Syrity of Contrasts

All,

I would have written during my time in Syria but unfortunately facebook and alot of other webpages were blocked so instead you will be getting a monster post...
Well ill talk about my last days in Beirut, where Dala left on Sunday and we went to an area called Beit Mary, as you can tell from its name a Christian area, and from what i could tell the majority of the Christian neighbour hoods were fairly prominent i wouldn’t want to draw into it, but i don’t find it very surprising from my experience with Muslims as they tend to be so lazy, im one of the them, but if it wasn’t for the natural wealth that God has blessed the Muslims then the wealth of the 1.5 billion muslims in this world will be ridiculously low, i mean if u took the GCC nations wealth out of the equation then you wouldn’t even want to imagine how poor the Muslim world would be...

Anyway onto my trip to Syria, it started off ridiculously early at like 7.30am or something like that! Aneway we drove through some really picturesque scenes on our drive to the boarder. We went through numerous checkpoints, thankfully me and Mohammad managed to make it into Syria and then we went on our way to the Shereton in Damascus, where a collegue of Mohammad was meeting us whos Syrian, and he sepnt the next few days with us taking us out and getting cheap taki fayres and getting cheap Syrian goods!Man the shopping was so good in Syria, i hardly brought a thing in lebo land but in Syria i couldn’t almost stop, i loved it so many little souveniors, and things i didn’t go crazy but i did buy a number of little things!
In the evenings we went to the mountainous areas overlooked the whole city, and if you go up there you will see loads and loads of little green lights and each of those represents a mosque, and i was told Damascus is called the City of a Thousand mosques and i qute lietteraly thing it does have a thousand mosques! However when your up there you will also meet the other sides of Damascus, when loads of families take picnics and bring the kids, but then you will find the dirty side, with a girl coming up to me who asked to have a photo with me who i am sure is a prostitute, then i had an incredibly attractive hijabi girl asking me in Arabic basically “how am i doin” but i didn’t understand so i jus carried on walking, i asked my friend if he thought maybe she was also a prostitute but he said most likely not, and she was just curious to speak to a foreigner. Anyway i never seen such forward behaviour, but it didn’t stop there, one night i was on the internet reading news articles on bbc as i couldn’t sleep in the lobby of the hotel and a women was in the check-in desk and then she turned around a couple of times, then she got up and nodded at me, and then did it again, i thought maybe im missing something, or seeing something that wasn’t there, but she made it clear once she was in the lift with her telling me to get in, clearly i didn’t otherwise i wouldn’t be speaking about it lol! But im saying it to illustrate two things firstly how bad things are in supposedly Islamic states and secondly and more arguably more importantly how desireable i am!:P
Anyway i did like Damascus but i much preferred Lebanon because i think you know what your expecting in Lebanon but in Syria it tries to be something it isn’t like on the surface you see it as a practising Islamic state but in reality, people need to be careful their not mugged, prostitution is rife, alcohol consumption is widespread and it jus seems a much dirtier country..

Aneway i best go as i have a busy few days, but will keep you updated!

Take care