Oasis/Lebanon, Days 14-17

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Friday 6th May - Day 14 Oasis/Lebanon

We arrived in Istanbul at 6:30am, an hour earlier than expected. Jess and I went back to the Sultan Hostel where we had first stayed and asked them if it was ok to leave our bags there for the day. They happily obliged and even let a couple of the others who had not stayed there leave their bags too. The 8 of us then met up and went off to find breakfast. Given it was so early there was very little open and as it was also starting to rain we needed to find somewhere inside which proved to be rather difficult. In the end a few of the others decided to go across the bridge to do some shopping instead so we went our separate ways and agreed to meet up later that day before the flight. Jess and I found a cute little place to eat, we had scrambled eggs and apple tea. After breakfast we qued for about 20 minutes at the Blue Mosque which was rather quick given the hundreds of people that were waiting in the line when we first tried to see it. Inside was just amazing, so much work and detail had gone into it. It was not as big inside as what it looked from the outside but still very impressive. We headed back to the hostel for some dry and warmth including another apple tea. Andy and Simon turned up shortly after so we sat around for a bit just chatting away. Jess and I then headed off once the rain stopped for a spot of shopping followed by lunch back at a restaurant we had gone to when we were first here. The rest of the afternoon we spent relaxing at the hostel until it was time for our shuttle to take us to the airport. Grace came to Sultans to say goodbye to us - she was going her separate way through Cyrus. The ride to the airport only took 1½ hours instead of the 2+ hours it took me originally so we were there a little earlier than expected and our check in desk was not open yet so we found somewhere to sit and eat until it opened. My bag weighed 22.2kg and they would not let it on so I had to unzip my small day pack from the front. It was fine, I just didn't really want to carry it as I was already carrying my laptop bag! The flight only took 2 hours so we were in Beirut in no time. Jess and I were the last ones of our group to come through customs but the guys had already grabbed our bags for us which was cool. A guy from our hotel was waiting for us as we had prearranged a transfer. Minivans don't seem to exist in Beirut as our transfer was 2 normal unmarked cars that we crammed all of our stuff into. Their driving in Beirut was almost as bad as Istanbul but thankfully it was only 20 minutes drive. We lugged our bags up 3 flights of stairs to reception to check in. Once there I realised that my wallet was missing, it had been in my jacket pocket but wasn't anymore. My pockets didn't have zips and I feared that it had fallen out at some stage at the airport. Luckily our driver was still there so he took me down to the car to see if it was in there. Initially I could not see it and was on my hands and knees looking under the car. To my relief the driver spotted it tucked down the seat of the car - I was so lucky! We climbed another 3 flights to our rooms - the guys having one, the girls having one. The rooms were small and basic but had the essentials that we needed so it was fine with me. It was midnight by the time we got sorted and settled so opted to head to bed and start the next day fresh.

Saturday 7th May 2011 - Day 15 Oasis/Lebanon

We rose early and were hitting the streets sightseeing. It was crazy walking around seeing beautiful buildings and shops like Chanel and Jimmy Choo only to walk around the corner and see a bombed and heavily damaged building just right there. I had not realised that Lebanon had been bombed only a few years ago - 2006! Most of the damaged buildings had been abandoned, left to show people what they had gone through which I thought was quite cool. They had instead opted to use their money not to restore those buildings but to build new ones to show how far they had come after the bombings. It was a little sad that they had not restored some buildings as there was one in particular that would have looked amazing had it been restored to its former glory but I did understand why they chose not to. On our wondering we found a bank that was willing to exchange some money with us as none of us had any Lebanese currency. We then headed down to the waterfront and had a lovely stroll along the promenade. The weather was fabulous, about 25°C and nice and sunny. We found a gorgeous little restaurant at the end of the promenade that was right on the water, literally. There was a rock wall right in front of our table that the waves were breaking against. We spent the rest of the day just walking around the city seeing everything we could. We visited the University which was very flash, it was huge and had its own massive sports complex down the bottom, right on the waterfront. We stopped for a well deserved ice-cream before heading back to the hostel for a nap. Andy, Simon and Jen decided to go for a beer so Dre gave them the map only to discover that he didn't actually know the way back to the hostel (he had been out and about very early that morning getting his bearings). We wandered around in circles for about an hour before giving up and getting a taxi, only to discover we really were not that far away at all. Our nap turned into a 3 hour sleep - waking about 8pm. Because we were going straight out after dinner we all got dressed in our going out clothes. Lebanon was very modern and people out and about, especially in clubs, were dressed to the nines. We opted for the full get up too - Jen and Jess didn't really have going out clothes so I lent them 2 of my dresses. Dressed to kill we headed to dinner. The first place we went into was terrible so we walked out and went to a little Italian place across the road. They didn't have a table for 7 ready just yet so we went to a local bar for a quick drink. The food at dinner was great. We then hit the main street where most of the bars and clubs were. We started off at a cute little bar before moving on to the night clubs. The music in all of them was house, but not good house. We moved from club to club and at 3am Jess and Andy decided to call it a night. Me, Simon, Jen, Fiona and Dre decided we would have one last drink back at the first pub before home time. They looked like they were about to close but said they would stay open for us - I guess with so much competition around 5 drinks was better than none. Their DJ had left so they told us we had to sort our own music out which was just what we were after - they had stacks of cds that we looked through putting on stupid songs like MC Hammer. We drank and danced the night away, attracting the attention of people walking past who then came in to join the fun to the delight of the bar owners. A local guy then started buying us shots and there was more dancing, including up on the seats by Jen and before we knew it it was 5am in the morning! The owners finally decided it was time to close so we walked out with light in the sky, the sun not that far from coming up. We had just the best night!!!!

Sunday 8th May - Day 16 Oasis/Lebanon

After 3 hours sleep I was up, showered and ready for another day. I was actually quite surprised how good I felt given the amount I had drunk and the lack of sleep. We all headed to breakfast before flagging down a taxi to take us to the local bus station where we were going to catch a bus to Baalbek, ancient ruins that Nev had told us we must visit while in Lebanon. The taxi driver asked us where we were headed on the bus and when we told him he offered to take us there, wait while we visited the site and bring us back again, all for a great price of $100USD - approx $15USD each. Given that it was easily a 6 hour day for him (the ruins were a good 1½ hours out of town) we snapped it up as it was so much easier than trying to navigate the local bus system. I had a little nap on the way there. A little lebanese man offered to be our guide and as we wanted to hear about the history we agreed. His knowledge was fantastic and he allowed us to take our time and see everything rather than rush us. The ruins were amazing, with 6 grand pillars still standing - I stretched up as tall as I could go on my tippy toes and still could not reach the top of one of the bases that lay on the ground. Baalbek was easily the best ruins site I had seen so far! After the ruins we had a quick look in the village so Jess could buy a patch for her collection and then back to Beirut we went. The driver dropped us off at the cafe where we had breakfast which was just around the corner from our hostel. We walked down the road to get a snack before heading back to the hostel to get ready for the night. Chelsea vs Man United were playing at 6pm so we headed back to the pub that had accommodated us until 5am to watch it. Sadly the result did not go my way (Chelsea) and instead Man U won to the delight of Andy, he even jumped up and did a little dance. It had effectively ended Chelsea's chances of winning the premiership - not cool 😞 After the game we made our way to the clock tower square where we had ice-cream on our first day where there were loads of restaurants. We were looking for a traditional lebanese restaurant - it had been mentioned in the lonely planet. We found it no problem. Me, Jess, Jen, Fiona and Dre ordered a whole lot of mezee. We had no idea what most of it was that we were ordered which made it even more fun. Andy and Simon had meat plates! We ended up with soooo much food - hummus, bread, a mixed meat platter, fried potatoes, tabbouleh salad, an aubergine type dip, some meat balls and the funniest veggie platter. We had expected it to be cooked veggies like peppers, carrots etc... but instead it was a huge raw plate that had half a cabbage, a whole small lettuce, whole tomatoes, carrots, springs onions, a capsicum, hot peppers and radish - it was so strange. I tried to dig into it and at one stage probably had more lettuce on my plate than anything else but it was just not going down too well so we left most of it. We had a local beer and took our time enjoying the beautiful food - it was some of the best food I have had! We got someone at the restaurant to take a group photo of us and then leisurely made our way back to the hostel. We had originally considered going out again but given that Andy and Fee had to be up really early we decided to call it a night. I had been having issues with my phone and the internet the whole time I was in Beirut but finally managed to txt mum for Mother's Day and send a message to Eric for his birthday before heading to bed.

Monday 9th May 2011 - Day 17 Oasis/Lebanon

We woke up at 6am to say goodbye to Andy and Fee. It was sad to see 2 members of Team Lebanon (as well of course Oasis) leave as we had had a great time together. We went back to sleep and woke again at 9am at which time we had to be showered, changed, packed and at reception for our airport transfer by 10:30am. We arrived at the airport at 11am and checked in straight away so we could get rid of our packs. We found a nice restaurant on the top level of the airport for breakfast - I had a pastry breakfast and Jess had a healthy breakfast which we shared. We did some snack/chocolate/water shopping to use up my final Lebanese currency before boarding the plane at 12:30pm. The flight was with Royal Jordanian and was pretty quick and painless, taking only a couple of hours - no sooner had we taken off we were landing! It was one of the smoothest landings I have ever had, I didn't think we had landed at first. Dave had told us that there may be a guy waiting for us at the airport who was going to sort out our visas as part of the Oasis group so that we did not have to get or pay for individual ones. We were a little skeptical as we were not sure how someone would be allowed to meet us inside the customs area. At first we did not see anyone so we lined up to exchange currency (we had to pay for the visas with Jordanian money) and as we were about to get in the que for the visas a guy holding up a sign that read "welcome Oisis" which we assumed was meant to be Oasis appeared. He took all of our passports and arranged a group visa while we went down and got our bags. We were all a little uneasy about handing a stranger our passports and simply walking away but thankfully he was not dodgy and reappeared shortly after with our passports, visas and stamps all complete. We had intended to wait at the airport until the other Oasis crew arrived, we were even going to try to make a sign and hold it up for them as they came into arrivals. This didn't go to plan as our helper had arranged a transfer for us to be taken to our hotel straight away so off we went. The scenery into town was flat, barren and quite deserty. Given the surprise I got in Turkey I didn't know what to expect but yip Jordan was deserty! As we got into town the buildings simply went for miles, when you looked on the horizon all you saw were more buildings, it was HUGE!! There were a lot of one way streets so it took us an age to get to our hotel. We had to be dropped off on the road as the walk way to the hotel was not accessible by car. We told the reception who we were as far as being with Oasis and they must have been expecting us as they had our room all ready to go. A guy sitting on the couches in reception then piped up and said "hey, I'm with Oasis too". Turns out he was the extra person we were picking up along the way. His name was Kevin so we called him Kev. We put all of our bags in the room and as Kev had been in Amman for the past 2 days we let him be our tour guide. He took us to a fantastic lunch spot that had great mezee - I had falafel for the first time and it was awesome! The whole meal, including drinks cost 11JD (£1) crazy cheap! We then walked through the streets and into a fresh fruit market where I sampled and subsequently bought a bag of loquids - fruit I hadn't had since I was a kid when we had a tree in our backyard. We then went to the amphitheatre which had a small museum just inside the gates. There were 3 levels to the theatre, the lower built for royalty so it was flat with quite small even steps, the second was built for the military so had slightly bigger steps but the third level was built for the poor people so the steps were huge, uneven and gave you a feeling of vertigo. I was knackered by the time I got to the top, which I must admit took me longer than it should have. We sat for a while looking out at the view of the city which was beautiful. We descended very slowly and the guys left us to go climb another view point whilst us girls (me, Jess and Jen) decided it was beer o'clock time (funny how it is normally the other way around). Unfortunately, we had read in the lonely planet that Amman was not that friendly towards women and a lot of places did not allow women in let alone serve them alcohol, only the big hotels allowed females to enter. To me this was just crazy and so wrong but we were not in our culture anymore so we just had to deal with it. We couldn't find a hotel that looked like they served beer and the one place we thought was a bar turned out to be a fruit juice and shisha bar. We each ordered a fruit cocktail (with no alcohol of course) which was pretty much sugar in a cup - I finished mine but the others couldn't because it was too sweet. When we got back to the hotel the guys were already there so we just chilled on the beds until the other Oasis crew arrived. We all went down to say hi and introduce them to Kev. We had a group meeting to chat about what they had been up to and what we had been up to and we were told that we would definitely not be getting the truck back for the rest of the trip. It was going to take too much time to get it through a border. Dave said Nev was hoping to be able to sort the truck and get leave so he could join us for a couple of days in Dahab but he wasn't too sure whether that was possible or not. It sucked to find out that we were definitely not getting the truck back and that we wouldn't be seeing Nev again but shit happens I guess. Once everyone was sorted in their rooms they headed off to do a bit of sightseeing and get some dinner. I walked with Kev again and a few others back through the markets and up to a view point where you could see the amphitheatre all lit up which was cool. I went straight to bed after getting back to the hotel as I had had a long day and we were on the road again at 8am the next morning

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