New Year's Eve 2010 Beirut, Lebanon

New Year's Eve 2010: Beirut, Lebanon

For New Year's Eve, Marie, Mikey, Kate, and myself (all above in the picture with four people, from right to left) were invited to Rabeah's apartment (Rabeah is above wearing the crazy shit on his head...)

The evening started out with dinner at Le Chef, a FANTASTIC restaurant in the district of Gemmayzeh in Beirut. It's one of the "greasy spoon" type joints, with the Chef who yells "WEEEELLLLCOOOOOMMMMEEE" in a very low, monotone voice to every single person who enters. The menus are hand-written, French or Arabic your choice, with certain items messily scratched out, and the handwriting almost impossible to decipher.

Le Chef Restaurant The Trademark "WEEELLLCOOOME"

In fact, Chef got to know me so well, not only would he give his usual WELLLCOOOMMEEE to me, but would also add, "HAAAABBBIIIIIBBBIIIIIIII......NOOOOOO WHHHEEEEAAAAAT!" His food was absolutely amazing.

Following dinner, we needed to get to Rabeah's place. We hop in a cab, and discover that the entire inside of the cab REAKS of gasoline. The driver asks his usual obligatory questions, where are you from, what are you doing here in Lebanon, etc., and then turns on the tape in his tape deck.

It was an entire goddamn tape of a Happy Birthday remix--once in English, then in French, and then in Arabic...over and over and over for the entire ride. Our friend the driver would also beep in synch with the music...

"beep beepbeep beep BEEP BEEP"

We finally arrived at Rabeah's, barely staving off passing out from gasoline fumes that had clearly already gotten to the driver's head. He must keep that tape ever-ready for whenever foreigners ride with him, assuming that we all must listen to Happy Birthday on our radios....

The apartment was nice, had a beautiful view of the city, and a lot of interesting people to meet. Sometime around 3 or 4 am, we decided to leave and head to a bar in Gemmayzeh called "Proof", where we stayed until about 6 am, and then returned to the hostel.

Upon arrival at the hostel, everyone was obviously, still awake. December 31st had been my last night at the hostel that I had booked, so I was being kicked out of my room. Kate and Mikey, luckily, had a room booked in another hotel, and since we three had decided to travel into Syria together, they said I could stay with them until we decided to leave. Julien, one of the Kiwis, thought he would at least join us for breakfast, but wanted to go on the roof of the hostel first.

Julien and Me

After some more drinking ( I think that's vodka and maybe mango juice in my hand?) we went off for breakfast. Not finding our usual place to be open, Kate decided to navigate us towards a five star hotel in town. I was way too out of it to be the opposing voice of reason. Plus, the breakfast tasted AMAZING. The bill came....$130. The breakfast wasn't THAT good.

Julien returned to the hostel, and I grabbed all my stuff and went with Kate and Mikey to their hotel. Syria was up next.

Iskandar