Safe in Aus..

My brother welcomed me at his house in Bathurst, Australia this week. It's peaceful here -- drivers never honk their horns. And for the first time in three months I don't have to lie on immigration forms about what I do for a living. (I'm a journalist, for any of you who don't know.) In the Middle East, I always wrote "bicycle repair" when asked about my occupation.

During the trip from Lebanon to Australia, I worried something would stop me. I woke up in Beirut on the morning of my flight to the sound of a jet fighter tearing accross the sky. I looked out the window to see if it was Israeli, knowing that if it was, I wouldn't be going anywhere that day.

Later at Beirut airport, takeoff was delayed due to a fight in the rear of the cabin which didn't end until an old woman was escorted off. This meant the airline had to hold our connecting flight in Abu Dhabi, and when that plane was late touching down in Sydney, passengers refused to stay seated while the interior was sprayed for foreign insects. Immigation wouldn't let us off until the spraying was finished, and it couldn't start until everyone sat. The standoff lasted nearly half an hour. One indignant passenger even phoned the Sydney Telegraph's newsroom on her mobile and claimed we were all "being held hostage."

So here I am in small-town Australia. I've got a bike to noodle around on and soon my brother and I will board a train to see the country together. There's not much to worry about here except for sunburn.

Oh, and poisonous spiders.

Beirut..

Amid all the Radisson hotels, Ferrari dealerships and Dunkin Donuts springing up in Beirut, there are still bullet and artillery-pocked buildings that were abandoned during past conflicts. There are so many there's even a coffee-table book about them for sale at the Virgin Megastore.

The granddaddy of them all is the former Holiday Inn. It wasn't open long before the civil war began in 1975 and it hasn't been open since. It's still solid, but at almost 30 storeys, I'm guessing it's too big for most investors to risk restoring. At least, not until the political and financial future of Lebanon looks more secure.

Will that day come? I met a restaurant owner in southern Lebanon who confidently told me he believes the next war with Israel will be the last. He said the two sides can never live together, and that his side will "finish Israel."

"Won't another war ruin your business?" I asked. "What about your children?"

"It will be better after," he replied.

The conversation was a downer, but I remain optimistic about peace. There's a lot of building going on here. Others must be optimistic, too.

The Dance Bus...

This is the second time in the Middle East that I've seen a mode of transport become a dance venue. The latest incident was while I was catching a bus ride from the Roman ampitheatre ruins at Bosra to Damascus with some Syrian university students. (See an earlier post titled "Istanbul" for the story of dancing on a train with Iranians.)

Dancing on the Syrian bus began in the aisle almost immediately and I and a group of fellow travellers were urged to participate. Not only was it a blast, it allowed us to observe some of the rules for interaction between men and women in Syria. For instance, the Syrian men on our bus could dance with female foreigners and Syrian women could dance with me and other male travellers, but Syrian men and women couldn't dance with each other. The reason, it was explained, was that dancing with foreigners was considered innocent fun while dancing between Syrians could potentially lead to something more serious. News of such behavior could get back to the dancers' families and cause problems.

At one point while I was dancing, I landed in an empty seat next to a young Syrian woman who was wearing a hejab. Men and women in Syria who aren't related don't sit next to each other, and the woman was visibly uncomfortable until the aisle cleared of dancers and I could move. A Kiwi in our group who was asked to have his picture taken with some of the Syrian women made the mistake of putting his arm around one of them. She stood rigid, not knowing what to do, and you should have seen the look on her face!

It all sounds frustrating to me, but that's just the way it's done here.

This is my last post from Syria. I'm on my way to Lebanon and will be flying from Beirut to Australia to visit my brother on Nov. 11. I've been promised homemade shepherd's pie upon my arrival Down Under!

Catching a Movie..

Syrian cities have a lot of decrepit movie theaters. Posters of past shows are stapled over the entrances and they're all for T-and-A or B-grade action flicks. My favourite was for one called "Lunar Cop" which had the tagline, "He came down to Earth to clean up the mess!" For the sexy movies, Lonely Planet warns that censors usually remove the scenes depicted in the posters.

I had a couple of hours to kill one afternoon so I asked about the next feature. It was "House Bunny" with Anna Faris starring as an ex-Playboy model who ends up as a sorority house mother. I went in.

The theater was completely dark so I waited for the film to start in order to have enough light to find a seat. But the projection on the screen was so dim I ended up taking the seat closest to the door. Even then, I wasn't sure I wasn't about to sit on someone. (Imagine watching TV through two pairs of sunglasses and you'll get an idea of how dark it was in there.)

I couldn't hear anyone else and thought I was alone until 10 minutes into the show when I saw a lighter flash and the ember of a burning cigarette a few rows ahead. The smoker began to emit a high-pitched giggle at unusual times and banged his seat occasionally. He talked sometimes, too, and I don't think he was on a cellphone. He particularly enjoyed a scene the censors appeared to have missed which briefly showed Anna Faris' bare backside.

The lights came on when thew show was over, and I could see that many of the seats were broken. There were some where only parts of metal bolted to the floor remained. I was thankful I hadn't tried to find a seat further in.

The experience cost less than a dollar, but I don't think I'll be doing it again. Unless, of course, "Lunar Cop" is playing.

Meeting Syrians...

There were 17 people packed into the minibus that took me from Turkey into Syria. Three women from one family were wearing burkas and there was a "discussion" at the border when one of their husbands tried to convince the Syrian guard that the women shouldn't have to remove their veils to reveal their faces. He lost and each of the women, for just a quick flash, lifted the black fabric.

This made me worried that Syria would be ultra-Conservative and that I'd have a hard time getting used to it after relatively-liberal Turkey. Fortunately, there are women here without burkas, chadors or hijabs. Some wear T-shirts and are perfectly comfortable approaching handsome Canadian tourists to offer a welcome to Syria.

Lots of people come up to talk to me here. Even Syrians who don't speak English know how to say "Welcome to Syria." They ask, "What is your country?" and when you respond they say, "Canada very beautiful." A group of teenaged boys added an extra "George Bush finished!" followed with "Obama!"

The only time I've seen Syrians unfriendly is when they drive. I saw one laying on his horn while a traffic cop helped an old man with a cane cross the road. In Iran and Turkey, drivers deftly steer around pedestrians. Here in Syria it's like they're aiming for you!

Life Aquatic...

I and a group of tourists were fleeing pirates on the Aegean coast when this photo was taken. We'd staged a mutiny earlier in the day when the boat's crew refused to use the sails like the tour company promised, and also for the fact they continued to blast techno music on all decks despite our repeated requests to turn it off.

The final straw came when the captain ran us aground on a reef because she was too short to see over the bow and missed the warning buoy. She also never offered to pay for the beers my fellow passengers drank at the bar on shore while we waited for the boat to be freed.

I was selected to lead the mutiny because I had the best hat, but things didn't go well. The pirates caught us, and even though we fought them off, they stole all of our ice. Many of the passengers were Australian and their brains rotted when they drank warm beer. A Slovenian passenger remained sane and urged us to turn ourselves in to the coast guard. We made him walk the plank.

So now we are fugitives on an uninhabited Mediterranean island. The cellphone I'm using to text this post will be destroyed immediately to prevent tracking. We've burned the boat. My methods have become unsound.

The horror. The horror.

Gallipoli

Over here, the Turks' defence of the Gallipoli Penninsula and the Dardanelles against the Allies in the First World War is seen as the first victory in the country's battle for independence, which ran from 1919 to 1923. This has a lot to do with the fact that the lieutenant colonel credited with the Turkish success at Gallipoli, Mustafa Kemal, later led the independence fight and became the first president of modern Turkey.

More than 40,000 soldiers from Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand and India died in the nine-month Gallipoli campaign in 1915 before it was finally abandoned. Also among the Allied dead were 49 soldiers from the British colony of Newfoundland. On the other side, the Turks lost close to 80,000 men.

Mustafa Kemal later became known as Ataturk, which translates as "Father Turk," and there are statues of him in every town, avenues are named after him, and his image hangs in just about every business. In 1934, he said something particularly conciliatory about the Allied war dead and I'll repeat it here...

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives ... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.

And now, on to some business from my last post. I'm hardly surprised most of you figured I would be too scared to venture onto the catwalk shown in the picture. But you were wrong -- it was the only way to get to another section of the fortress, so I walked the entire length of it!