Yalla - road trip Lebanon!

9 Apr Tuesday

An early, self-inflicted stressful start - after a night of debating with myself and with everyone else whether or not I should extend my stay in Lebanon, I was finally unable to win the debate and took everyone else's side and took the plunge: I whatsapped my supervisor, and asked, with lots of SORRYs and WONDERING IFs and MAYBEs and BUTs and NEVERMINDs, about extending my leave for another two days (so that I could stay for another four, connecting the weekend). After a short but nerve-wrecking (2 minute) wait, he goes online, goes into 'typing...' for (what seemed like) a very long time, and finally gave me the go-ahead. I promised to be back by Monday morning (which turned out to be a failure - see "Hezbollah" post about 3 posts ago sigh), then Jen and I headed out for our Lebanon-outside-of-Beirut expedition.

Jaad our driver was a few minutes late but all is forgiven knowing Beirut traffic and knowing that he's going to be our chauffeur and guide for the next 8-9 hours. Leaving the coast and the lowlands to fester in their weekday traffic, we escaped up the Shouf, meandering up the mountain roads into the heartlands of the Druze community. The mountains also came with spells of drizzles and fog, which (optimistically speaking) was strangely romantic and mystic. And kept tourists away. At least those that aren't eager beavers like us.

The Shouf

The mist

Our first stop was the Beiteddine Palace, apparently where they host the Beiteddine Festival every summer, where performers included the likes of Mariah Carey, Elton John and Ricky Martin. It dates back to  early 19th century, and supposedly one of the finest remaining examples of Lebanese architecture - and it indeed looked very unique and well-kept and (almost) fully intact. The myriad of rooms and halls, beautiful mosaics, courtyards, ottoman architecture and the huge hammams (bathhouse) kept us busy for a good hour or so. The hammams intrigued me the most...and made me wonder whether Japanese onsens (温泉) & sentos (銭湯) and these hammams along with roman baths had any relation to one another, or what sort of cultural or historical similarities resulted in the birth of the baths, or was brought about by the love of public bathing? Hmmm..

Beiteddine Palace

Beiteddine Palace

Hammam @ Beiteddine Palace

We hopped back into taxi a la Jaad, up up up the hill and into the fog and down down down the temperature went. We arrived at the Al Shouf Cedar Nature Reserve, greeted by a couple of chatty old uncles and strong black coffee in a shabby little cabin. On one side of the cabin was a huge cabinet full of jams and honey and oil and other things in bottles and jars produced by the Nature Reserve. Jen and I were rather tempted to stay in the warm cabin and examine each jar and chat to the uncles than to go out in the rain and the cold to get lost in a cedar forest.

But we braved it nonetheless. But not before borrowing an oversized raincoat from one of the uncles.

The Cedars of Lebanon

It was wet, muddy, cold, foggy, quiet, cold, and a little creepy. There were a lot of cedar trees. But it wasn't in full bloom yet. Following very vague directions from one of the uncles and armed with our phone cameras, we set off almost speedwalking through the misty forest to find the largest cedar tree in the region/world/galaxy/universe/whatever. When another man suddenly appeared a mere 10 steps away I nearly jumped. I'm glad we snapped a lot of pictures along the way, because honestly speaking, the experience itself was a bit (excuse the pun) overcast by the weather, but looking at the photos now reminded us how worthwhile the trip was. While we couldn't see anything beyond 20 metres, and completely missed the view of the valley from the hill, there was a different sense of awe, standing alone in a quiet forest, surrounded by these huge and old and healthy cedars, breathing in moist fresh cedar-scented air, listening to the rain drops fall gently on the leaves and the ground around us.

In the misty forest

Even for us who have endured seasons of British weather, it was still too cold. Plus our shoes got shamefully muddy. So after we found the gigantic cedar tree we made a bee-line back to the cabin at the entrance. We each picked out a jam, drank more coffee, took photos with the uncles on our phones, scrapped off the mud from our shoes and set off in the Jaad-mobile back down the hill.

We made a pit-stop at the Khafraya winery, with true student/budget-tourist style tasted some free wine, used the free bathroom, and left in high spirits but empty handed. We carried on driving, stopped for lunch at a local cafe/restaurant, listened to Jaad continue telling us about his life story, telling us about his children, perhaps even trying to hard-sell his son to one of us, as we munched on our tasty shwarma and falafel.

The Bekaa Valley

With yum-filled stomachs we quickly dozed off soon after getting back on Jaadertaxi as it whizzed along the Bekaa Valley through the masses of Lebanese-Syrian traffic.

It was around 3 or 4pm when we finally arrived at the place we had been looking forward to seeing, and our final destination of the road trip - Baalbek. The incredible, magical, spectacular archaeological wonder that I was most excited about.

BUT, since I've already taken far too long to write this post already, I'm going to leave Baalbek for the next post. Haha. Stay tuned.

Rant: Water it, or leave it

"If you think the grass is greener on the other side, maybe it's time to water the grass you're standing on." - Anon.

...and to that I add, you can also leave it.

I am growing increasingly impatient of people who wouldn't stop harking on about how much they hate Hong Kong [or wherever they're living at this current moment], constantly complaining about how this sucks or how that doesn't work properly or how something is insufficient or how something else pisses them off...and yet they still live here. 

We live in the 21st century now, where mobility (especially at our age and stage in life) is virtually unlimited, the choice of places to go is abounding and opportunities can be found (to a certain extent) everywhere. So why choose to be bitter and stay in a place where you hate with such passion?

The worst is when they try to impose their views on others, and they pick out all the undesirable aspects of the city, compare them to other cities/countries that have gone through a completely different history or has vastly different cultural heritage or geographical features, and then whine about how HK sucks because some aspects just can't compare.

 "I have no choice" is not a legitimate excuse. If you have the ability to be waffling on about it over brunch or over a $40 coffee or over a dinner table at a restaurant that's not a cha-chan-teng or if you are reading this, then you definitely have a choice.

So to them I say, either get out of my country, or zip it and embrace it and start doing something about it.

Peace.

"This sucks...I'm just gonna close my eyes and pretend I'm somewhere else"

Statistics

I thought these "blog readership statistics" are just me clicking on my own blog once in a while..but I got 10 views yesterday. I wonder who these people are. But no one leaves comments. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT'S IN YOUR HEAD TOO!

And yes. Lebanon posts are still on the way...slowly but surely.

Ladies of Leisure in Lebanon

Monday 8 Apr 13

Ruins, mosque, church, construction = essence of Beirut

After a leisurely morning at home cooking and eating (leftover) breakfast, Jen (who arrived late last night and found me in my PJs dozing off with a book on my face), J, bebe E (100 days today!) and I decided to take the stroller and take a stroll across central Beirut. Roads and pavements in Beirut are not exactly stroller friendly, however. So mama J carried the baby in front of her the whole time, while Jen took the stroller, and I took pictures.

We started our journey along Hamra Street (of Hamra area, which I was told was the 'Muslim' district), got fruit juice on the way, and trotted towards the city centre. All along the way, my mind was constantly being fascinated by and frantically taking in the surrounding environment - the colourful graffiti in english and arabic, run-down buildings with exotic architecture, construction sites everywhere, houses decorated with bullet holes and some just tired from time and from war...not to mention the sounds - rusty engines, constant honking of cars, excited children on a school playground, and the unexpected "welcome!" and "hello!" and "picture picture!" where some people have gestured at my pro-looking (i.e. chunky) camera, asking me to take pictures of them. Still baffles me to this day why they did that.

RM Private Museum

At one point we very randomly chanced across a luxurious and wonderfully preserved building & huge garden - we poked our nose in and walked through the gates into the garden, where there was a decent collection of statues and columns and other relics from around the Byzantine period (that's like 1700 years ago). We later found out that it was the Robert Mouawad Private Museum that was in the guidebooks, but at the time we were too chicken to go inside the building.

We finally reached the city centre, the Place de l'Étoile, and sat down at Al Balad for lunch, followed by a very leisurely afternoon cuppa at a non-smoking cigar lounge in Le Grey Hotel - living the Lebanese 'tai tai' life in Beirut.

After tea, Jen and I, not being able to take any more of bebe E's cuteness, abandoned the mother and child (who was joined by their father, don't worry), dropped by the beautiful and magnificent (but not old) Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque and continued East to the (supposedly) 'Christian' district of Achrafieh in East (side of) Beirut. We took more photos of crumbling buildings, was WELCOME-ed by the Le Chef boss, chatted up some uncles sitting by a construction site, exchanged phone numbers with a cutie from a vintage light repair shop, stared at cats staring at birds, took photos of a random group of finely-suited (mafia-looking!?) uncles, all the while sticking out like a sore-thumb (and screaming tourist!) with our fair skin and big cameras.

How can one not love this face!?

Leisure-ing in Le Grey

Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque

Creativity 

Dinner was simple but delightful, at a newly opened little restaurant around the corner from home. We tucked into an array of home-style dishes, no clue as to what they were called...but it was nothing short of pure joy.

*disclaimer - don't take my word as any factual reference. Do your own research. Ha.