lacks is a single entrepreneur with the capital, the licensing patience, and the distribution connections to make it a permanent fixture. When that person emerges, the scene will change fast, because the demand is already here and growing.

The One Place to Track the Emerging Scene

If you want to know what is brewing figuratively and literally, follow the social media accounts of the two or three dive center owners who are openly passionate about beer. These individuals tend to be at the center of Aqaba's informal craft beer network. They know which Amman brewers are experimenting with sea-infused or desert-inspired batches. They host the occasional tasting event in their dive centers after hours. One of them once organized a rooftop tasting near the old fort where homebrewers from Amman and Aqaba brought their latest batches and twenty or so curious drinkers showed up on a Wednesday night, which is the kind of scene that gives you hope for what this city's beer culture could become.

Local Insider Tip: "Ask at your dive center reception if anyone has bottles in the back. Several dive centers near the marina unofficially stock craft beer for after-dive sharing among their instructor teams. They are not licensed to sell it, but if you are friendly and have just finished a good dive, sometimes a cold local homebrew appears from nowhere."


King Hussein Street and the Old City: Where Craft Beer Looks Different

King Hussein Street runs through the central part of Aqaba and passes close to the old city area, the Mamluk Castle, and the Aqaba Archaeological Museum. This is the historic spine of the city, and it has a very different energy from the resort strip or the modern developments. The buildings here are older, lower, and the street life is dominated by local commerce fruit vendors, fabric shops, money changers, and small family-run restaurants.

Craft beer in this part of Aqaba is almost invisible. You will not find tap handles or bottle displays. You also will not find many tourists wandering this street at night. But you will find something that matters: the handful of restaurants and small bars that serve alcohol to local customers, and in one or two of these spots, you might be surprised by what appears if you know what to ask for.

The character of drinking culture in central Aqaba is deeply tied to the city's identity as a working port. Fishermen eat lunch at the grill houses along King Hussein Street. Traders from the nearby markets drink tea and coffee in the afternoons. The few bars here that serve beer operate quietly, without fanfare, and their customers are regulars who have been coming for years. If a craft beer exists in one of these central spots, it is because the owner went out and bought it themselves, because a distributor happened to have it in their truck, or because an Amman friend showed up with a case.

This part of Aqaba is worth visiting regardless of the beer. The food is the most affordable and authentic in the city. The history is tangible in the Ottoman-era structures and the spice-scented air of the souk. And on a rare night when a fisherman's bar has a specialty bottle in the back, the experience of drinking it while the call to prayer echoes from the minarets and the lights of Eilat glow green across the gulf, that is a moment of craft beer culture that exists nowhere else on Earth.

The Weekend Rhythm You Need to Know

Thursday evening through Friday is the only window when the central area's bars are reliably social. Sunday through Wednesday, many of the smaller establishments either close early or operate at minimal capacity. If you are in Aqaba as a tourist and only have one evening to explore the central streets, make it a Thursday. The energy shifts. Families are out. The restaurants fill. And any bar owner who has been saving something special is most likely to bring it out when the crowd is right.

Local Insider Tip: "On King Hussein Street, near the archaeology museum, there is a small restaurant with no English signage that has a handwritten drinks menu tucked inside a plastic folder under the table. It is not meant for tourists. If you sit in the back corner and ask in basic Arabic if they have anything 'khas,' meaning special or imported, you might get a beer that surprised even me the first time I found it there."


Beverages to Actually Drink: What I Order at Each Type of Venue

Since this is a guide written by someone who has personally sat at every bar described above and many that did not need mentioning, here is what I actually drink when I sit down in Aqaba and the craft beer taps Aqaba are flowing.

At hotel bars, I go for anything from the Amman craft scene, usually an IPA or a wheat ale, because these styles travel and hold up reasonably well through Jordanian distribution channels. I avoid stouts and porters in the summer months because a room-temperature glass of dark ale in Aqaba's 42-degree heat is a punishment, not a pleasure. In any coastal city, lighter styles make sense. A Czech-style pilsner, a Belgian witbier, or a hop-forward pale ale, these are the styles that work in Aqaba's climate and pair naturally with the seafood-heavy dining that dominates the local food scene.

At Ayla-area restaurants, I ask what is newest on tap, because these places rotate their stock more aggressively and the bartenders tend to be more knowledgeable. If they have a local homebrew, I order it without hesitation, even if the style label is vague. Aqaba's homebrewers are experimenting with desert botanicals, date syrup adjuncts, and sea salt, and even when the execution is imperfect, the creativity is worth supporting.

At the smaller bars along the marina and Al-Saadah Street, I drink whatever is coldest and freshest, and I am grateful. If there is a Jordanian craft offering, I take it. If not, a cold Taib beer from Aqaba's own Arab Brewery, Jordan's first and only commercially significant local brewery, is a legitimately decent lager with real heritage. Arab Brewery has been producing beer in Jordan since the mid-20th century, and while it is not "craft" by modern definition, drinking a Taib in the city where Arab Brewery operates its Aqaba production facilities is a connection to the history that matters.

What you should not do: do not expect Aqaba to replicate the beer culture of a European or American city. The selection will be smaller. The prices within the resort zone will be higher. The hours may be shorter. But what Aqaba offers, on its best nights, is the experience of craft beer in a place where it is rare, where it carries a slight transgressive thrill, and where the people pouring it care enough about what they are doing to make the glass worth the trip.

Local Insider Tip: "The local Jordanian lager, Taib, is brewed in Aqaba. On a hot afternoon after a dive or a desert trip, a cold Taib over ice at a port-side restaurant is a perfectly respectable beer, and it costs about 3 dinars, which is nothing. Do not let craft snobbery blind you to the fact that local beer matters."


Where Craft Beer and Aqaba's Broader Identity Connect

The best way to understand why craft beer exists in Aqaba at all is to think about what this city is. Aqaba has never been a major cultural capital. It is not Amman, with its galleries and music scenes and generations of intellectuals. It is not Damascus or Cairo or Beirut, cities where brewery culture has centuries of pre-modern history. Aqaba is a port city, a logistical corridor, a place where goods move through rather than a place where goods originate.

And yet, ports have always been places where cultures mix. The British sailors who docked here during the Arab Revolt must have wanted a proper pint. The Ottoman garrison stationed near the old fort certainly drank something. The modern dive instructors and maritime workers who cycle through Aqaba's port and resorts bring their beer preferences with them, and some of those preferences include hops and barley varieties that have nothing to do with mass-produced lager.

Best craft beer bars in Aqaba are not just bars. They are small experiments in what happens when a conservative, predominantly Muslim port city on the edge of the Arabian desert encounters the global craft beer movement. The results are imperfect, underfunded, scattered across hotel rooftops and dive shop storage rooms and hidden restaurant cabinets. But they are real, and they are growing.

The scene is deeply connected to Aqaba's identity as the city that sits at a border, both literally and culturally. The Israeli city of Eilat is visible across the water, and its modern, secular drinking culture is a constant neighbour. Saudi Arabia's Tabuk region is a short drive south, and the contrast with its stricter alcohol regulations makes Aqaba's relatively open environment feel intentional and valuable. This in-between quality is what makes Aqaba's small craft beer scene possible and what makes visiting it feel like you are seeing something that could not exist anywhere else.

Local Insider Tip: "Visit Aqaba in late October or early November. The summer heat is gone, the European tourists have not yet fully arrived for winter, and the bars are at that sweet spot where staff is relaxed enough to chat, the specialty stock is fresh from the last Amman delivery run, and you can actually hear yourself think while sipping a brew."


When to Go and What to Know

The beer year in Aqaba runs roughly opposite to what you might expect in Europe or North America. The high season for craft beer availability is October through April, when the weather cools below 30 degrees Celsius and the European tourist influx fills the hotels and their bars with demand for better beer. Summer months, June through September, are brutally hot, tourist numbers drop significantly, and many bars reduce their specialty stock or close certain sections entirely.

The Islamic calendar also matters. During Ramadan, many bars in the central city close entirely or operate with reduced inventory, as the cultural expectation shifts and many Muslim Jordanians refrain from drinking entirely during the holy month. The resort bars remain open, but even they operate more quietly. If you are visiting specifically for craft beer, check when Ramadan falls and plan around it.

Licensing in the ASEZ is more permissive than in other parts of Jordan, but drinking in public is still prohibited. Do not walk out of a bar with a glass. Do not appear intoxicated in the streets near the old city or mosque areas. The enforcement is generally relaxed in the resort and marina zones, but respect for local norms is what keeps the scene viable in the first place.

Budget-wise, plan for 8 to 15 Jordanian dinars per craft beer depending on the venue. A hotel bar will be at the top of that range, an Al-Saadah restaurant at the lower end. A full evening of craft beer tasting in Aqaba, assuming you visit two to three spots, will cost between 25 and 45 dinars for drinks alone, plus food.

Transportation: the city is small enough that taxis or ride apps will get you between most of these venues for 2 to 4 dinars per trip. Do not drink and drive. The roads between Aqaba's districts are poorly lit at night, and traffic enforcement around the port and border areas is serious.


Frequently Asked Questions

How easy is it to find pure vegetarian, vegan, or plant-based dining options in Aqaba?

Aqaba has fewer dedicated vegan or vegetarian restaurants compared to Amman, but several restaurants in the central city and the Ayla area now offer plant-based menus or clearly marked vegetarian options. Al-Saadah Street has at least two restaurants that cater specifically to vegetarian menus. Most Mediterranean and Lebanese-style restaurants, which are common throughout the city, naturally include multiple mezze dishes, hummus, falafel, and vegetable-based entrées. Expect to pay between 5 and 12 dinars for a vegetarian main dish at a mid-range restaurant.

Is the tap water in Aqaba to drink, or should travelers strictly rely on filtered water options?

Tap water in Aqaba is technically treated and Municipal water meets basic safety standards, but most locals and long-term residents drink filtered or bottled water. Aqaba heavily relies on desalination plants for its freshwater supply, which affects the taste. Hotels typically provide filtered water in rooms, and bottled 500ml water is available everywhere for approximately 0.25 to 0.5 dinars. Travelers with sensitive stomachs should default to bottled water.

What is the one must-try local specialty food or drink that Aqaba is famous for?

Aqaba is best known for its freshly caught Red Sea fish, particularly sayadieh, a spiced fish and rice dish prepared with caramelized onions, cumin, and tahini. Sayyah, a grilled whole fish served at port-side restaurants near the marina, is another local specialty. For drinks, fresh sugarcane juice and mint lemonade are ubiquitous and unlike anything you will find inland. Traditional Arabic coffee with cardamom is served widely and is a cultural staple at nearly every restaurant and hotel.

Is Aqaba expensive to visit? Give a realistic daily budget breakdown for mid-tier travelers.

A mid-tier traveler in Aqaba should budget approximately 70 to 100 Jordanian dinars per day, or roughly 100 to 140 USD. This includes accommodation at a mid-range hotel, 40 to 50 dinars; meals at local restaurants, 15 to 25 dinars; transportation by taxi, 5 to 10 dinars; and entertainment or activities such as a snorkeling trip, 15 to 20 dinars. Resort area hotels and Ayla-area dining can push this to 150 or more dinars per day, while budget travelers staying in central Aqaba guesthouses can manage on 40 to 50 dinars daily.

Are there any specific dress codes or cultural etiquettes to keep in mind when visiting local spots in Aqaba?

Aqaba is more liberal than most Jordanian cities due to its special economic zone status and high tourist volume, but visitors should still dress modestly in the central city and around the old souk area. Swimwear is acceptable only at beach clubs and resort pools. Shoulders and knees should be covered when visiting mosques or the archaeological site near the fort. In the resort and Ayla areas, casual Western dress is the norm. Public displays of affection should be minimal across all areas of the city. During Ramadan, refrain from eating, drinking, or smoking in public during daylight hours out of respect, even in the ASEZ.

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