Articles from this Category
12 November 2025
Above: Temple of Bacchus. Note the person on the extreme left, for scale . Getting to Baalbek Today, I make my fourth visit to Baalbek, a place that’s very special in all my travels. It started with a short taxi ride at 0645 to Cola station. It was an awfully long wait from 0700 till […]
11 November 2025
Tripoli Railway Station I woke at 0300, which is good for adjusting back to East Asia. I dozed for a while and headed out at 0630 by foot to Mina, which is Tripoli’s port area nearby. The route took me through a different side of Tripoli which was clean and modern. Some 25 mins later, […]
10 November 2025
Breakfast I had been keeping to roughly Malaysian or Chinese time for much of the trip, but the extra hour time change in Lebanon saw me wake at 0300. I dozed a little before heading out at 0700 to get breakfast at a place that came highly recommended because I’m Malaysian. It’s a fatta shop […]
9 November 2025
Crossing to Lebanon Today, I leave Hama in Syria to cross into Lebanon for my two nights at Tripoli. I had originally planned to just over night but have arrived early, having saved a day in Aleppo few days ago. This is a route I had done twice before in reverse in the days when […]
8 November 2025
Lazy morning I had hoped to make my third visit to Palmyra today but it wasn’t meant to be. I wanted to see what damage had been done during the civil war. Abdullah had appeared to discourage us from going and priced the trip at a prohibitive level. Instead, he suggested a half-day trip instead […]
7 November 2025
Complimentary breakfast It’s Friday today and the only day of the week that Abdullah has a sleep-in. But he came in early to bring me breakfast, as I’m a very old repeat guest. With so many guests over the 23 years I doubt if he actually remembers me but he was putting on a good […]
6 November 2025
Aleppo Citadel After breakfast at the hotel, I packed up but kept my room, and headed out to visit the Citadel. Getting there at 0855, I had to wait till 0910 before visitors were let in. I walked up the steps to the first gate-tower and then into the second tower which led into the […]
5 November 2025
Damascus to Aleppo Today, I move from Damascus to Aleppo. I had received conflicting information on which of the several bus stations to catch the bus from. The last time I did it, it was from Baramke but that was nearly 20 years ago. And on the remaining visits, I did the journey in reverse […]
4 November 2025
Maaloula & St Thekla I wanted to make an excursion to the village of Maaloula, which I visited in 2002. It is well-known as one of the last areas where Aramaic (specifically Western Neo-Aramaic) is still spoken on a daily basis. That language is believed to be the closest language of Jesus, which was Galilean […]
3 November 2025
Return to Syria Today I return to my favourite country after 15 years, having visited in 2002, 2004 and 2010. Since my last visit, parts of the country have been to hell and back: Over 40% of Syria’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed. Some cities lost over 70% of their housing stock. 13 million+ […]