Ahlan, I'm about to leave Beirut tonight (well actually tomorrow morning, very early) but I thought it was better late than never to write a blog entry about it. Beirut has been very interesting. After spending so much time in Asia, which does vary alot but also has a fundamently similar base that is completely different in Arab culture.The plane was a strange in between zone, we flew Qatar Airways (which has really good food) on a plane of about half Arabs, half...

Ahlan, I'm about to leave Beirut tonight (well actually tomorrow morning, very early) but I thought it was better late than never to write a blog entry about it. Beirut has been very interesting. After spending so much time in Asia, which does vary alot but also has a fundamently similar base that is completely different in Arab culture.The plane was a strange in between zone, we flew Qatar Airways (which has really good food) on a plane of about half Arabs, half...

The description that best fits Beijing is big. The population and size were not much more than alot of big cities, but everything in Beijing was huge. This caused some problems, when all we wanted to do to go just round the corner for dinner. 'Just round the corner' involved a 30 minute walk in -14 degrees. We quickly mastered the subway system, which helped, but our mirror image maps in the photocopied lonely planet made life very confusing when we would arise f...