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!

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

Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death and sweet as love. -Turkish Proverb

Some of our favorite spots to get coffee:

At Café Younes , a cute little “leftiest” café where we can drink delicious (and expensive!) cappuccinos and listen to young, chique university students and old European ex-pats passionately discuss the likelihood of war (maybe as early as mid-March), the pros and cons of “intellectualizing” the Israeli apartheid, the continued denial of civil rights to Palestinians here in Lebanon, the political trends in Europe…..

From Aqmed, who sells incredibly strong espresso for 500 Lebanese pounds (about 33 cents) and teaches us a bit of Arabic on each of our visits.

From the numerous street venders who flavor their thick Turkish coffee with cardamon and loads of sugar

In the staff rooms at the hospital where one of the nurses makes incredibly sweet tea or thick, black Turkish coffee, which we sip out of dainty china cups, while the Palestinian physicians chain smoke Marlboros bought for a dollar a pack.

And of course there is Starbucks if we wanted it.... but we wouldn't dare.

Haifa Hospital

We’ve spent the last three weeks working mornings at Haifa Hospital, one of 5 hospitals in Lebanon run by the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS). It’s located in Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp in South Beirut. The hospital used to be a rehab center for patients who had been injured in the years of fighting, but after Israel destroyed most of the Palestinian hospitals here in the 1980s, they converted the building into a hospital.

this sign is posted all over the hospital

To say that it is lacking does little to describe the scarcity of resources here. Coming from a university hospital where the equipment, technology and resources is always the newest and most expensive, it is hard to believe they are able to provide any inpatient care here. It also makes so much of what we do in US hospitals seem exorbitantly wasteful. There is a small ICU with three beds, but their one ventilator was donated years ago and no one here was ever trained to use it, so most patients who are very sick need to be transferred elsewhere.

a rusty oxygen canister in the PRCS ambulance

Yesterday we met with the director of the PRCS who shared stories of his early experience working in villages in South Lebanon during the eighties. Trapped in the town with only one other doctor for six months, he said that he did over 30 amputations – without anesthesia and with knives borrowed from the butcher. They stabilized patients as best they could and then waited for the siege to be over in order to evacuate them. The hospital here is better equipped, but not by much.

the ED trauma room

A few days ago I assisted during a c-section. The power went out three times during the surgery. Each time as we paused, motionless, waiting for 5-10 seconds before the generator kicked in, I wondered what would happen if this occurred during a critical step in the surgery or if the generator, like so many other things here, malfunctioned and didn’t turn on. The obstetricians seemed hardly to notice, continuing with the surgery as if the outages had never occurred.

Its hard to describe the poverty in these camps and the sense of frustration and anger. Refugees have extremely limited civil rights in Lebanon - they are denied the right to vote, to own land, and to work in over 70 professions. The physicians, most of whom have medical degrees from old Soviet Block countries are only allowed to work in the PRCS hospitals and earn about one fifth of what Lebanese doctors earn. Many young people no longer have any desire to attend university, since a degree doesn't provide them with any additional opportunities.

water lines in the camp

The political situation in Israel and Palestine as well as in Lebanon makes any resolution seem impossible. And yet there is incredible hope for a return to Palestine and conversations inevitably turn to this topic. Most of the Palestinians that we've met here have never been to Palestine, but they all talk about the villages of their parents and grandparents and their desire to return.