Take Me Skiing In Lebanon

Thursday May 3, 2012

"Hello, how are you?" said my friend Adam as he befriended yet another Lebanese soldier.

We were walking back to our hotel after dinner in the small tourist town of Bcharre, deep in the mountains in northern Lebanon. The famous Cedars of God and the best ski fields in Lebanon are just up the slope from the town centre, and the spectacular Qadisha Valley is down the slope.

Me with Bcharre and Qadisha Valley below.

The people of Lebanon like to brag that on the same day they can go out to the beach for a swim then out to the mountains for a ski. Adam was determined to achieve that double, if not on the same day but on the same trip.

Two days earlier during lunch we had asked the restaurant owner if it was still possible to ski. He was pessimistic, "The lifts closed just last week."

But after a few minutes a lightbulb went off in his head. "You can ask the army."

What? Ask the army for what? "Ask the army if you can ski on their slope. They sometimes allow foreigners to use their lift. You can ski with the soldiers."

The closed lifts at Cedars of God - we missed it by a week!

Adam's eyes lit up! From then on we approached every soldier we could find to see if we could sweet talk ourselves onto the military snow. And soldiers are easy to find in Lebanon.

Like busy hookers we solicited as many military personnel as we could the next two days - but had no result. We had even visited the military ski training centre up at the Cedars and spoke to the guards, to no avail. But even after all that Adam had not given up hope.

On our way to dinner we had met three blokes on duty (I don't know what they were patrolling, they just seemed to be standing in the middle of an anonymous Bcharre street) and Adam spoke with them for a few minutes establishing rapport. Everyone in Lebanon seems to have a cousin in Australia, it was easy enough for us to get a conversation going.

Ski training centre for the Lebanese Army,
at Cedars of God.

After yet another filling Lebanese meal we walked back the same path and encountered the same checkpoint. Adam wanted to resume the conversation with the trio, hoping to get on that elusive slope.

"Hello, how are you? What a beautiful night!" Adam began, with the zeal of a evangelist. It was a crisp night in the mountains, and a near full moon lit the sky like an aurora.

The soldiers stared back at Adam with a strange look. They didn't seem to be as enamoured with him as earlier. Adam tried his best to keep the conversation going, but it turned out to be a very awkward five minutes.

We finally gave up, said our goodbyes to the military folk, and trudged back to our hotel. Adam sighed "Geez, that was hard. It was like as if they didn't even remember me from two hours ago. I really thought I had a chance with those guys."

I had to put Adam out of his misery. "Adam, you know they weren't the same guys as before dinner? They changed over while we were eating."

Where are you from... really?

Saturday May 12, 2011

The people of the Middle East are the friendliest folks you'd ever hope to meet. Strangers will willingly help you, welcome you, and invite you to their homes. As a foreigner you could not travel to a more amiable region.

However there is an odd phenomenon that I have encountered on my journeys to Arabia, the Levant and Iran, which I never experience in Europe, Asia or North America. Ninety five percent of my conversations in the Middle East would begin like this:

local: Hello, welcome to (this country). Where are you from?
me: Australia.
local: [looks confused] No, where are you originally from?

How does one answer that? I'm very proud of my Korean heritage and have nothing to hide in that respect, but I'm also very proud to be Australian. And this question is a rejection of my first answer, a denial of my nationality.

Me and Eli, our driver in Lebanon

Don't get me wrong, this is a VERY minor inconvenience. I would much rather have this problem than be a person of South Asian appearance constantly being picked for "random" searches at airports (like Sharukh Khan), or, heaven forbid, be an Indigenous Australian traveller having to bear the heartbreak of being asked "No, where you originally from?"

Obviously the typical person in the Middle East does not know enough about Australia to understand that it is a multicultural nation, and follows an explicit policy of multiculturalism. The irony is, of course, that the countries in the Middle East are some of the most ethnically diverse in the world - an Israeli could be of Jewish, Arab, Armenian or Ethiopian ethnicity; an Iranian could be Persian, Kurdish, Arab, or any number of other ethnic backgrounds.

Of course, the local in this situation is being hospitable and does not mean to cause any offence. And while I would like to make the person realise that the question is inappropriate, I'm not in the habit of picking confrontations with locals while I'm a visitor to their country.

Me and Adam at Qadisha Valley, Lebanon

So while I would love to come back with "Excuse me, would you ask a black American which part of Africa they originally came from?" or "Why do you not ask my lilly white companion Adam which part of Europe he is originally from?", most of the time I would tell them what they expect to hear.

But many times, when I think it's not too blunt, I would educate by letting them know that Australia has peoples of many colours, just like Britain or the United States. I hope that piece of information would plant a seed in their mind about what multiculturalism means, and contribute in a small way to future peace in this region.

My first time in a DO NOT TRAVEL zone

Sunday May 6, 2012

Tyre (Sur in Arabic) in southern Lebanon is a hotspot. A hotspot for Hezbollah, a hotspot for regular fighting with Israel (just 30km away), and a hotspot for Palestinian refugee camps. Tyre is so hot that the Australian government classifies the area as "DO NOT TRAVEL". This was my first excursion into a location with such dramatic designation, and after reading my friend Gabrielle's account of her visit naturally I was curious as to what we'd encounter.

Tyre, Lebanon: market area

Gabrielle strongly recommended we visit Tyre with a local. However, my Australian friend Adam, American friend Tia and I decided to go unaccompanied. We thought that choosing an arbitrary stranger off the street and naively asking "Can you take us to Tyre?" would probably be asking for trouble.

We caught a mini-bus down to the city, a mode of transport very common in the Middle East. The usual chaos of Lebanese traffic and driving had us reaching for our vomit bags - the bus almost smashed into an oncoming Mercedes, and to this day I don't know how our driver managed to slide out of the way on the gravelly surface. The youths driving that old Merc' are very lucky they're not tomato juice now.

As we approached Tyre the Shi'ite and Hezbollah influence of the region became evident. Large portraits of the Iranian figure Imam Khomeini started popping up on buildings; military checkpoints began slowing our progress; and UN peace keeping (UNIFIL) armed vehicles joined the traffic.

The only time I was nervous during the entire day trip was when two UNIFIL vehicles drove directly in front of our mini-bus. For some reason I'm at peace with government travel warnings about artillery fire but my mind kept replaying the advice "Do not drive close to UN vehicles as they are the targets for roadside bombs". I kept a careful eye on the UNIFIL trucks like it was filled with delicious ice cream.

Tyre, Lebanon: Aww, coloured chicks for sale.

Upon landing in Tyre all I could think was that it was a lovely seaside city. From the families enjoying snacks on the seaside promenades, to the busy souq, to the young women dressed in western clothing, to the young men swimming in the beautiful Mediterranean water, nothing raised any alarm. I thought "What's all the fuss about?!"

We walked through the souq, where the merchants were enjoying a busy Sunday afternoon. There was some staring of the obvious foreigners, but no more so than in other parts of Lebanon outside of Beirut. And they were definitely friendly curious stares, not a menacing "What are you doing here?" glare.

Later at the corniche one particular teenager tried his best to impress the three foreigners by doing wheelies on his motorbike. On the beach many locals were basking in the warm weather; some women were dressed in summer gear while others were playing on the sand in full head-to-toe Islamic garb. Young men were swimming and giggling, while older men were fishing off the rocks. It was all very Lebanon.

Tyre, Lebanon

After officially not purchasing any pirated DVDs in the markets (How do they have Hollywood films that have not even been released in western cinemas?) we enjoyed lunch at a seaside restaurant. Unfortunately there was an argument about the bill there. It escalated to an ugly moment where the owner just said "Don't worry about it" and tore up the bill - some sort of reverse psychology or guilt trip, we gathered. We left a pile of money which was a compromise between what they thought our total was and what we thought, and walked out of there. We semi-anxiously joked to each other, "Hmmm, he might call his Hezbollah mates to come get us. Let's walk quickly!"

Tyre, Lebanon: Roman Hippodrome

Tyre hosts a couple of fantastic Roman ruins. After visiting those we skirted around a massive Palestinian refugee camp - reportedly seedy lawless places where extremism arises - which is a no go zone for normal Lebanese folk let alone foreigners.

By then we had enough of walking in the heat and decided to return to Beirut. We came to a busy intersection where there were mini-buses lined up. Two operators were literally pulling us back and forth to get our business. They tried to out-do each other on price and was trying to convince us that the rival was not actually going to Beirut. Then they began emphatically shouting at each other, presumably for feeding us lies about the other. For the consumer the scene was fantastic. Why don't Gerry Harvey and Rus Kogan yell at each other on the street in Australia, that would be hilarious!

The larger bus promised us a ride for 2000 pounds (AU$1.33) while the smaller operator bid 4000 pounds ($2.66). Aside from the price our natural instinct was to go to the bigger bus, thinking "We won't be kidnapped in a big bus, surely."

Adam and Tia boarded the bigger bus, but just before I hopped on, to be 100% sure, I asked "This is DEFINITELY going to Beirut, yes? And it's 2000 pounds?". The operator then said "Saida for 2000 pounds. Beirut - 4000 pounds."

I barked at Tia and Adam and we were out of there! The smaller bus was glad to see us back and welcomed us on board, with the driver justifiably grinning that he didn't lose customers to the big boys who had attracted us misleadingly.

After another nauseating mini-bus ride back to Beirut our adventure to the "Do Not Travel" zone was complete, with no physical or mental scarring.