Off the beaten track....

Self evidently, even the smallest, most insignificant countries need banks, and as my employer specialises in banking systems, we have a large and efficient sales force visiting all of them trying to peddle our wares and bring those banks, often kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.  It leads to some interesting travel possibilities.  And that is frankly one of the best things about the job.   Since we don't normally sell into regular tourist destinations (although in the last couple of years I've missed out on projects in Cyprus, Malta and Mauritius), it means trips to places that are not normally on any list of Must Go There destinations.

And often with surprising results.

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Poland, for instance, was not really on the mass tourist trail when I was sent there to do a couple of weeks of workshops 10 years ago.  Now I call it home, it has changed dramatically (and for the better) and is now a regular tourist destination (though not in the package deal sense) that is becoming increasingly popular.  The same is true of Slovakia (where I spent time about 9 years ago): another ex-Soviet bloc emerging nation that was - and possibly still is - even less westernised than Poland.   The same could be said of Latvia, Romania and Bulgaria, all places I would have never dreamed of visiting under my own steam but all of which have unique charms that led to enjoyable stays, and all places to which I would happily return (if only to see the changes since my original visits).  Further afield, Kazakhstan (yet another Soviet cast-off) was a quite extraordinary place that I've already written about extensively here (see last month's post "Go East Old Man"). 

Kenya, although popular for safari vacations (and rightly so) has a capital city in Nairobi that in the two weeks I spent there never felt in the least bit safe to me, so I spent the entire time holed up in my hotel.  Mind you, it was a fine hotel  - the Sarova Stanley.  It doesn't have particularly good reviews on Trip Advisor, but I found it charming, all Victorian Colonial wood panelling and chandeliers, comfortable rooms, excellent restaurants and bars, one of which opens direct onto the pavement outside and features great live music every night.  It also has a really nice rooftop pool and sun terrace, with an adjoining bar and restaurant.  The food was good, the beer cold and strong, and there was wall-to-wall Premier League football on TV every weekend (and most evenings) courtesy of the South African SuperSports network.  Basically it was everything I need in a hotel when I'm on the road, and I have no hesitation recommending it to anyone.

Saudi Arabia was sosmething else again, a bizarre place that is basically a feudal dictatorship pretending to be a 21st century democracy.  I was only there a week but it was enough to put me off ever going there again.  I was in Dharam, an oil town on the coast of the Persian Gulf and not the main cities of Jeddah or Riyadh, so it was pretty quiet and not crowded at all.  I flew into Bahrain, which is perhaps an hours' drive away, and was picked up in an air conditioned Cadillac limo to be ferried across the causeway into Saudi and thence to the Sheraton Hotel (I think, but it could have been a Holiday Inn).  It was a comfortable enough hotel but of course dry - after a week I was sick of orange juice or water, not even coke to relieve the monotony.  The staff were friendly but 100% male, the same situation as at the client.  And the pool was Males Only.  I felt very uncomfortable, such an alien culture.  I had a limo pick me up every day to drive me to the client, about a mile away.  One morning, stopped at traffic lights, a king cobra three feet long slithered across the road in front us, past a handful of people standing at a bus stop (who ignored it completely) and into a bush.  Extraordinary.  The client was in a five storey office block, all marble, fountains and trees growing in the central atrium, and perhaps 50 people (all male of course) worked there.  I've never seen so much open space in an office before or since.  One evening the IT manager offered to drive me back to my hotel.  We went down to the air conditioned underground carpark, got into his air conditioned Cadillac, drove up the ramp onto the road, turned right, drove 20 yards and turned right again into a gated compound next door to the client.  We parked in his garage (yes, it was air conditioned) and went into his house.  As we entered, he called something in Arabic and I heard footsteps retreating upstairs - I assume he was telling his family to get of sight.  While he changed out of his suit into traditional Arab costume I looked at the gold ornaments and pictures everywhere and drank more bloody orange juice.  Then he drove me in silence to my hotel - he was not a great conversationalist, although his Engliah was impeccable.  I was very glad to leave for home the next day.

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Probably the most unlikely place to offer comfort and enjoyment turned out to be Beirut.  I was offered a couple of weeks' problem solving there that turned into an 18 month project commitment.

I was not at all keen.  Lebanon has a history of civil warfare and open conflict with my old friends Israel, and occupying Syrian forces only left the country a couple of years ago.  The most popular political party in the country is the Iranian backed Islamic fundamentalist Hizbollah, and there are regular shootings and assassinations.  The Foreign Office's Locate website (an essential tool offering travel advice for every country in the world - I never leave home without reference to it) basically said to avoid it like the plague.  I had extensive conversations with the project manager and a couple of buddies with recent hands-on information (one of whom travels extensively in the middle east) and they all assured me it was nowhere near as bad as the press made it out to be, so as it was only for a couple of weeks leading up to Christmas (2 years ago) and I had nothing better to do, I accepted the gig.

Getting there from Warsaw was challenging.  I had a variety of different routes, via Frankfurt, Paris, Milan, and Istanbul, and over the 18 months tried them all.....and lost baggage on them all.  The actual flying times were ok.....via Istanbul probably the best, with just under 2 hours from Warsaw to Istanbul, then a further hour and a half to Beirut, but the connection times were horrendous: the outbound journey meant a four hour stopover and arrival around 2 a.m., and homeward even worse.....a 6 a.m. flight from Beirut, then 10 hours hanging around in a Terminal without lounge access in Istanbul.  I tended to use the Frankfurt route most frequently, even though the flight times were longer and departure/arrival times not good and invariably meant weekend travel (Sunday night outbound, Saturday morning homeward).  I tended to arrive in Beirut around 3:00 a.m. Monday morning local time, and leave again at midnight from the hotel on a Friday night for a 3:45 flight that got me home to Warsaw by Saturday lunchtime.    Going via Paris and Milan were just very unpleasant - neither airport is particularly efficient or friendly in the way transfer passengers are treated, and I missed a couple of connections homeward in Paris because of flight delays in-bound caused by French air traffic controllers working to rule.

Anyway, to Beirut.  The city still bears many scars from the 10 year civil war, and you really can't miss them.  The drive in from the airport takes you through very poor neighbourhoods where ramshackle breeze block homes are piled one on top of the other in the most flimsy and unfinished apartment blocks I've ever seen,  and virtually next door are more exclusive areas that look finished to a high standard and have 24 hour security patrols, satellite TV and so on.  All of them are always alive, with lights in windows, music playing in roadside bars and cafes, and people smoking and talking politics or whatever even at three in the morning.  It's a scruffy but vibrant place - New York may pride itself in being the City That Never Sleeps, but Beirut must run it a close second.   The roads into and through the city are wide, at least three lanes each way, but poorly finished, and at any junction or intersection massive concrete blocks are laid out to filter the traffic flow and separate the various routes.  It still looks like a war zone.  The traffic in the day time is terrible, and the quality of driving the worst I've ever seen.  The roads may be limited to three lanes, at least according to the somewhat erratic lane markings, but during rush hours there are never less than five lanes of actual traffic squeezed into them, crawling along most of the time at not much more than walking pace.  There seem to be only a handful of traffic lights in the city, and since they only flash amber (even though they appear to have red and green lights as well) everyone ignores them anyway.   No one signals, no one gives way, people on the inside lane will suddenly carve across to turn left, or from the outside lane decide to turn right, and door mirrors seem to be considered ornamental rather than useful safety devices.  And yet there seem to be relatively few accidents.  I only saw one, a mini bus that had overturned somewhere between the airport and city centre.  It was lying on its side and people were scrambling out of broken windows.  My taxi driver kept going, blowing his horn and shouting something (probably abusive) in Arabic as he passed....very friendly, I thought.

My hotel was out of the city centre in a northern suburb called Zalka, one of the main shopping districts apparently.  It was adequate, 17 floors, all rooms with a good balcony but no furniture on them unless you specifically asked for it, and once you got above the 11th floor a sea view (of sorts).  The room service menu was better then the restaurant, and it's the only hotel I've ever stayed in that lacks a bar in the reception area....though you could order a beer from the restaurant and drink it in comfort there.  But there was a good selection of reasonably priced places to eat and drink within walking distance so it was ok.  Over the months I was there I got know most of the reception and restaurant staff pretty well, and they were all very friendly and gave me an excellent service, so I have no real complaint.  Across the street was a Starbucks, so as the hotel breakfast was unfailingly terrible I got into the habit at weekends of getting up about 10, showering, then wandering across to breakfast on Grande Latte and blueberry muffins, listen to my miusic and read my book in a comfortable armchair inside for a couple of hours.  It was very pleasant.  The hotel provided a cable service that, like in Saudi, covered English football, again via SuperSport but also as an alternative a Dubai set up that was basically a SkySports clone, even down to the ex-Sky presenters, so weekends were actually quite enjoyable.

There was not a lot else to do in Zalka.  Although Beirut is on the Mediterranean coast, there are no public beaches and only a handul of private ones in the immediate area, all a good half hour by taxi from the hotel so I didn't bother.  Call me old fashioned, but the idea of spending half an hour in a cab to go to a beach where I have to pay $50 to get on it, plus a good ten bucks a beer (and more for food) doesn't seem to be an attractive option.  With the sea visible from my hotel though, I thought there might be somewhere I could go just to dip my toes, chill out and read, so I went for a walk one Saturday morning.  First problem was crossing the highway......dangerous enough to travel in a car, suicidal to cross as a pedestrian.  I had to walk maybe half a mile to the nearest footbridge.  Then followed another half mile walk (and another dodgy road crossing, this time without the aid of a bridge) to get close to the sea.  But it was a huge disappointment.  In both directions, for seemingly miles, between the road and the beach was block after block of cheap and nasty warehouses and garages, all of which seemed to use the space behind them (i.e. the beach) to dump all kinds of unpleasant looking crap and slurry.  I've never seen such a polluted beach, and the sea beyond, although it looked like the Med does anywhere - that is to say blue and inviting - it was probably equally polluted.  It's a shame, but in the whole 18 months I worked on the Mediterranean coast in Beirut I never got my toes wet.

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Which is not too much of a surprise, really.  Beirut has been an important port on the eastern Med seaboard for thousands of years, and the wars of the last 20 or 30 years have failed to shut it down.  It's still an important container port, and as the city recovers and rebuilds itself into a tourist destination the cruise ships are returning too.   Which is good for the Lebanese people, who with very few exceptions I found to be really friendly.  Although it's an Arab country, it's also majority Christian with a big French influence from that country's colonial days.  The people speak both Arabic and French interchangeably, and most of the professional classes, and pretty much anyone under 30, speaks English too.  Listening to the locals argue, especially in the bank, (which as voluble Arabs was all the time) was really entertaining as they would be using all three languages, often within the same sentence.  As a typical linguistically lazy Englishman who has a few words of French, German, Spanish and Polish (even after 10 years in Warsaw) it was a shaming and embarrassing experience. 

It's also a democracy, despite Netanyahu's declaration that Israel (which shares Lebanon's southern border) is the only democracy in the middle east.....as usual the man is talking bollocks.  You could actually argue that Lebanon's democracy is stronger than Israel's, since it's written into its constitution that the President must come from one particular segment of the population, the Prime Minister from another, and proportional representation means that it's in a permanent state of coalition government, but it seems to work.   There was an election while I was there, and the build up to it meant wall-to-wall party political broadcasts on every TV station, and the patrons in every cafe and bar spent hours arguing politics over their hubble-bubble pipes and backgammon boards.  There were cars with mounted loudspeakers touring the streets and declaiming until all hours of the night, and every window and wall and door was plastered with candidates' posters.  Clearly, politics - and in particular democratic politics - is very important to the Lebanese.  Those of us who were foreigners on the project were sent home for the election weekend, just in case some of the more radical Hizbollah militia fanatics got upset by the result and tried to start something, but in the event the election went exactly as most people thought it would, and passed off peacefully.

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So I didn't stray too far from Zalka and the hotel.  A few times I went into the downtown area, now rebuilt after the war, and the centre of nightlife in Beirut.  It's an interesting place: all the major hotels are there, there's a huge and beautiful blue-domed mosque, and several pedestrianised streets full of designer clothes shops, bars and coffee houses, all quite reasonably priced.  Along the Corniche (the promenade, by the sea) there are more restaurants including a perticularly good Indian, and every night there are hundreds of people promenading in the warm Mediterranean air.  It's a place to see and be seen, and is increasingly popular as a venue for fashion shows, film festivals and book fairs.  Sitting on the terrace at the Moevenpick Resort hotel one evening in December, in a shirt and sweater, enjoying a beer and looking over the calm and moonlit sea, the recent troubles seemed like another age entirely.  The Merecedes, Porsche, Ferrarri, Lamborghini and other expensive and new SUVs in the car parks and on the roads testify to the country's continuing recovery and prosperity.

My one out of town excursion was to the ancient port of Byblos, about an hour north.  A group of us went one evening and had a pleasant time.  Byblos is a lovely place, especially the old port area (beyond that it's really just another Lebanese town with its tower blocks and traffic problems).  This is full of lovely old sandstone buildings, filled with gift shops, bars and restaurants, all linked together by a network of narrow and winding roads too narrow for anything but walking, and many of them covered over with multicoloured and arabic patterned canopies.  It's noisy and full of life and enjoyment, and when we were there hardly any tourists.  Beyond the port area there are some lovely old Roman amphitheatre ruins and a temple, and a little harbout where fishing boats go about their daily business.  It's well worth a visit, but I only spent one evening there.....I'd like to go back and spend a weekend there, to do it justice.

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The project itself was awful, not one of the most enjoyable work periods, but the people I worked with made up for that.   We have an office in Beirut and the bulk of the team came from there.  There were a couple of Indian guys full time, and over the months I was there additional people came in (and left again) from London, Dubai, Frankfurt and Dublin, so it was a good mix.  I think everyone came in with the same expectations as I had......that is to say, war zone, dangerous, Arab nutters, mind your back.....and found the place to be totally different. 

I wandered around many times well after dark, returning from various bars and restaurants, and never once felt threatened or unsafe.

I can think of no stronger praise than that.