Beirut

In light of recent events, I've decided to republish my impressions of Beirut from my old yahoo groups site. As you can see my feelings were mixed, but on the whole positive and I felt that the place was generally going in the right direction.
The shocking and horrific scenes playing out on the nightly news are heartbreakingly sad.
I don't want to embark on an anti Israeli tirade as it doesn't add much to the debate. I can't help think however that the double standard in play does nothing to help bring peace to the region.
The kidnapping of 3 SOLDIERS cannot justify what is currently going on.
Over 250 civilians have died in Lebanon. The infrastructure is being dismantled in much the same way that has happened in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel has the right to defend itself, and I am no friend of Hamas or Hez, but is doing itself no favours in the long run.

Israel is demanding that the government impose soveriegnty on the south and disarm the terrorist groups. I find it hard to understand how it can do that if Israel continues to bomb the capital, airport and infrastructure. Israel has to understand that it cannot decide who governs other countries or states.
Women and children are dying everyday.

Is Arab, Christian and Jewish blood not worth the same?

I cannot accept what is going on right now is self defence or a "measured response".

Reading the old post below is sad. Beiruit was full of hope and looked forward to a bright future. When the cedar revolution threw the Syrians out 6 months ago, the US promised to support and help this new democracy. The Lebanese are asking themselves "Where is Ms Rice now?" The one country capable of calling Israel to heel has turned its back on the Lebanese people. Empty promises, proven to be worthless. The Lebanese lobby in the US has no power it seems.

People are dying.

Israel is not saving the Lebanese from Hezbollah.

Israel is destroying Lebanon.

The result may well be another civil war pitting Christain against Muslim. This happened the last time Israel attacked and then withdrew.

Israel exisits. That is a fact which is not going to change. It also has the right to defend itself. To remain within the community of nations however, it needs to behave in a civilised manner. Collective punishments, aparthied walls, and dropping bombs on civilian neighbourhoods (regardless of whether or not terrorists are hiding within those neighbourhoods), does not qualify as civilised behaviour.
I feel sorry for the people of Lebanon.

I don't feel sorry for suicide bombers or people who fire rockets at schools or railway stations.
I'm afraid that the death spiral is swinging out of control in the region, and could easily widen into something even more horrific than at present.

I arrived in Beirut at 4 in the morning. The flight is 5 hours from Heathrow and I was delayed getting away, so was dog tired when I got there. The first thing I noticed was how empty the airport was, and how sparkling new everything seemed to be. I don’t know why I expected it to be a bustling place at that time of night. I guess it’s because I’d arrived in other places in the Middle East at similar times and the chaos and transit traffic seemed to be a “Middle East type thing” Airports in this part of the world don’t impose night flight restrictions so being a kind of regional transit point for Asian flights, (especially Dubai) there are always planes taking off and landing at all hours. But not it seems in Beirut.
The procedure on arrival was quick….line up, buy a visa, (15 bucks), hand over your passport and they check to be sure you haven’t been to Israel, then pick up your bag and get in the car waiting to meet you. It all took about 20 minutes.
That was the last efficient thing I did in Lebanon.
The ride from the airport to the hotel in West Beirut took about 25 minutes as there was no traffic at that time of day. When I got to the hotel the room wasn’t ready so I spent 2 hours sitting around, drinking rocket fuel coffee and flipping through a dog-eared copy of “From the Ashes”, a book about the rebuilding of the city.
Smoked ciggie after ciggie and tried to work out whether or not the teenagers with the machine guns guarding the hotel were always vigilant or were putting on a show for me. (The exhausted pale white guys). After about an hour, they got tired of Rambo poses, got into their jeep and played Arabic music. Very, Very Loud.
Everything seemed slightly surreal. The sky started to lighten, and the Mosques kicked into the call to prayer. If you’ve never heard it, it’s unique, eerie and other worldly, but musical and kind of nice.
At 6 am in Beirut, it was just this side of a B movie.

When I did finally get my room, this is what I saw when I opened the window and stepped out onto the balcony:





I didn’t have much time as I was due for a brekkie meeting, so it was shower, change, and downstairs to the restaurant. I knew I’d be tired later, but I had that “new place buzz” as well as caffeine overload.

I was staying on Hamra Street at the Crown Plaza West Beirut. In its time this was the Champ-Elysee of the Middle East, but has undergone change over the past 30 years. It’s now a collection of carpet shops, and downmarket clothing stores.
The side streets give you glimpse of beautiful examples of French mandate era houses sandwiched between new office blocks and low rise commercial buildings. They’re a reminder of another time, before the civil war when Beirut was where it was at in the Middle East.



I had an opportunity to travel all over the city. Everywhere you went there was evidence of the civil war. The fighting in Beirut was primarily conducted with small arms and low level explosives, so though many buildings are devastated, they’re still standing, and in some cases still lived in. The most poignant symbol of the war is the Holiday Inn, which sat at the green line (the border between Muslim West and Christian East Beirut). A strange sight, standing as it does in the heart of the city, next to the new Intercontinental Hotel, it’s a blasted skeleton. I remember watching news footage 25 years or so ago where it always seemed to feature, being as it was at the flashpoint between the two communities. It felt strange standing in front of it taking this picture, on wasteland ground that in earlier times was probably the most dangerous place on earth:



We travelled around the city by taxi. There are two choices in taxi transport: A hotel cab, which is a late model French car, or by old battered Merc taxis which cruise the streets, constantly beeping as a signal they’re free. The hotel cars aren’t cheap…you either negotiate a set fee for the trip, (which is never less than $10), or an hourly rate (about $15). For work stuff, I hired a driver for the day ($120). It’s the most efficient way to get around as the driver drops you off, waits for you, and seems to know where he’s going. The cruising cars are much cheaper as they cost about 5,000 Lebanese Lire (1,500 to the $ so that’s about 3 bucks) for short trips and 10,000 for longer journeys. Both have meters, but neither ever turns them on. You need to establish the price BEFORE you get in. No one ever ripped me off so I don’t think you need to sweat the taxis in Beirut. The old mercs usually travel set routes and are routinely shared, though the drivers don’t stop for others when they have a foreigner (at least not with me). As they cruise by, people standing on the side of the road shout out their destination, if the car is going that direction, it stops. There were plenty of pissed off Lebanese shouting at my car when I rode these cabs as I said, they never stopped for anyone else. I liked these cars driven by old guys, relics on wheels with torn seats and icons hanging from the rear view mirror. This is a guy I hired for an afternoon.

The rules of the road in Beirut take a while to work out.
· There are no lanes painted on the road.
· Nobody signals; they beep their horns.
· The traffic lights don’t work (or only at certain times of the day).
· Traffic can be appalling or light but it didn’t seem to correspond to any particular time of day.
· Traffic seemed to flow and I didn’t see any accidents the whole time I was there.

The old downtown area of Beirut has been completely rebuilt. The area was gutted during the civil war but shows no signs of the fighting today. It’s a collection of swanky shops (Channel, Boss, Hagen Das) and a pedestrian area of cafes and restaurants. The flower of Beirut youth gather to sit and drink coffee, eat ice cream and sit for hours smoking flavoured water pipes. (I had apple as it was the easiest for a white guy). Both men and women smoke these pipes. Beirut is unlike other Middle Eastern cities I’ve been to as there’s a lot of flesh on display. The young people could’ve been from anywhere in Europe, but better and more expensively dressed. These people have style.
They dress to impress, mobiles pressed to their ears, casual affluence on display, but in a nonchalant non-pushy type of way.
I ate at a couple of the restaurants in this area, but I had trouble finding Lebanese food its all French, or pizza, or pasta. The Lebanese it seems, want something different when they go out.
There were very few westerners in town so I attracted a bit of attention everywhere I went. This ranged from friendly smiles to unsettlingly appraising stares from the women- I’m not kidding it was BOLD and OBVIOUS, to more sinister and worrying. I went for a walk around the corner from the hotel and in the space of 50 meters the atmosphere changed. Nods and smiles became cold , hostile, blank stares. I knew I wasn’t imagining it as my colleague felt the same. I wouldn’t want to have been walking down that road at night. We headed back to Hamra Street and sat down for a coffee and after about 20 minutes, there was a flash from a camera and I turned to see that some guy had pulled up to the curb and had just taken my picture….so I took his:


With that half smile, he sped off…….a little worrying but nothing came of it.

I had a bit of time free over the last weekend of my stay in Beirut, and I walked along the waterfront. There was some sort of wedding/family celebration going on and a bus disgorged a crowd of black clad women and men in suits of varying styles. The women all looked pretty used to the bed sheets.The men seemed uncomfortable, picking at their butts and collars. The kids, were doing what kids do.

There was one woman standing by the water, staring out at the ocean that really caught me…….She seemed so sad and lonely….forlorn. We’ve all felt that way at times in our lives, and I just had to take her picture, because on that sunny afternoon, I felt like I was standing beside her in a way….

On my last day in Lebanon, I hired a driver and went to “Jounie”. “The Monte Carlo” of the country. It took about two hours and we drove through a series of little towns which all really seemed joined together little villages..Some were run down others had a shiny new concrete feel. I don’t know why I expected to see beach, ( I had packed a swim suit) but I didn’t see much beyond an occasional thirty yards or so of dirty sand. When I got to Jounie I was initially disappointed. There seemed to be no focus to the place. The driver pulled over and, I got out for a walk. When I looked over my shoulder to make sure he didn’t take off, he was already fast asleep.
There seemed to be nothing to see. There was a brand new DUNKIN DONUTS, and behind it was something truly strange: A cable car running up the length of the escarpment winding upwards and away into the distance. No one was around. The little cars came and went empty, silently. A little slice of Switzerland in the Levant. I paid about $4, got in and away I went, with a loud grinding of cables and gearsnot silent and Swiss, very Lebanese . Immediately, I realised this was a bad idea. These little cars were small , really small. Any shift of weight started a shocking swinging back and forth, side to side. The climb was almost vertical. Vertigo was almost instant.
I made the ascent slumped over, hands on the little seat in front, staring at the sweat dripping off the end of my nose….and at the warning panel on the inside wall.

In case of an electricityoutagewait for a few minutes huh? During my time in Lebanon, there had been frequent power cuts in Beirut. Sometimes they lasted hours. I wasn’t in Beirut, I was in the boondocks and I was way above the ground.

The climb was so steep that my ears were popping almost from the start. The little car swung back and forth and it got perceptively cooler. I was nervous but thought “hell they must have some sort of safety inspections right?”

Well, no, Terry, this is not Canada or the UK.

I don’t think there are many safety guys inspecting empty cable cars.”

At the top I was in for a surprise. There was a beautiful church “Our Lady of Lebanon”, perched high on the escarpment surrounded by the country’s famous cedar trees. There was also a lovely little restaurant where I sat, looking at the awesome view, drinking coffee and steeling myself for the return trip. As it was, the descent was nowhere near as bad as the trip up. The trick is to sit looking up,not at the sheer drop, and not to move.
When I went back to the hotel that evening, I was greeted by one of the oddest sights I have ever seen in my travels. I think I said in part one there are very few foreigners in Lebanon right? Well milling around the lobby was a collection of them….The South Korean, National Football team, complete with German coach. He took the picture below…

Me and the Asian guys with the glowing trainers…..They were terrified of going outside and as far as I know spent their entire time in Beirut in the hotel except when their bus was being escorted by jeeps full of guys with big guns and blaring sirens.

Nightlife in Beirut

I sampled the nightlife on only one occasion….but again thanks to my trusty driver (below)….I saw quite a bit as I was dropped off, had a drink and whisked away to the next place…..He seemed to enjoy waving away the valet guys, with exclamations of “British Man!, Canadian British Man!” I asked him to stop that, as everyone looked distinctly disappointed, when I emerged from his battered Merc. I think they were hoping for some boy band member or something…. Everyone was really friendly and they all had a cousin living in Canada. Below is a run down of the places I went:

Sky Bar-The Palm Beach Hotel

Pretentious and expensive. It’s on the 7th floor of the hotel, which isn’t really very promising in print but the view was nice. It is where the great and beautiful go in Beirut to see and be seen. There are lots of local celebs, silicon gals and the odd Russian hooker. I got there late, and felt pretty underdressed….It’s Armani and Gucci…still they let me in, though I think it was the foreigner novelty thing working in my favour. I’d say you need to put yourself together to ensure entry…there were stunning people waiting at the door……maybe I’m not so bad after all….Good for a laugh….

Hole In the Wall - Monnot Street

Good fun -Dress as you want.- cheap


Monnot Street is a collection of bars in East Beirut, and is pretty much the centre of nightlife for the city. The Hole in the wall could not be further from The Sky bar…It’s more like a traditional English pub. Really laid back, relaxed, and inexpensive, it was friendly and an ideal way to start off the night. The DJ played an eclectic mix, of everything from Chris Issec, to Jazz to Motor Head…..all with good humour, lots of expats and no one seemed be taking themselves too seriously.
1975- Monnot Street

LOUD and a bit silly.- Dress How you want. Cheap if you’re a local
The place is decked out in sandbags and is on a “This place used to be in a war zone and isn’t that cool, theme”. The lounging, DK clad, 20 somethings, make it look like a designer bar gone bad. They ripped me off on my round of drinks, so I wouldn’t recommend it. Plus the music was annoying Euro-trash, electronic babble played at a stupid volume….. I say give it a miss.

Ice Bar- Monnot Street
Commie hang out Dress like a student- very cheap

Well that’s what the driver said. I saw a bunch of students smoking Gitannes….still the food was cheap (Armenian I think the menu said). I say….OK if you have the time.
Club Social- Monnot Street- Seemed casual- cheap
Supposedly a newish fashonista bar. I thought it was friendly and fun…and cheap ($2 bucks a beer). When I was there it was early and the music was low key. There is a DJ playing specific styles later on. (Different DJ every night I was told). Very friendly. The staff invited me to a party being held in some warehouse later …..I declined old man that I am. I say go if you have the time

Crystal- Monnot Street-Money, Money, Money (stick to the beer)

Porches, Ferraris, Mercs…all being parked by uniformed valets. The outside looked like some sort of Asian “private” Gentlemen’s club, where the mega rich take their mistresses…..Really, Really impressive from the outside…….pretty shoddy inside. I arrived early (It’s really a post 2am kind of place) and got a lot of attention as I was led a meandering route to a seat at the bar by one of the most stunning women I have ever seen. Everyone lost interest though when I ordered a local beer. This place is about Champers, designer gear, hot women, and guys with gold chains and expensive suits which didn’t seem to fit (why do people buy suits one size too small?). The music was “popular Arabic”, which means….interesting and good for a change. I think there is live stuff late on but I didn’t hang around. Friendly, but you will be the only westerner….where does all that money come from?

Liquid Bar- Downtown-cheap

Very friendly and trendy looking. Great happy hour. Off the main restaurant street. Fills up with tourists (what few there were) later

Quick Guide to Beirut

There is French everywhere. This used to be an old French colony, and many of the street names are French. French business is still very much in evidence.
You can pay for anything in US dollars, but you are likely to get Lebanese currency in change. This is confusing, but I was never ripped off (except in one of the bars). Bills often have prices in both. Ask for change in US $’s sometimes they gave it, but more often than not, they claimed not to have it.
Cash machines will give you money in $’s Euros or Lebanese currency.
Everyone will assume you want your coffee black…ask for milk if you want it.
Post offices are in odd places, ask the hotel guys and they will take you there (often third floors of office buildings)
No matter what you’ve heard, NO ONE will smoke dope with you….don’t ask.
Don’t take pics of soldiers (unless you’re me!)
Everyone will ask you what you think of the country…be nice and comment on something that catches your eye…it will go a long way to breaking the ice.
Everyone has a cousin in Canada or the US
The women are stunning
This is not really an Arabic country but a blend of Europe and the Middle East
Do not under any circumstances rent a car or drive.
Try to get out of Beirut if you can, but take some sort of organised tour.
DO NOT go to the Bekka valley, no matter what anyone tells you…it is dangerous.
Check out the rebuilt downtown.
Check out the old holiday Inn
Take a street taxi
Don’t be afraid to talk to the local people
Don’t’ mention Israel. I heard it referred to as “that bad place”. Lebanon was invaded by Israel and many people believe it still stirs up trouble. The Mossad have acknowledged assassinating people in Beirut, and the Israeli air force still over flies the city from time to time….making people very nervous. Whatever your Politics….leave them at home, because no one will ask your opinion and they won’t push theirs on you. Good advice anywhere, but especially here.
Lebanese people are friendly. Use your radar however. Leave if anything feels strange.
Relax and have Fun