Byblos, Lebanon

Wednesday the 9^th January

I remember thinking It’s a good thing I don’t have to work for a living or I would not be feeling good today. As it stood, the most difficult thing I had to do this morning was to get out of bed and get a pizza for breakfast. Alison had to head back to Damascus to catch a plane home early that morning and she was a happy bunny to be so early. Rob and I had planned a run along the cornice, but common sense told us both that was right out. So, Marcus and I spent the morning chilling in our room watching crap TV and recovering. We were sharing a room with another guy, Rory from Dublin, he was off to Tripoli and Bcharre that morning. We had planned to follow him up the next day. We decided if nothing else we could manage a trip to Byblos as it was only a 45 min bus ride.

We took a servise from the Charles Helou bus station north of Beirut to the ancient city of Byblos. Byblos was founded somewhere around 5000 BC. It is believed to be the first known city ever to be built in the world and it vies with cities such as Damascus for being the oldest continually inhabited city although there is no concrete evidence to suggest this. Byblos is a Greek name. The Phoenicians called it Gebal and the Canaanites Jbiel. It’s currently name derives directly from the old Canaanite name. It has many legends around it. Cronus was thought to have built the city and Thoth, who is purported to have invented writing, is thought to have resided there [Evidence of a Phoenician alphabet certainly exists from around 2000 BC. There is even a nice little translation chart you spell your name in Phoenician in the museum]. The name Byblos is thought to have come from the parchment that was shipped from Egypt to Greece through this port. Archaeologists love Byblos for the sheer volume of artefacts, human detritus, and historical evidence that lies in abundance under the foundations here. City after city was constructed at this site.

I won’t go into overt detail here because the history is extensive. If you want to read up on it there are plenty of sources on the web. However the usual suspects all had a hand in the development, or destruction, of the town over the centuries. The Egyptians, Assyrians, Byzantines, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, et cetera.

The town itself is reminiscent of a Mediterranean coastal town. You could be quite forgiven for thinking you were in Greece, Spain, France, or Italy, as you stroll along the winding streets down to the quay. We took some lunch in a restaurant famous for being home to a local legend, one Pepe The Pirate. Hob-nobber with the rich and famous and playboy extraordinaire, this old funboy is depicted in photographs adorning every wall of the restaurant. It was a little uncertain as to whether this guy was still alive or not, but his spirit was definitely still around.

The site itself was a bit disappointing given the history of the place. The Crusaders had quite thoughtfully and considerately built a large castle on top of the previous one in the 13^th Century AD. There is a number of ruins from Phoenician temples dating back thousands of years, but they were so difficult to make out it was difficult to ascertain exactly what the guide was alluding to. The castle was reasonably impressive. The ancient city walls from the Byzantine period were quite cool, as were the remains of the city gates. The graveyard was a bit of a let down. There was a nice Ottoman-style house on the sea-front.

… Marcus and I are exploring the ruins of Byblos. They are pretty much that. Ruinous. Large signposts designate the area we are in as the Phoenician Temple of Obelisks. I can make out a lot of coke bottles and crisp packets which I am pretty sure are not dating from pre-Biblical times. The castle looms above us masking the setting sun. The thing that has interested me the most so far on this trip is the fascinating modern rail-tracks. These tracks have popped up all over the site They go under rocks, into walls, and earlier on we saw them heading off into the sea at the edge of the port. “Wanna go Choo-Choo!” I say. Marcus doesn’t look as optimistic as me about a train turning up.

We headed home after this and went out for an Italian on Rue Gemayze where we got chatting to two English guys. One was a painter and the other was working for the BBC. The painter was tripping around Lebanon taking inspiration from this ancient land. The media guy was making a documentary on him. We said good-bye and hoped we may bump into them again. Tomorrow we are heading North, into the mountains.

Baalbek, Lebanon

Tuesday 8th January.

One of the many fascinating things about Lebanon, is the amount of archaeological sites available to visit. They are simply stunning. I met a Tunisian archaeologist in Palmyra who alluded to this fact. Now I found myself in Lebanon I was eager to experience this firsthand. The bad weather had all but passed so Marcus and I decided to join Alison and Rob on a jaunt to the ancient ruins of Baalbek.

Baalbek is famed for containing some of the most – in fact I think the most – well preserved Roman ruins in the Middle East. It also was host to a monumental temple, one of the finest the Roman Empire ever saw – despite never being finished - The Temple of Baal-Jupiter. This Temple was never completed probably due to the sheer size of the work required. Most of the focus of work took place between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD. There were temples dedicated to worship in Baalbek long before the Romans arrived. Excavations have revealed evidence of a civilization dating around 5000 BC; and why not, the Levant was, and still is, a beautiful area of the world. The Phoenicians built a temple here in 2000 BC dedicated to Baal, the sun god. There is scant evidence to the role and importance of the place in the next two millennia, but the Romans recognised it as a place of great religious importance and, in their usual trick of speeding up the process anthropological integration, they fused the worship of three Middle Eastern Gods with their own: Jove, as Jupiter and Baal. Venus via Astarte, and Bacchus replacing the Anatolian Dionysus. Baalbek thus became the city of Heliopolis. It was bestowed the title of a colonia and AD 15 and a legion was stationed there. By the end of the 1st Century AD it had become a place of pilgrimage for people from all corners of the Roman Empire and was given the rights of ius Italicum.

We left the hotel late in the morning The plans we had made for an early start had been slightly upset by the events the night before. Nevertheless we left the hotel around mid-morning in bright sunshine, reasonably bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. We took a taxi to the Cola Pullman bus station. This is the base for all northbound servises. Our taxi driver was a cantankerous old git who blatantly tried to rip us off. We got into an argument with him as he dropped us off at the bus-station. He followed us out of his cab and started threatening us in the street. He even went to take a swing at me, which would have been interesting as he was all of 5 ft 1. He finally left with a huge mood-on and far less cash than he was hoping for and we hopped on in a servise to Baalbek.

... I am sitting in a servise en route to Baalbek. Rob and Alison have both been drinking double espressos to combat there hangovers. Marcus and I are munching falafels. Marcus is clutching a bag of chillis in his right hand. He didn’t want them but the falafel shop owner insisted that he must have them; perhaps he looked a bit cold. We left Beirut in a warm haze of January sunshine. Unfortunately 10 km northeast and 1000 metres up the temperature has dropped a tad. Moreover we are driving through a low cloud hanging over the mountains. Visibility has dropped to 25 metres but our servise driver insists on trying to overtake every vehicle that he comes across, whilst on his mobile. Most of the vehicles coming from the opposite direction seem to be articulated lorries. My nervous system is already on edge after too much alcohol and too little sleep. Seeing large trucks leap out of freezing fog 20 metres ahead of us, directly in our path, is not helping much. I decide to close my eyes. It offers some solace. But given it is like night-time outside and the vehicles have their main beams on it is not much. I wonder can I keep this up for another 45mins…
We arrived, and I was somewhat surprised at this, alive in Baalbek just after lunch. At an elevation of 1,137 metres it was slightly colder than Beirut. The Baalbek district of Lebanon is predominately Shiite and known to be the strategic headquarters of Hezbollah As we entered the town Alison noticed a full-size tank on a raised plinth in the middle of the road. “Israeli!” One of the passengers said by way of explanation: a leftover trophy from the invasion, no doubt. We were dropped off at the entrance to the site feeling pretty cold, however the sun was still shining and this was warming us up. We nipped into a café and grabbed a crepe each, then headed off to explore the ruins; avoiding the energetic street vendors trying to flog us Hezbollah T-Shirts as we went by.

The complex is massive. You enter through through the ruins of the great courts of approach. These courts were not actually finished until much later, during the reign of Philip the Arab (cute, I know) and Caracalla in the 3rd and 4th Centuries AD. They are mostly in ruins but you can still clearly see the bases of the columns making up the colonnaded entrance. Further inside you enter the hexagonal courtyard, the last addition to the complex, built by my namesake in the 3rd Century AD. It is a massive area, with small ante-chambers at each plane. In the centre was, what appeared to be, a large altar. Deep recessions were dug into either side that looked like they may have been holding pens of some sort. The others veered off left to explore the left side of the great temple that led down into the lower area of the site. I headed up the main staircase to the temple of Jupiter-Baal. This place was vast. When it was in it’s glory it must have been simply astounding to behold. Each of the Corinthian columns stood at 20 metres in height. There was originally 42 of these columns. Only six remain. Trying to gaue the size of this is pretty mind-boggling. Then on top of these you would also have had supporting buttresses and a roof. A roof! The size of a football pitch. It is amazing to see the evidence of such grandiose engineering from nearly two thousand years ago. And evidence there is in abundance although Emperor Justinian had eight of the columns disassembled and shipped to Constantinople, for his basilica of Hagia Sophia. What fascinated me the most about this temple though, was the size of the monoliths that comprised the lower level of the temple and weighing 400 tonnes each. Then again under these lie the Tritholon – these are three stones weighing in excess of 1000 tonnes each. Three single stones! Hubba Hubba. I wouldn’t have liked to have been in the stone shifting squad the day they put those bad boys in. [incidentally, in a quarry not far away from the temple lies another stone known as: "the stone of the south" (Hajar el Gouble) or "the stone of the pregnant woman" (Hajar el Hibla). Had it been liberated from its place of rest it would have been the single largest stone ever laid in a foundation].

From here, after meeting the others, we headed down into the lower levels to visit the temple of Venus, or Astarte, if you want to name her by her Eastern incarnation. Eusebius of Caesarea, a Christian and a Roman scribe recounted of the decadent and licentious worship that took place in offer to Astarte, or Aphrodite. Worship that was reported to persist into the 3rd Century AD. Basically this temple complex was a the site of multiple places of exultation and Romans were quite happy to tolerate, if not integrate and encourage, the rites and rituals of local Gods. Thus pagan ceremonies were observed with aplomb (I’ll bet even more so when they realised that many forms of worship to Astarte included prostitution of nubile females) much to the disgust and horror of the newly converted Christians; so much for when in Rome.

The most complete and exquisite temple we visited that day was the Temple of Bacchus, or Dionysus. Much of this temple is still standing. This is quite an amazing fact, down a combination of very good engineering coupled with sheer luck I think. Given the fact this temple has been subject to a major earthquake. Several sackings from the Byzantines, the Arabas, the Ottomans, the Crusaders, and in more recent years, air-strikes from the Israelis. It is a wonder anything is still standing. Yet so much of it still does. Although dedicated to the God of wine and fertility, it was commonly referred to as the Temple of the Sun. It was one of the lesser temples, but these days it is the most intact and most beautiful. Built by Antoninus Pius, it has some fantastic sculptures and reliefs, and more importantly, the roof supports remain almost completely intact, with amazingly intricate stone sculptured art-work. Some of the ceiling did, of course, fall down. This is laid directly below its corresponding place in the roof so you can view up close the beauty of the sculptures.

In 637 AD the Muslim army led by Abu Ubaida ibn al-Jarrah triumphed over the Byzantines and claimed it for themselves. Power transferred hands repeatedly over the next four centuries during which time the caliphs of Damascus and Cairo claimed authority. During this time the temple was fortified and a Mosque was built south of the temple of Bacchus. The Crusaders fought Saladin here and lost in the 12th Century AD. Not shortly afterward earthquakes ravaged the area and much of the remaining edifices fell. In the year 1517 it passed, along with most of the Middle East, to the Ottoman Empire and thus it remained so for the next four centuries.

Inside the temple of Bacchus was just as amazing. It was used in the 19th Century as a lunatic asylum-cum-prison. I am not sure of how the cells were laid out but there is little evidence to suggest it existed as such a facility today. The interior was, in its heyday, divided into an outer and inner sanctum, the inner being reserved for the select few – priests, priestesses, and people of religious importance. Many of the reliefs and pictures have faded but you can still make out some scenes depicting Bacchus and his followers gorging on wine and cavorting amongst themselves.

By this time it was getting pretty nippy. We had a quick peak into the Ottoman architecture museum and then through the old cistern that led to the exit. We stopped before we left to check out the Baalbek museum. It was worth spending a couple of hours there but we had only about 10mins as the power was soon to cut out. We had a quick nose around, Alison and I were especially interested in techniques used to carve the intricate stone-masonary. There was also a neat little room showing photographs taken by a Belgian explorer at the turn of the centurty.

We exited into a very cold evening. I was beginning to get a bit worried at this point as everyone was looking a bit cold and our lips were turning blue. We managed to get a servise back to Beirut pretty quickly though. We met an interesting journalist from Hong-Kong who shared our servise. We got some good tips off of her for heading North.

We got into Beirut in time for dinner and then went out for a couple of drinks which turned into night-club and were tucked up in bed by 5am.

Lebanon – the next week

January 2^nd, Beirut – January the something or other.

The next day we checked out of the grandiose and palatial accommodation we had occupied for the last three days. We were debating staying in Beirut or heading north. The main allure of staying in Beirut meant we didn’t have to lug our backpacks around the country with us. Lebanon is a very, very small country. It is approximately 240Km north to south, therefore you can pretty much explore anywhere as a day trip. So, we reasoned, why bother heading into the country when we could day trip from Beirut. Natalie had also offered us a place to crash, but it was quite far out of town - she was maybe moving flat the next week, but still away for the time being. In the end we got a taxi to the Charles Helou bus station and – unbelievably so – it was raining. That clinched it. We walked back into town for five minutes and checked into the Taalal New Hotel.

This turned out to be a chilled out and relaxed back-packer’s hostel. The two guys that ran it were very cool and there was always an eclectic bunch of people hanging out in the communal area downstairs. We decided to stay for a day until the storm had blown over. We headed up to the Beirut Museum for the afternoon. We were still recovering from our New Year’s eve soiree, and my liver was still throbbing, but we soldiered on. In contrast to our recent archaeological excursions in Syria the artefacts on display included the Iron age, Bronze age, and comparative archaeology from Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Phonecian, rule through various periods. This was, of course, before the invasion and occupation of the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Ottomans, the French, the British… Indeed many of these artefacts were a testament to how much history, and how much cultural influence the Levant has seen.

We headed back, walking in the sunshine this time. Interestingly enough the buildings pock-marked with bullet holes and shrapnel blasts are now been covered up and rapidly rebuilt. There is a lot of money in Lebanon and the evidence of the last civil war is being brushed under the infrastructural carpet of progress – as it should be. Who wants to dwell on the past? Probably not the dispossessed Palestinians, who are now living as second-class citizens in semi-permanent camps in Beirut, Sidon, and Tyre, amongst other places. As we were walking back we chanced upon a cinema showing the Golden Compass – the adaptation of Philip Pullman’s first installation of His Dark Material’s trilogy: The Northern Lights. It was a reasonable film, though it sorely lacked the genius woven into the tapestry of the tale told on paper and was a bit too rushed – rather like the recent Narnia Chronicles. But it was nice to be in the flicks again and the special effects, as always, appealed to my geeky side.

We got back to the hotel and decided to go out for food in the nearby street of Germayze. This turned out to be a hedonist’s treasure trove of bars, cafes, clubs, shooter-bars, and an-any-sort-of-excuse-for-selling-alcohol–bars. Even just after New Year everyone was out partying and revelling hard. We had found our home for the next ten days.

… Marcus and I are out having dinner with a group of Lebanese people we have met. We are sitting in a very plush restaurant in a very chic shopping mall in Beirut. We are dressed like complete gippos: by this I mean Marcus and myself. When you are travelling you just don’t have clean clothes. And your cleanest clothes are stained, ripped, and generally something that would turn your mother as white as a sheet if she thought for one moment you would wear them out to dinner. Sorry Mum! Lebanese food is very similar to Syrian, Jordanian food. We are all deciding what to order, but nobody is taking the bull by the horns, so to speak. I am just taking a passive role in all of this so I have decided to not to say anything. The girls decide to order everything on the menu. Everything… I am known for having quite an appetite. Rachel spent Christmas week remarking that I have two hollow legs. But everything on the menu will be quite a challenge. I am talking to a girl, Zeina, and asking her about her favourite drinking holes on Germayze street. However, I can’t say Germayze for some reason. I keep saying Gemayerza. Zeina patiently corrects me for the third time but she is having trouble keeping a straight face…

The next seven days seemed to pass in a haze of late nights and long lie-ins. Most days it rained. Most days we lay in bed and watched TV late into the afternoon whilst the storm raged overhead, waiting for it to pass. It never did though. And each day for some reason the drinking hour got earlier and earlier. We got to know the people staying in the hotel and spent the evenings clubbing with them. We met an Ozzie called Rob who knew Adele and Rach from Damascus. He had travelled to Beirut with a girl called Alison. Alison had met Leah in Hamas and she told her that Marcus and I were in Beirut and to look out for us; our reputations were proceeding us. It was a great backpacking route through Syria and Lebanon because it was small enough for everyone to know everyone. We also met Julia, a Dutch girl studying to be an anthropologist, and her friends Tamara and Steph who turned up a couple of nights after her. We all had a great couple of nights partying. We went out one evening to a club called BO18. This was a bit to 18-21 something for my old bones. You could smell the hormones in the air. The guys outnumbered the girls in a ratio of probably 5-1 and the girls in our group got hit on so blatantly and repeatedly they ended up going home out of sheer annoyance. We had a good boogie though and every now and then the roof opened: retracting back like the entrance to the jungle missile-silo in a James Bond movie. It was quite something to suddenly realise that you could see the stars overhead. Marcus, Rob, and I stayed on and we partied until the early hours.

… We are in a shooter bar on Germayze St. We have been ordering a colourful and varied range of cocktails. Mind-benders, bubble-gums, B-52s, slow comfortable screws, brain haemorrhages, Osama Bin Ladens. The bar is tiny, the size of an old-school chip shop. I am chatting to some Lebanese people and Rob and Alison. I notice a barman come in from another place down the road. He nips behind the bar and grabs a bottle of Absolute vodka. I watch as he pours out two, sizeable, shooters for himself and the barman; then another two; then another two. At this point I am laughing in disbelief. He notices me and declares I am far too sober. I get a triple vodka shooter for free. Whoo hoo… I think? Suddenly I notice a guy tapping on the window. The head barman from the other bar has come in search for his errant bartender. The shooter maniac exeunts sheepishly waving good-bye to us all. Steph and Tamara are now dancing on the bar…

New Year’s day, Beirut

January 1st, 2008.

Bappy New Ear!

What can one usually say about New Year’s day? It hurts? It hurts the precioussss it does. Well today's was no exception. I tried to convince Marcus, and myself included, to move hotel. Hangovers notwithstanding, given the fact a storm had unleashed itself outside, we decided to stay another night in the squalid, manky, dump of a place we were currently in.

We spent most of the morning trying to catch up on some sleep and waiting for the rain to pass. When it finally did, we decided to head out and walk to pigeon rocks: one of Beirut’s few features of natural beauty. It was a pleasant enough walk along the coast, past the shrapnel ravaged leftover building shells from the civil war. We also had to experience the avid beach-goers, playing fast ball in thongs, on the Corniche. We stopped at the light-house for brunch where I decided to have fetah with meat followed up by a nargile. That really did make me feel sick, and I spent the rest of the walk trying not to throw up. We reached the rocks and sat around in the afternoon sunshine and then walked back along the sea-front once more – durng this period I managed to fall over spectacularly, into a ditch in front of a road-full of spectators in their cars. This made Marcus happier than I had seen him all day. I am glad I managed to achieve something memorable that afternoon.

The evening was pretty uneventful. We grabbed some food and took it relatively easy. Marcus tried it on with Ronald McDonald.

New Year's Eve, Beirut

Monday, December 31st
We got up, at some ungodly hour this morning, of around midday. We headed out into West Beirut and found somewhere to eat breakfast. It was kinda like a fast food chain, but for Middle Eastern food. We had shish kebabs. Marcus then decided to go home and collapse whilst I went online and spent most of the morning chatting to my friend, Rom, on msn. The usual stuff: life, love, and how crap – as always – New Year’s eve was likely to be. I had to admit though, on this occasion, mine was probably going to be a bit a little bit more exciting.


I headed back to the hotel and met up with Marcus. We spent the rest of the afternoon messing around and doing very little as we were conserving our energy for the night ahead. We headed out around 6pm for dinner and then on to Rue Monot.


… We are queuing outside of another bar. Everywhere so far as been guest-list only. Some places are charging for entry. Entry includes free drinks and food. Trouble is we have already eating huge pizzas and we are stuffed. We are getting a little fecked off as everywhere is filling up rapidly. It is one of those nights where you have to take a chance on a place and stay there. We opt for a pub rather than a club. A small bar called ‘The Hole In The Wall’, apropos to the bar in Waterloo and very similar, apart from the occlusion of a tube train rattling that nearly rattles your pint off of the table every 5mins. We start the evening with a B-52. “Shot or glass?” The bar-girl asks. Marcus and I exchange glances.
“You do glasses of B-52s?”
“Oui” She replies. Oh, but this is going to be fun…


We spent a hilarious evening in a small bar just off Rue Monot. It was my sort of New Year’s Eve. The kind of night where you start off by knowing nobody then finish the night by dancing on tables, with a bunch of your newly found best friends. There were a group of Spaniards, Germans, and lots of Lebanese. Lebanese people can paaarrtee! They really know how to have fun. I am sure the evening needs no ostentatious narrative. Tables were danced upon. Bars were danced upon. People were hugged and kissed. At one point a series of sparklers were set alight on the bar. We were all given masks, streamers, balloons, poppers, and various other party paraphernalia. The pictures should be demonstrative, if not reflective, of the evening and how it unfolded. As to its conclusion. You’ll have to find the taxi driver and ask him. At least we’d moved to a double room that afternoon so I didn’t have to share my bed with Marcus and his mattress.

Damascus, Beirut - December 30th

Beirut, December 30th

We left Damascus, in a shared taxi, bound for Beirut, from the San Maria Pullman bus station. Lebanon is a stone’s throw from Damascus: indeed it was carved out - along with Palestine - from Syria, after the end of the First World War. As the Ottoman Empire collapsed so the Middle East was redefined by the Allies. The Entente forces. To the victors the spoils; and how they carved it up. Mesopotamia became Iraq, under British mandate, ruled by the King Faisal Husayan. The Hashamite kingdom of Transjordan popped into existence. Well, when I say popped, I mean it was also carved out of Syria by the Allies and handed as a kingdom to be ruled by Abdulla Husayan, also under British mandate. Syria became a French protectorate and the coastal, predominately Christian areas, of Lebanon and Palestine were divided again between France and Britain respectively. Thus the board was drawn up and the pieces were set in place by the progenitors of the modern Middle East for the game that is still being played out today, of course now with America as the principal antagonist. The consequences of the gluttonous division of this turbulent area of the world lies on our shoulders now, and I wonder if our forefathers realised just what a devastating affect this would have on World peace in the 21st Century. The war against ‘terror’; The invasion of Iraq; The muhadjein warriors; the suicide bombers; The calls to jihad; the misrepresentation of Islam by the West, to the people of the West, in our culture, today. The insurgencies and hushed civil war in Algeria; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and its subsequent withdrawal. It is a wonder things have not degenerated into a right mess before now. Oh, whoops, What I am talking about? They have.

Entering Lebanon for the first time evoked such a feeling of nervous excitement I could barely contain myself. The nervousness came from knowing absolutely nothing about this country, other than what I have read online and in the Lonely Planet - and by advice online I don’t mean the advice of the Home Office. [If people would to adhere to the government website for British tourists abroad, I would be taking a tentative holiday in Skegness at this point; and even then I’d be dubious] The excitement came from the immature schoolboy sense of adventure I still have from doing something ostentatiously stupid and dangerous – this is, of course, nonsense. Lebanon is home to 4 million people and has a thriving economy. The fifteen years of civil war that envelope its past are still fresh in the memory of its inhabitants, however. The question is, whether it is likely to change in the near future.

… I am buying a cup of tea – hot, sweet, and black - from a vendor in San Maria bus station. We are in the shared taxi area. We have a luggage in the taxi – a big 1950’s Mercedes with two front seats in addition to the driver’s – and we are now just waiting for it to fill up. Someone approaches me and addresses me from my left: “Are you a yankee boy?
“Pardon me?”
“You look like a fuckin’ yankee-boy. Are you a yankee-boy?”
“Err… no. I am English.” I say.
“Well fuckin' hell, would you like a cup of tea? Let’s have a cup of fuckin’ tea!” I appraise the source of the expletitives. He is a old guy, with a Mafioso hair-style, brushed straight back in a window’s peak. He must be about fifty. He looks European rather than Arabic, he is dressed old-school – in a suit and trousers. He also has his right leg amputated below the knee. He is walking on a crutch. He shakes my hand and introduces himself as Charlie. We are to get to know Charlie quite well as we will meet him on several occasions. He speaks English with an American accent, with an emphasis on his masterful use of swear-words. These, he tells me later, he learned from the British and American Navy, in Lebanon, where he grew up.
“I’ve already got one, thanks.”
“Aaaah, you’ve got some tea. Would you like some fuckin’ sugar with that?”
I call Marcus over from where he is perusing for some chocolate. He is going to fuckin’ love this guy…

We ended up arsing around in San Mario for an hour or so, waiting for our shared taxi to Beirut to fill up. Standard price is $15 or 750 Syrian pounds per person. During the interlude we bumped into the fantastic Charlie. A Lebanese guy who works the Bus Station, helping tourists and back-packers by stopping them from getting ripped off by the touts. His unique pitch was to speak English like an Bronx gangster and interject profanities into the most obscure and mundane sentences in such a innovative segways that made offers of tea sound like a threat to your life. He was quite a funky old character and he kept us entertained whilst we waited for our taxi to depart.

Our taxi finally filled up and we left for Beirut around 7pm. It was cold in Damascus but Beirut was supposed to be much warmer. We crossed at the border with relatively no problem. Snow lay heavily on the ground. We had to get in and out of the taxi three times, which was fun. The Lebanese fourteen day visa cost around $20 and could be purchased on the border. We queued for hardly any time at all, despite it being pretty busy, and we observed some ridiculously overt displays of baksheesh going on between soldiers and taxi/bus/drivers, as cigarettes and wads of money were handed over in between passports and under tables. The only thing missing was nudge-nudge wink winks, Sid-Jamesesque cackles and the music from the carry-on films.

The journey to Beirut was relatively uneventful. Well, I say relatively: we saw two accidents. The second one involved a car being run off the road into a lamp-post. Beirut drivers are, as Charlie would aptly describe them, fuckin’ lunatics. The road to Beirut snakes through a mountain pass and then descends into the city via a sharp twisting series of chicanes and hairpin bends. Down this road, the denizens of Lebanon fling themselves like the cast of the Cannonball Run films. Horns are beeped in a fluid and dynamic orchestra of frenzia, cars swerve in and out of incoming traffic with gusto and aplomb. It was terrifying [I know this sounds like an exaggerated description but I assure you, it isn’t. I was checking a news article, the next day, in the Lebanese Daily Star to gauge what New Year’s eve would be like in terms of expected civil unrest. The main concern of Beirut’s citizens were having to drive or cross main roads on New Year’s eve. Cross main roads? Mmmm..] Fortunately, however, our taxi driver was an old-hand at whacky races and we arrived in one piece. Physically.

… We are in a local taxi driving along to the Cornice in West Beirut. Our taxi driver points out a building on the opposite side of the road. He tells us this is where Harriri was assassinated. We peer into the night and observe a cordoned off series of buildings. All of their windows are blown out. The plaster and the outer structures of one of them, that looks like it took the main force of the bomb, is completely shredded and peppered with shrapnel. This was two years ago. “That must have been quite a bomb.” I say to the driver.
“Yes, Harriri.” He says, by way of explanation once again. “Boom!”
I nod in agreement – Boom. Behind the buildings looms the infamous Holiday Inn. The entire building is riddled with bullet holes and shrapnel.
“It’s good here.” Marcus says. Quoting our encompassing catch-phrase for anyplace that is a) diabolically boring b) an unbelievable shite-hole and, in the last five minutes, c) potentially life threatening…

Our taxi dropped us off in West Beirut, near the Cornice, the predominately Arabic area of the city. We were staying at a place recommended in the good book, for being cheap but clean. Well, to be fair it was cheap. It was also a shite-hole (It’s good here). It was situated by a car wash round the back of all the nice hotels. One of the rooms didn't have an external wall. We stayed three nights. Ok - Mainly the last night – on New Year’s day – was on account of having mild alcohol poisoning. The first night I took a single room after winning the coin-toss. Marcus took a camp-bed in a dodgy looking dorm. This was fine though, because after coming back late that night – twatted - Marcus found himself locked out of the dorm and decided to sleep in my room, on my bed, after dragging a mattress he found into the hall into my single room. My room, btw, was smaller than Harry Potter’s room under the stairs at the at the Dursley’s in Privet Drive. Needless to say I was up early the next morning.

For our first night we decided to walk into central Beirut. The place is weird. Really weird. By this I mean there is a heavy military presence everywhere. This in itself is not strange but the ambience, The feel of the place itself, is strange. The shops and restaurants are open but virtually empty. Everywhere is brand new and pristine, but with very little, or no, atmosphere. It’s downright eerie. It wasn’t until we were out having dinner, nearly a week later, with a very shrewd and switched on guy we met in another hotel, did he surmise the feeling elegantly for us: The whole of central Beirut is like a film-set. It is like the town the characters in Blazing Saddles knock up in a night to fool Hedley Lammar’s (I love that name) group of libertines. Everything looks and appears working and functional, yet you get the feeling that the moment you leave the place, people are going to just start dissembling the whole thing and put the buildings into boxes for the evening. This is augmented by the physical presence of armed military personnel, private armed security personnel, armed police, barricades, razor-wire, gun placements. military vehicles, and small cannons, here, there, and everywhere.

Rue Monot however was not so contrived. This place is one of Beirut’s hot spots. It is a series of clubs, bars, and drinking dens, situated just by St Joseph University, focused into one small area of the city. Of course, being the good, adaptable, travelers we are, we embraced it with alacrity. We spent most of the first evening getting twatted in and around the bars there. We also ate a mammoth Chinese meal for dinner. Then we stumbled across a great club and went dancing.

.. We are in a very busy bar on Rue monot. It's karaoke night. People are dancing on the bar, and on the tables. Marcus and I have just arrived from Damascus and we are experiencing something of a cultural adjustment. The last time we had a drink it was a glass of red wine at a friend's house. We have forgotten this sort of thing went on in the world, but it won't take us long to remember...