Beirut, Damascus again, and the monastery of Mar Musa

It’s been difficult to send constant updates in so far since I arrived in Syria. The Internet cafes are few and vy slow here, and twitter still just doesn’t seem to want to sync up with my Syrian mobile phone. So, apologies for the lack of news lately. For Iser’s mom: I can confirm that I have not been abducted by Iranians in the Kurdish mountains.

So, Beirut: A complete and hilarious disaster. Definitely the least fun part of my trip so far. However, to be fair, the problems I had in Beirut were not really Beirut’s fault, and had I planned my trip there better I might have had a great time. I want to go back and do it properly, but at a different time of the year, when it’s less sticky and there are hotel rooms for reasonable amounts of money.

Basically, I arrived at the Beirut bus station at 9pm, hoping to find a cheap hotel room. No luck. After getting turned away by 3, I found one which offered to let me sleep on the roof along with several other cheap-os. I’ve done that several times on this trip, and it often ends up being more pleasant than sleeping in a stuffy hotel room. But this roof was another story. On it, I got my first formal introduction to bedbugs — either that, or fleas. Or perhaps both. It was super nasty, and I didn’t sleep a wink.

When I woke up at 6am (as the sun hit my face), I walked over to the area around American University of Beirut, and looked for a hotel room there. The cheapest one in the whole town seemed to be $95, which is considerably more than I had budgeted. (Apparently, for the months of July and August, every person of Lebanese descent around the world, along with plenty of wealthy Gulfies, pack themselves into Lebanon, jacking up the prices for just about everything, especially hotel rooms.) But I took it, promptly delivered all of my clothes to a laundry to rid them of any of the nasty beasts that infested that rooftop, and took a long nap.

In the evening, I met up with a friend of a friend named Martyn, who showed me around a bit. But I was still too tired to stay out vy late, and so I went back to my hotel and crashed. The next morning, after a half-hearted attempt to find another hotel room for less money, I got in a shared taxi back to Damascus. That meant another 7 hour wait at the border to get a new visa for Syria. After several warm-cheese sandwiches from the border-crossing cafe, I got my second Syrian visa at about 9:30pm. I then crossed the border on foot, and waited at the first gas station to find someone who would take me into Damascus.

When I got into Damascus, I faced the same problem again: All the cheap hotels were full. So I ended up at the Orient Palace Hotel ($45 a night), an impressive throwback to the art-deco colonial period, although it has become somewhat rough around the edges over the years. Still, the ceilings were at least 30ft tall, even in my enormous bathroom, and breakfast was served in a ballroom which was once clearly quite grand. Sort of reminded me of the Baron Hotel, in that shabby aristocratic kind of way.

The next day, I decided to go to Mar Musa, a Syrian Catholic (Essentially, a branch of eastern Christianity with roots in the Antioch tradition, which then united with the Roman Catholic church in the 17th century.) monastery about 2 hours outside of Damascus, which I had heard gives room and board to travelers who are willing to help out around the place. I spent two nights there, and had a great time chatting with the various monks, priests, and other travelers passing through. Really peaceful and, despite being in the middle of the desert, surprisingly cool.

I’ve posted some pictures above, which should do a better job of demonstrating what it was like.

Now, I’m back in Damascus, finally getting around to the gift-shopping that I’ve put off for so long. Tomorrow, Amman by bus.