Spent all morning taxiing around Tehran’s five star hotels looking for one that had a satellite sports package. Sadly the best they had was CCN and BBC with no sport. Gutted. This will be the first AB test I have missed in years and years

Went totally against my backpacker roots and have booked four internal flight to see most of Iran. This had to be done to make up time because I need to be in Mumbai in India in fifteen days. They only cost twenty quid each and it will save me around 53 hours of wasted bus time.

It’s the Muslim holy month of Ramadan where they all fast during daylight hours. As a tourist I am not expected to fast but the food places are mostly all closed so it’s academic. Have managed to find plenty of fruit and nuts which is lucky if you like living off foods that you can normally forage for in the for jungle.

Saw the National Jewels Museum which rivaled the collections I have seen in London and Moscow. They have a very impressive globe with 51366 precious stones on it. It would have been even more impressive if the eejit who made it had included New Zealand.

Walked past the German Embassy which has a memorial outside to the Iranians who were gassed by Saddam during the Iran Iraq war. Apparently the Germans supplied the gas to Iraq after the war had started. I wont type the whole thing but the last sentence reads ‘Iranian people who have been continuously witnessing the martyrdom of their beloved sons who had been victims of such lethal weapons shall never forget the German government’s complicity and undeniable role in this atrocious crime’. They don’t mince words here and they don’t forget or forgive quickly.

The building formerly known as the US Embassy but now known as ‘The US Den of Espionage’ is far more entertaining as it is covered with rabble rousing murals. Here are a few examples:

• We will make America face a severe defeat.
• On that day when the United States of America will praise us we should mourn
• United States of America after ghods occupier regime is the most hated statebefore our nation
• and the old classic Down with AmericaThere are other images showing America as warlike and corrupt as well. Well worth a look.

Had to read and listen to the ABs v Italy. The audio commentary over the internet by a group of guys at http://www.tvnz.co.nz/ was very funny. I emailed the show about how I had tried every five star in Tehran and they read it out on air to the whole wide world. My ego nearly exploded.

Changed some money on the street because the banks are closed. During the day the street value and the bank value is nearly identical. At night it’s a different matter. I found a guy and negotiated 35000 local for my forty dollars. When I counted and only found 25000 I asked what the deal was. He looked at me seriously and said one word ‘commission’. I gave him two of my own words and went to someone else. Money changers are one small step away from taxi drivers as far as I am concerned.

After dinner I caught the metro home. I’ve caught the metro in several countries now so I pretty much consider myself an international metro expert. Tehran’s metro is very new so it was easy to sort out. Firstly I checked the map and sorted out where I need to go. Then I bought a ticket for about 5p. I was cool. I had it under control. I walked down to the platform and wouldn’t you know it a train was waiting with its doors open. I didn’t run. I’m no metro beginner. As I calmly stepped onto the train I was smug in the knowledge that I truly am an international metro expert. I was performing a quick backup check to make sure there was no mistake when the conductor pulled my shoulder and signaled for me to step off the train. Eh? What had I done? What could possibly be wrong? And then I had an epiphany. As I stepped off I looked back over my shoulder and sure enough the carriage was full of women – and only women – all looking at me like I was a Muppet (or whatever they have here instead of Muppets because The Muppets is probably banned). How was I to bloody know the bloody tube in bloody Tehran is bloody segregated.

There were very few women on my mostly full 737 to Tehran. On boarding the flight only one had a head scarf on. By the time we landed in Tehran they all did.

Just in case you had any doubts about how Iran feels about Israel and America they have posters at passport control that show soldiers shooting at images of Palestinians with blood dripping onto a broken Star of David. The English part read ‘Down with Israel Down with America’.

The airport taxi guys were the usual bunch of overcharging lying (you pay 400 percent cheap cheap, your hotel no good, I know better one) tossers. It’s nice to know that some things never change.

Watched some local TV but couldn’t decide between the ‘praying dude channel’ or the ‘music video of soft focus violence against Zionist occupiers’ so turned it off.

Sleep at 5am.

No time to waste. Up at 9am.

Headed to Ghazvin where I could head out to Alamut and the castles of the assassins which are apparently very beautiful. People were very helpful one guy even gave me a lift to the local bus station on the back of his bike and wouldn’t take any baksheesh. Sadly despite my best efforts I did not make it there before dark so headed back to Tehran. Should have just taxied the whole journey from the beginning.

Interestingly one of the buses I caught was segregated. All the boys sat at the front and all the girls sat at the back. When I was eleven my intermediate school’s bendy bus was also segregated because there was too much pashing and stuff on the back seat. Coincidence?

The dress code for women in public here seems quite simple. Anything black that looks like a tent and covers your entire body will do. Even crossing the road at night and even in the baking midday heat.

There was a huge march in Tehran today to protest against the Zionist occupiers (Israel). They even had effigies of Bush, Blaire and Sharon. From the news it looked like many thousand turned up. They really hate Israel here.

All through Eastern Europe I wore shorts, even when it was a bit nippy. I got many odd looks for this. Now that I am in warm country I am wearing long pants and long sleeve shirts. Is it me that is nuts or is it everyone else?

Went to the Embassy again at 9am. They don’t so visas on Tuesdays but I thought it would be worth a try. It wasn’t. Today’s emotion is brought to you by the letter F for Frustration.

While waiting I read some of the Iranian Embassy literature which contained a list of workshops you could take including: ‘The disasters Darwinism brought to humanity’ ‘The collapse of Darwinizm (misspelt)’ and ‘The Qur’an leads the way to the science’. Educational I’m sure.

More milling around Sofia with my bottom lip hanging out. As a gesture of blind faith I bought some long sleeved shirts to wear in Iran so I can dress in a manner that is respectful to their religious beliefs.

Sometimes I have trouble communicating with the Bulgarians because they seem to be nodding when they mean no and they shake their heads when they mean yes. Hmmm. I’ve had many conversations that have gone: No? Yes. Yes? No. So no? Yes. So confusing.

Saw ‘The Village’ and ‘The Forgotten’ which were both good.

Caught the space museum which was much more pants than we had been led to believe.

We have to leave Russia tomorrow and we need to fly because the Belarus and Ukrainian visa situation is impossible. We booked the cheapest flight to the first place we could think of without thinking of whether we needed visas or where we were really going. Our lack of thought and planning was highlighted after we paid for the nonrefundable tickets and Runty looked at the Lonely planet and said ‘Hey Budapest is in Hungary’. As usual blind luck carried us through and Budapest is in the perfect location to begin the next leg of the trip.

FINAL THOUGHT ON RUSSIA

Russia is an amazing country and I would highly recommend it to anyone who travels. However the Ruskies could do a little more to encourage tourism and thus tourusm dollars. My recommendations are as follows:

1. Scrap the pain in the arse to get visa. The cold war is over, it was in all the papers.
2. Have a torist information office in every city that tourists frequent.
3. Put up a few more English signs around the place. Especially in the Metro.

FINAL THOUGHT ON THE SOVIETS

Our Russian guide told us that In the Eighties her huband got up at 6am to queue for a shop that opened at 9am so that their baby could eat. She said there were documented cases of Russians passing out when they arrived in the West and they saw the shops packed with food. Everbody had a job even if that job was sitting in an office all day drinking tea with nothing to do. The KGB would roam the streets looking for people who weren’t at their ‘jobs’ and arrest them, This was soviet Russia.
Apart from the death and suffering of tens of millions of people world wide and some really big really ugly buildings name one thing that communism has given us. My personal feeling is that the soviets were as evil as the Nazis.

Arranged for my hostel to wake me at 7.30 so I could be at my freshest, baldest and fedest for the nine o’clock bus. I was rudely woken at nine o’clock by a group of German mountain climbers having a loud conversation outside my room. I quickly forgave them their mountain climbers fashion sense (I only had one eye open) and ran for the bus whilst frowning at the camping ground manageress. Who looked suitably guilty.

If I could offer one piece of advice to those of you traveling to Greece it would be don’t catch a cab from the airport to the seaport and head straight to the islands. Instead go to the Meteora first. They are amazing and if I had made the quick transfer back to London that I was after then I would have truly missed out.

The Meteora are a group of 24 massive natural stone columns in the center of Greece. Over the centuries some kooky monks have built a number of monasteries on top of them. One of the Meteora, Agios Stefanos, was even use in the James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only. One hundred years ago the monks used wicker baskets and rope to pull prospective visitors up. One English writer who visited at the turn of the century asked how often they change the rope. The reply was “every time god lets it break”. Thankfully millions of tourists since then have impressed upon the monks the need for something a little more substantial. Stairs. Which considering I am a self proclaimed godless bastard I think is a much better idea.

The monasteries whilst beautiful and immaculately presented are all pretty much of a muchness. They all have a church (no kidding), a museum (well most do) and a souvenir shop. In fact the only thing they are missing that most tourist attractions have is an overpriced coffee shop. They also all have a huge sign out front that clearly states that women in short skirts and men in shorts will not be permitted, which is a bummer because I only have shorts. Luckily they all had a selection of embarrassing baggy pants that you could borrow free of charge that helped underdressed tourists like me rise to the required level of decency. But of course they did. In the olden days the monasteries may have survived on selling wine and salvation but these days it’s strictly tourism only at five hundred Draculars (almost a quid) a pop. And if the dozen or so tourist coaches doing the monastery circuit in the off season are anything to go by then they are doing very nicely indeed.

Apart from the stunningly spectacular views of the other Meteora and monasteries (well worth the admission alone) the churches in each monastery have to be the highlight. Each is intricately decorated with paintings depicting the lives and deaths of the various saints (you can tell they are saints from the golden globes surrounding their heads). There were literally hundreds of pictures of the saints being burnt, cooked (roasted, fried, steamed, stewed and boiled) amputated, speared, stoned, squished with heavy stone slabs, squished in wooden presses, eaten by ferocious animals, drown and decapitated (a particularly common way to whack the annoying saint in your neighborhood) to name a few. And the funny (funny odd, not funny ha ha) thing is looks on the saints faces as the were stabbed, burnt or lay on the ground next to their feet etc. If you had asked me before I saw the paintings I would have guessed that the look would be either ‘ouch ouch ouch that hurts’ or possibly ‘whoopee I get to see my good friend god now’ but they are not that at all. The look that every single saint has on his or her face is something akin to ‘I wonder what time dinner is?’ Go and see for yourself, you will see that I am right.

Got to bed at 8.30am and was up again by 11.00am when sleep ceased to be an option at my noisy hostel.

I met a Brit called Ben who is down on his luck at the moment. He has no money for food and is two days behind on his rent. To get out of hock he borrowed fifty shekels to get to a festival on a kibitz were he worked thirty hours straight. He was devastated when the promoter did a runner and nobody got paid. Fortunately the club I was at needed an extra set of hands so after two and a half hours sleep (hey that’s all I had) I woke him and dragged him off to work.

Ben’s plan for getting back to England is ingenious. Well ingenious is one word that you could use. When he wants to go home he is going to go to the British embassy and cause some trouble or break something so they are forced them to fly him home to face trial. Apparently one of his mates did it and when he was sent the invoice for the flight he never bothered to pay it. The lengths some people will go to avoid paying for things.

I read today that the Taleban in Afghanistan has a ‘Ministry for the Suppression of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue’. They should cut straight to the chase and have a ‘Ministry for the Suppression of Freedom and Rights and the Promotion of Terrorism and other Hate Crimes’.

DO YOU KNOW WHY THERE ISN’T PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST?

I have had a lot of time to mull over why things are so shit between the Arabs and the Israelis. You tend to have a bit of spare time to think when you travel alone. After all my deliberation I think I have it boiled down to one single fact that can explain all of the hatred and pain they cause each other. THEY DON’T WANT PEACE. Or a little more accurately they don’t want peace badly enough. If the general population of both sides really really wanted peace then they would find a way to make it happen. Instead what you find when you talk to people (either side) here is that they claim that they want peace and then try to justify their own sides actions. I think that they are just saying they want peace, or perhaps they think they want peace but when you talk to them what you realise is that what they actually want is REVENGE and what they perceive as JUSICE. And the official stats bear this opinion of mine out. In Palestine 85% of people want the ifutada to continue (despite the horrific loss of Palestinian life) and in Israel the hardliner Prime Minister Sharon has an unprecedented level of support (despite mounting Israeli deaths). I think that until both sides realise that they will never get everything that they want then there is no hope for peace. In short: they’re totally and utterly fucked.

JUST ONE MORE…

Why I the Islamic world rushing to line up behind the Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin Liner? It’s mental. The western world equivalent would be if America’s Amish community went bad and drove a suicide horse and cart into the great mosque in Mecca and then the American government decided to protect the people responsible and then all the Christians on the planet lined up behind the Amish community to destroy Islam. Ludicrous! This would never happen because in the west when you commit a horrible crime the authorities hunt you down and punish you. They don’t ‘jump on board’ and say, “Well you’re a bunch of extremist bastards but let’s see where this crazy horse ride goes!”

Forced to spend another day spinning around Jerusalem waiting for the Jews to let everyone else resume their normal lives. As a protest against religious oppression I watched TV, listened to the radio, used a phone, used the internet, left the house, ate, drank and tried to get laid (failed of course) before the sun set. I’m all for organised religion and other relatively harmless forms of brainwashing for the gullible and weak willed but I really object when it starts to have a negative impact on other peoples lives and especially my life.

Have decided to catch a taxi to Tel Aviv when it is totally dark and the Jews have decided to play nice.

SO MUCH FOR ORIGINALITY

A couple of years ago I had the idea of packaging up coffee, sugar and coffee whitener in one container. It would be great for backpackers etc. Well in a couple of weeks back I found out that some Syrian outfit is already doing it. One week later in Beirut I discovered that Nescafe are also doing it. It goes to show that no matter how smart you are or how good your ideas are that someone somewhere will already have thought of anything you will ever come up with. In the words of Bart Simpson “Can’t win. Don’t try.”

IS THIS THE END OF NORMAL SEX AS WE KNOW IT?

Have any of you ever heard of a sexual act called humming? The kiwi girls I met on the truck from Palmyra to Aleppo told me about it. Surprisingly I had never heard of it before despite being a dirty old bugger. Humming is when a girl puts your testicles in her mouth and forms a seal around them. Then she starts to hum. Apparently the feeling is out of this world and it never takes longer than 30 seconds to make you cum. personally I am more than a little sceptical but I plan to find out the truth of the matter anyway. If any of you get a chance to try this before me (quite likely) feel free to send a review. Oh and get this. Common etiquette says that the guy even gets to choose the tune. Magic.

HUMKU

hum hum hum hum hum
hum hum hum hum hum hum hum
hum hum hum hum hum

DAY 79 (CONTINUED)- ESCAPE FROM JERUSELAM

I missed saying goodbye to rob the American which is a pity because I wanted to confront him about being a spy for the CIA. Now that I think back on our time together I realise their where several obvious clues.

1. Rob was average looking, average height etc and you would never suspect him of anything. Least of all spying.
2. He said when he was young he was an athlete and was well coordinated. Just like a good spy would need to be.
3. He was detained ‘for no particular reason’ for 45 minutes at the Joranian/Israeli border.
4. About his job he said “I worked as a writer of technical books for Microsoft on a suite of packages called Microsoft Office” and asked “had I heard of it?” Nobody who really worked in the IT sector would ever be so dumb as to ask another IT guy if he had heard of Microsoft Office. Sounds like a dodgy cover if you ask me.
5. He knew an amazing amount of detail about the Israel/Palestine problem. Just like a spy would need to know.
6. He said had been traveling for two years (of three) to explain his packed passport. But the stamps and visas could easily have been from carrying out various ‘assignments’ around the world.
7. He took loads of photos. Not too suspect in itself but when considered with the other facts it seems very suspect.

It’s probably for the best that I didn’t get a chance to let on that I was on to him as I don’t know what the standard operating procedure for a blown cover is and I think he would have been quite upset if he had to ‘erase’ me. Also he was probably pretty busy making drops, tailing people, mixing up batches of invisible ink, decoding secret messages and other spy stuff. Right now he’s probably making a small gun out of his toothbrush and shaving foam canister so he can ‘put a cap in’ Sharon or Arafat’s arse if they don’t hurry the fuck up with the peace process.

I eventually got a service taxi out of Jerusalem around 6pm when the sun was well and truly behind the horizon. Got in to Tel Aviv around 8pm and booked into the cheapest place in town. Which worked out to be my most expensive yet. On the up side the room comes with it’s own shower and toilet facilities. On the down side I have to share it with 7 sweaty (and stinky) blokes from around the world.
Its much hotter here than Jerusalem. For the last couple of nights in Jerusalem I have had to use my sleeping bag to keep warm (first time I have experienced ‘cold’ since Mt Sinai). I didn’t really give it a second thought and figured that summer is drawing to an end. My sweat glands have helped me realise that the hot weather is far from over and that Jerusalem must be at altitude or something.

I can tell that Israel is a big step closer to the western world because the porn has reappeared on the top shelf in the newsagents.
An odd thing about Tel Aviv is the number of pet dogs they have here. It’s like no other city I have seen in the last 79 days. You can come up with your own theories for why this might be. I’m tired of doing all the thinking.

The women here in Israel are very nice indeed. I mean they are not Beirut nice but it’s not entirely unpleasant walking the streets. The important thing to remember in Israel though is that all of the women have been in the army and they all know how to kill you with a single punch. Definitely something to keep in mind.
There is one other theory I had about the women in Israel. I was debating it in my head and was in the process of collecting additional data to check my hypothesis when another guy on tour said exactly what I was thinking. Freaky. Later on another guy said it too. After extensive checking I have to say that all the data suggests that I was right. And since I had the theory confirmed by two independent sources it pretty much seems like an open and shut case to me. The theory can be put succinctly in two short words: GREAT TITS.

There are a number of shops here in Tel Aviv that look like they have closed recently. A year of Intifada (the Palestine uprising) is obviously costing the Israeli economy dearly.
The remaining tourist here at the moment fall into a small number of categories. the diehard tourists like me who came a long way to get here and didn’t want to go home without seeing the sights. The mentallly unwell who are here for their own reasons and who will probably stay until they get in trouble and are sent home. The young and dumb who think Israel is a great place to live and work at the moment. And the down on their luck. There a quite a few of these last two groups. People who live from day to day and work illegally for a fraction of what the Israelis earn. There’s loads of shitty under the table work for the tourists at the moment. Partly because there are so few tourists to do all the work and partly because the Palestinians are all locked up in the occupied territories.

The other main group that you see here is South Africans. Many of the Saffas use Israel to put together enough cash to get their English working visa. The other main advantage for the Saffas is that Israel acts like a halfway house for them so that they don’t have to go cold-turkey on street violence i.e. they don’t go from a situation where they are likely to get shot at every day (South Africa) to a situation where they are very unlikely to get shot at all (London).
Found out about a kibitz here that has a ratio of five girls to every guy. Apparently they Danish and Finish girls there used to have a competition to see that could ‘score’ any new boys first. That was until their respective embassies advised them all to leave. I got this information first hand from a Saffa guy called Andrew who lived there with his girlfriend. He described being there with his girlfriend was like taking a sandwich to a restaurant. Like everything in life, this information is for sale for the right price. All serious bids can be sent to my email address.

Up at 5.30 to take sunrise photos of Jerusalem with Rob the American. Getting up early is the perfect excuse to not have a shower. Was a little grumpy to have a third disturbed nights sleep in a row but the photos would make it worthwhile. Or at least they would have if I had taken the fully charged battery instead of the empty one.

Rob and I did a tour of the old and new cities after that. First stop the church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is where Jesus was supposedly crucified, buried and resurrected. We also toured the Via Dolorosa where Jesus carried the cross and the place where the last feed was held. How I was able to visit these sacred sites is a good story in itself. You see the bible is quite different from the Lonely Planet in that it doesn’t have any maps (not that the Lonely Planet maps are that crash hot). Luckily the roman emperor Constantine’s mum was here around 300AD and she came over all funny and had some visions and stuff, which showed her where all the places that Jesus went to in the bible were. Well that’s all that settled beyond all reasonable doubt then.

After that we took a tour of the new city including the Mahane Yahuda market, Ben Yehuda Street and the ultraorthadox Jewish neighbourhood of Mea She’arim. The last place is described by the Lonely Planet as the world’s most reluctant tourist attraction. This is because loads of tourists love to pop by and gawk at the ultraorthadox Jews who basically want to just get on with their lives and perhaps listen to a little ZZ Top (there I go again). Their neighbourhood is signposted with huge bills that say ‘we ask you with all our hearts please do not pass through our neighbourhood in immodest clothes’ and goes on to give a list of examples. You probably haven’t realised this because I certainly didn’t until Rob pointed it out but the places we visited have all been targeted in recent suicide bombings. In short, we did the terrorist attack tour of Jerusalem and lived to tell the story.

Had a run in with the hostel owner at the al Arab about paying for my bed on the roof. I try to pay day by day so if I make any sudden changes to plans then I can just get up and go without having to worry about getting a refund. I think it’s better that way since I am the only person that I trust completely. Today it backfired on me, as the hotel manager’s senile father doesn’t remember rudely demanding the money or me paying him yesterday. I paid the extra but had a talk to the manager later on and worked it out so that I don’t end up out of pocket. Sorted.

I was woken at 2am by a Russian women crying and wailing at her husband in the next room. She went on constantly and didn’t stop. The six of us on the roof next door were all kept up by her racket until the Japanese guy got the receptionist to come up and have a word. This was effective for about two minutes until she started up again. Eventually the fuzz were called by a neighbour and three policemen, nine army guys with automatic rifles turned up. That shut her up. When they got there they knocked on her door and said who they were. She said, “What do you want?” I remember thinking ‘they want you to shut the fuck up you dumb bitch’ (I was very tired). Then they said some other stuff and she said she was pregnant and I remember thinking ‘great, that’s nine people you are keeping awake’. I’d had enough by now. enough of the drama, not enough sleep. So I went down stairs to watch CNN (to try to find out how many pets had been hurt) before my sightseeing tour at 3.30.

The tour started with a walk up Masada for a sunrise photography session. Masada is most famous for being the site where 960 Jews on the run from the Romans killed themselves to avoid capture. What were they thinking? ‘We can really show the Romans by being dead when they knock the front door down.’ I bet the Romans really kicked themselves too. I bet they thought ‘fuck those zealots really showed us a thing or two today.’ This is another perfectly good example of religions fanatics taking their beliefs out on themselves and not other innocent people.

The next stop was the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is 340m below sea level and nothing grows in except, apparently, four kinds of fungus. The water itself is 33% solid, which means that you float much more than you normally do. Which was kind of fun. Some floating, a few photos, and a couple of mad dashes to the showers to flush burning dead sea water from our eyes we were on our way again.

We saw some other stuff later on but it was nothing to write home about.

COS I’M WAILING

Got back to the hostel at four in the afternoon and tried to sleep. The still wailing Russian girl and her husband were being kicked out so I took off for a look at the wailing wall. Apparently they are heroin addicts or similar so everyone is pleased to see the back of them.

SHE’S GOT LEGS

The Wailing Wall was either packed with orthodox Jews preparing for Yom Kippur or they were having a massive ZZ Top look-alike competition (a cheap and predictable joke I know, but I couldn’t resist). Either way it was Wailing Wall to wall big beards, black hats and black suits.

When I got back to the hostel I found that my pack had been broken into. They couldn’t get into the main part because I keep it locked up and as far as I can tell all they got was my Swiss Army Knife. Surprisingly I am not even slightly fussed about this. Which is lucky because it’s not every day that you get robbed and don’t give a fuck. I figured it was the junkie Ruskies and one shitty old Swiss Army Knife is a small price to pay for a good nights sleep.

The mosquitoes caught up with me again last night and made the most of it (me). They must have flown all the way from Hama in Syria to catch me. Well at least I know how fast they can travel, about fifty kilometres a day, give or take.

My new diet is going really well. Yesterday I lived on shuwarma, chocolate and coke (hangover food). Today I had burger king for breakfast. Fatbastardness here I come.

Also on personal issues my guts have gone again. I did promise to keep you posted after all. Don’t worry it’s not that bad since I am in a place with loads of toilets an I’m not throwing up, feeling weak or any of the other things that come with having a dodgy stomach.

After some initial tough talk from bush I had thought that we was backing off from all out war and was regaining his composure and common sense. That is until today when I saw his comments on the BBC web site about the ruling Taleban in Afghanistan. “…they follow in the path of nazism and totalitarianism … and they will follow that path all the way to where it ends: in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies.” and “every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make … either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” and them’s real fighting words so I think that things might get a bit tense here soon. Especially when you consider how one-eyed the everyday Arabs choose to be about things. They see Israel as another crusade and completely ignore the suicide bombs in Israeli cafes. They see the Iraqi sanctions and resulting deaths through starvation and lack of medicine as murder and refuse to even consider what might happen if Saddam’s regime develops a working nuke, ballistic missile or effective biological weapon. So if Bush bombs Afghanistan even further into the dark ages (how much further they could possibly go?) then the resulting Arab/Muslim deaths will unite a large percentage of the Arab/Muslim world even further against the USA/West. Possibly even to the point where the Arab leaders who enjoy American/Western financing and support so much may not be able to remain in control their own countries. A good way to explain the one-eyedness that the average street Arabs have is shown by the widely held belief here that the CIA and/or Mossad planned the hijacks. The rational for this are scary to say the least:

1. Only those two organisations have the power or skill needed as they are both omnipotent
2. You can’t do anything in the USA without the CIA knowing, as they are omnipotent
3. Nobody else has anything to gain. The Americans will get a huge insurance payout and the Israelis will get even more Arab deaths, which is basically all they have ever wanted.
4. Apparently not one Jew died in any of the attacks. So they all knew in advance and stayed away that day. Or the other one you hear is that four thousand Jews died in the world trade centre. So what were they doing there eh? Eh? Don’t you think that is a bit suspicious eh? Eh?

Before you ask. Yes a large number of people here really believe this shit and to make matters worse they seem to be getting (at least some of) their information/ideas from the (government controlled?) Arabic news television. Unbelievable.

More drooling around the streets of Beirut and have decided to risk making a run at the Israeli border despite hearing it was closed recently. My rational for this is:

1. I didn’t come all this way to miss seeing the sights in Israel
2. If it does ‘kick off’ here then I will be a lot safer in pro-American Israel than in one of the Arab nations.
3. If the border is closed then I can come straight back here and take the Beirut option.

That afternoon Fouad (the other guy from Petra) picked me up from Beirut and drove me out to his house just this side of the Syrian border in Aanjar. Fouad’s convertible Mercedes is much nicer than Sako’s (sorry Sako) and Fouad definitely believes in honking. As well as swearing and vigorous hand gestures. It didn’t matter though because we flew over the mountains so fast that most of the honks sounded like they were coming from the car behind us.

Coming into the Bekaa valley we were stopped at a military checkpoint where a guy in an army uniform tried to sell us something. Fouad politely said no thanks and we passed through. He explained that the checkpoint was a fundraising venture run by the Hizboula. That’s the same Hizboula who like to fire mortars at Israeli villages. I don’t think Fouad likes them much but they’re not the sorts of people you mess with. In fact they’re not the sort of people you do anything other than be exceptionally polite to. I am reminded of the joke about what you call a three hundred pound gorilla with a baseball bat. Sir.

Twenty seconds later we passed through a Syrian checkpoint. Almost all of the military in this part of Lebanon are from Syria. They established their intelligence headquarters here during the war and haven’t decided to leave yet.

One thing we were going to do is drive by the house of one of the hijackers who only lived two towns away. Fouad even knew the guy through his sister who went to school with him. I wanted to take a photo of his house but we (or more accurately Fouad) decided not to as the locals there are a little jumpy at the moment.

Aanjar has some small roman ruins and is the home of a large number of Armenians. The Armenians moved here from eastern turkey in 1915 after the Turks tried to remove their race from the face of the planet. Aanjar completely escaped the destruction of the war in Lebanon because the local Armenians stayed neutral. Although the presence of the Syrian intelligence HQ might have helped a bit.

Fouad’s maid did all my washing and made me an excellent home cooked meal. It didn’t exactly fit in with my new grease and sugar health regime but it tasted great so I didn’t say anything. Later on Fouad met a friend in Beirut and I hung out at Sako’s where I used his computer (these emails don’t write themselves you know) and drank imported Grolsh.

I have been keeping a close eye on what is happening in the region via local newspapers, the internet and television because I want to make sure that if it suddenly gets too dodgy that I have some warning. I am starting to get a little over the CNN coverage though. The other night a reporter gave the following insightful report. “Thanks Connie. I’m standing down here at the perimeter of ground zero. There are hundreds of people holding up homemade signs thanking and supporting the rescuers and some giving descriptions of the missing people. This little boy is holding up a sign for his missing father. It gives his name, hair colour, eye colour and height, which you can see, was five foot nine and has been crossed out and is now five foot eleven. Now I ask you Connie what difference could two inches possibly make?” the reporter pauses to allow the full emotional impact to sink in “but would we do any different if it were our father? Over to you in the studio Connie (chokes back tears as camera cuts).” Thank god for the BBC is all I can say.

Later on met Fouad’s parents who are really great. Apart form being fantastic hosts they are really interesting and right up to date with all the developments in the local situation. Which isn’t always the case in this part of the world. They know way more than I do despite my best attempt to stay abreast of things through the Internet and television.