Friday, April 2, 2010



mae sot to bangkok to khao lak...an epic 20 hour bus trip... at least we go fluffy blankets and pink neck pillows!

oops...bad planning for the scooter ride... we forgot it dumps buckets of rain like clock work in the afternoon

at least the rain was warm

enjoying the hot sun on a boat trip around the islands



1237 steps to climb to get to this temple on the top of a mountain!

moments later the monkeys stole this little box of soy milk that had been left as an offering




kids at mae tao





Thailand

arriving in Mae Sot

the best pad thai chef in town

eating at the burmese tea house

a road side water pot



some sort of strange looking dessert

last days in lebanon




Did we match?.....yes!

Monday, March 15, 2010

mmmm...

Lebanese food is amazing!




Byblos

Last weekend Elisa, Josh and I headed north to the old fishing village of Byblos (Jbail in Arabic). It’s said to be one of the oldest continuously occupied towns in the world and the birthplace of the modern alphabet, but the trip there made it seem like a suburb of Beirut. The unchecked development since the end of the war has created a nightmarish track of high-rise apartments in various stages of construction and decay along the coast, engulfing the old towns and villages. But once we made it down to the little harbor we fell in love…. even though the beautifully restored souqs (markets) were a bit of a tourist trap.


We spent a few hours tramping through an enormous and imposing crusader castle, built with stones scavenged from the Roman ruins on which it was built; marvelled at the view from the crumbling remains of a Roman theater overlooking the lazuli Mediterranean sea; and clambered down into old Phoenician tombs from 2000 B.C. Then, exhausted, we feasted on a seafood mezzae as the sun set over the harbor.




The Bakaa Valley

Early in the trip, Alex put me in touch with an American lawyer living in Beirut who is running the Palestinian Civil Rights Campaign (see his article http://www.counterpunch.org/lamb09142007.html).
Last weekend he invited us along as he took another American writer on a tour of the Bakaa valley. The valley is know as a Hezbollah stronghold and for producing enormous amounts of marijuana ("red leb") and heroin .... it is also an incredibly fertile valley filled with farms and wineries and was once considered a “bread basket” of the Roman empire.

Almond orchards in full bloom

Josh climbing “the largest quarried stone in the world” in the old Roman quarry

the ruins of the Baalbek temples

Hezbollah flags on the streets of Baalbek

Josh walking down the street in Baalbek

a horse farm, tucked in the fertile Bakaa valley, with the snowy hills that harbor Hezbollah training camps in the background