We woke up in our room at the Safwan and decided to indulge in a little bathing.

We had not done so in quite some time. In part because the arid climate of Syria kept us pretty dry, which made us feel clean, and in part because the poor quality of the showers at our beloved Hotel Ziad Al Kabir in Damascus had been quite the deterrent.  In fact, Scott later disclosed to us that he had been afraid even to use the bathrooms for missions more serious than urination.

So it was in an atypically shiny and manageable state that we emerged from the Safwan, hopped on our cycles, and headed out into Latakia, in search, unsurprisingly, of coffee. Not far into the search, as we were driving by a central park, we spotted a fellow wheeler who had attached a few of those Jordanian style giant coffee urns to his cycle.

We decided we had better try some and found it to be truly delicious and mind bogglingly cheap. So we propped the bikes up against a wall and began to settle down for a few cups.

While we were drinking coffee and admiring the fellow’s cycle, a man wandered up to us and introduced himself as Samer.

He was excited to learn about our trip, and brought us over to take a look at his car.

It was a Chevrolet pickup truck, of which he rightly assumed we would approve being Americans. As we were taking a look at the car, a giant water truck showed up and began hosing down the streets with a mighty high pressure hose. The fellows running the hose were also quite friendly, and made sure not to soak us, which was no small task, such a torrent were they handling.

When we asked Samer to a recommend a good breakfast joint, we found ourselves quickly and inescapably compelled to eat breakfast with him. So off we went together, Samer driving his black and yellow striped Chevy, and we following behind.

He led us to a very local establishment, which sported a simple, but tantalizing menu. They offered piping hot homemade flatbread, hummus, babajanouj, pickles, and plates of tomatoes and onions. Despite the simplicity of the menu, it was obviously a popular local hang out, just filled with people. Each table sported a fantastic aluminum oil-can shaped olive oil dispenser and a few ramekins of spices – salt, cumin, and paprika. At Samer’s direction, we ordered a few of everything on the menu, and were just blown out of the water by what arrived.

The hummus was delightful, thick and oily, with a few whole chick peas thrown in.  The pickles were crunchy and delicately flavored. The bread was steaming and soft, with just a hint of crunchy brown exterior.

As we ate the, owner of the place came out to chat with us. He too was very interested to learn what we were doing in Syria on these bikes. Samer seemed proud to have us there, and we were certainly proud to be there with him. At the end of the meal, the customary free tea was brought out to the table, each small cup accompanied by a rather giant egg-cup sized serving of sugar. They were certainly into massively sweet tea in this country.

After we had eaten, the owner took us for a little tour of the operation.

The tour took place quite diligently underneath a giant poster of the president of Syria, Bashar Al Assad, the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and the late brother of Mr. Bashar Al-Assad, Basil.

It was clearly an institution.

Full of hummus and bread, and feeling just great, we bid our new friend goodbye, pausing to take a group shot before hitting the road.

A fellow wheeler showed up, just as we were executing the shot, and joined in as well. The more the merrier, we figured.

Then we headed out into Latakia, excited to learn more about this city. We first plunged down to the coastline, where we caught sight of the same blue Mediterranean that we’d swam in in Lebanon. The temperature and the humidity were rising quickly as the day wore on. And as we continued to wheel down the coast, we realized the easy to handle dry air of Damascus had given way to a downright sticky climate now that we’d reached the seaside.

We spotted a local public beach, and headed down a gravel drive to investigate. Soon the gravel drive turned into more of a hiking trail, which in turn dissolved into a path too gnarly for our bikes. So we carried our cycles the last few meters to the beach, where we were able to climb back on and continue wheeling, now over hard packed sand.

The beach was very popular, with all kinds of stands selling various goods, food, and even haircuts. We wheeled back up onto the road, where we saw a large wooden ship’s hull that was perhaps being repaired in the middle of the street. It had obviously been there a while now, for traffic had parted around it so frequently as to have worn new roads into the packed sandy ground.

As we wheeled on, we soon found ourselves in a decidedly new, and decidedly poorer neighborhood. We were forced to stop from time to time, as Claudia was starting to feel none too well in the stomach. Despite our repeated questions as to whether or not she would rather turn back, Claudia was determined to continue wheeling, which we respected.

And so on we went, deep into what we would soon learn was the Palestinian refugee neighborhood.

Claudia had become increasingly in need of a rest room, and so we began stopping from time to time to ask to use a business’ facilities. Unfortunately, all the businesses seemed to have no bathrooms for women, so we wheeled on, hoping Claudia would be able to continue to hang in there. She did, of course, and valiantly, until we were able to find a nice restaurant that granted her admission to its restroom.

As we rode on, we saw all kinds of interesting pro-Palestinian graffiti, unpacking of which is more than encouraged in the comments. Along with the graffiti, we stumbled upon a number of interesting plaques and posters. This wheel was proving unusually fascinating.

Soon we turned off the main streets, and began wheeling the alleyways, cutting across the refugee neighborhoods, stopping from time to time to check on Claudia and to drink water. We were sweating profusely in this city.

As we rode by, the locals were extremely welcoming, calling out to us, and smiling as we cruised past. Soon we were dumped onto a particularly muddy and traffic snarled street, from which we made our way back up toward the center of town.

As we rode, we passed this interesting operation, which seemed to be sporting a roof doubling as a refuse storage zone.

We were joined part way back by quite the obnoxious gang of little wheelers-in-training, and soon we found ourselves so harassed, that we began pondering ways to lose them.   They had been swerving in front of us dangerously and shouting at us in languages we couldn’t understand, coming up so close to us, that we feared we might lock handlebars and both go sprawling into the filthy street. Something needed to be done.

And it was thus that we ended in an uphill struggle to outpace them on the climb back to the high ground of the city center. The superior gearing and general hardware of our Dahons was in our favor, but the kids were tough and Claudia was weakened with sickness.

So we struggled on, climbing, and steadily gaining ground. Somewhere around this stand where kids were selling circular pretzels, we saw our chance to shake them and took it, pulling a quick unexpected licht onto a very busy street.

Suddenly we were on a slight downhill and began to pick up speed fast. We could hear them shouting behind us, but we had good headway now.

By the time we whipped by this very well branded intelligence agency building, we were pretty sure we’d lost them.

Now the sun was hanging low, and we were back in the city center, where we headed around the large roundabout and continued back to the vicinity of the Safwan, which turned out to be in the container port district.

We had to stop when we saw this very violent faceless scarred head statue.

If anyone can tell us more about it in the comments, we would be truly grateful. With bikes parked next to the scarred head, we sauntered over to a viewing platform and watched containers being moved around by giant clawed machines, as the sun set over the port of Latakia.

We ate our second last breakfast, once again at the good old Al Negma. The food was just as incredible and affordable as we remembered it, and the owner was just as willing to give us directions to the bus station.

Except this time we were not headed up the giant booze-shop-lined hill toward the Ante-Lebanese bus station. This time we were headed on a domestic trip, to the fabled city of Latakia.

It was yet another near tearful checkout from the Ziad Al Khabir.

It was beginning to join the ranks of Steve’s Room and Motta’s apartment in terms of hosting AsiaWheeling for extended periods of glory. We said one last goodbye to its welcoming staff, endearing grunge, and Sudanese spiced onion-scented halls.  And with that, we wheeled to bus station.

The ride was pleasant. We had no idea of the schedule of the buses leaving, so we were in no rush. Damascus was as beautiful, dry, and sun-drenched as ever. As we were riding, a car pulled up next to us and called out: ”AsiaWheeling!” We looked over and it was none other than the man who had taken us under his wing on our first day in Damascus, helping us to repair Scott’s sandals and taking us for a tour of the covered market. We pedaled next to his cab, chatting for a bit, and in the end wishing him safe travels.

Once we directed our attention back to wheeling, we realized that we had missed a turn. Not to worry, though, for we were able to pull over in front of a giant military compound where we were quickly surrounded by fellows in all black with giant machine guns. The guys seemed mostly excited to see us and especially interested in talking with Claudia. She was happy to oblige them and was able to secure some very good directions for us. A quiet jaunt on a rather busy highway later, we arrived at the bus station.

I set up shop watching our things while Scott and Claudia headed out to compare buses. It seemed that all the buses to Latakia were selling out as we spoke, and their mission quickly dissolved into a frantic dash to secure tickets. But secure them we did, and soon we were relaxing in the blood red seats of a giant lumbering bus crawling its way across the desert towards Latakia.

The bus stopped halfway through the ride at an Arabic sweets shop, and we decided to buy some to keep us going. The sweets were particularly interesting, featuring the usual baklava-esque variants coupled with a new one, which  consisted of a large flat noodle stuffed with a sweetened cheese and chopped pistachio. Normally I am not too into sweets, but these were just too interesting to hold back on.

While we enjoyed the plate of sweets, Scott went to the counter to acquire diet cola.  While doing so, he struck up a conversation with a fashionably dressed young woman named Hiba who hailed from Malmö, Sweden. She was on her way to visit family in Latakia.  Originally from Palestine, her extended family had been relocated to Latakia in the mid-twentieth century, with her parents moving to northern Europe later on. Hiba and Scott exchanged Syrian phone numbers, and as they bid farewell, her younger brother sporting Nike dunks, a big purple t-shirt, and a fitted baseball cap came to accompany her back to the bus.

When we arrived in Latakia, we unfolded the cycles, and climbed out into the cool desert night. We were immediately befriended by a military officer on his way back to his home town for a little R&R. He led us from the station over to one of the main streets, from which he gave us directions to the city center. We wheeled on from there, noticing that our Syrian flashlights had, despite our charging them all the last night, somehow either failed to store energy, or had broken.

Fair enough. Latakia was lit plenty well enough, and soon we began to spot hotels around us. The first few we wandered into were a bit too pricey, but eventually we stumbled into a Tintin-themed place, by the name of the Hotel Safwan.

From there, we headed out in search of more of that amazing garlic mayonnaise-soaked shawarma, and wiled away the rest of the evening playing whist at a local hookah and ice cream joint.

The next morning, we woke bright and early and headed off to meet Hossam in the same market district of Damascus’ old city where we had met the day before. He met us there with his friend, Delia, who was in very high spirits. We all wandered together through the market, talking excitedly about our plans that day. Not far into the place, Hossam ran over to a vegetable seller and grabbed a few onions and a handful of herbs. “For the kebabs,” he explained.

Our first stop was a meat shop. Hossam definitely had his favorite suppliers, and took great pride in carefully selecting some fantastic cuts of lamb. The first of these he directed the shop owners to blend  and run through a grinder with the bundle of onions and herbs that we had just bought. While they got to work on that, we headed down the street and bought more pieces of lamb from another seller, who proudly hung a bunch of freshly skinned lambs outside his storefront. The lambs had been gutted and cleaned, but for one reason or another, the testicles were left attached. “It is the Syrian way,” Hossam explained to us, grabbing a giant, brown paper wrapped hunk of meat and two chickens, strolling back out into the bustling alley.

We then bought a giant watermelon and a smaller honeydew from an man with a giant room full to my head level with melons. I grabbed the watermelon, and Claudia the honeydew. Hossam protested at Claudia carrying the melon, to which she responded with a feminist retort. Hossam’s friend instantly recognized her and joined in in solidarity. Hossam soon shut up as he became preoccupied with other things, such as fresh cheeses and homemade hummus. We also bought a large bag of fresh cucumbers and more onions.

As we were leaving the market, we noticed this kid selling the kind of child’s bouncy balls that included a set of handles up top, allowing the user to bounce around on it, presumably as some sort of enjoyable though inefficient mode of transit. In any event, he was looking so enterprising and debonair, that while we could not bring ourselves to buy a bouncy ball, we couldn’t resist taking his portrait.

Hossam left us for a moment to run into his friend’s apartment and grab a bag of utensils and a large grill. It was not long before we were met by Hossam’s dentist friend, who pulled up in his Hyundai Verna. There were six of us needing to cram into his five-passenger vehicle, but I was more than happy to climb onto the console, and do my best to avoid the stick shift, snuggled in-between two heavily cologned Syrian men.

Hossam and the dentist began cackling uncontrollably as Hossam told us that he had managed to get off work that day by telling his boss, at the large phonebook company where he worked, that he had just gotten a call from a real big potential client and would need to run off immediately to go close the deal.

We stopped outside Hossam’s place, and he ran inside to talk for a bit with his grandfather. While he did this, we continued to joke around in the car, playing musical sunglasses. Scott looked particularly dashing in the dentist’s shades.

We proceeded from there to drive out of the city of Damascus and into the countryside, where we found ourselves turning left and right into a tangled maze of deserted and dusty back roads. Eventually we stopped outside a giant half-built concrete, multistory structure. “We’re here!” our new friends exclaimed, and we all hopped out of the car, grabbing armloads of food and equipment.

Hossam turned to me and put a finger to his lips. “Shhhh,” he stifled a giggle, “we are going to need to steal our way into this one.” He then jumped over a low-lying wall and into an overgrown courtyard. From the other side of the wall, he took out a knife and jammed it into the lock of the gate, wiggling it around. He then began violently kicking at the gate. Eventually, the old rusty thing gave way and swung open with a gut wrenching creak.

In we went, picking our way through the grasses and over to a small clearing by a somewhat sewage-laden babbling brook. Delia, the dentist, and Claudia began to set up shop there, while Hossam and I scrambled up onto another concrete wall and pulled off some of the corrugated asbestos roofing tiles from a nearby building.

At Hossam’s order, I dropped into the building, which proved full of dusty stuff, and began collecting things, handing them up to him. First two cobweb-covered hand-woven carpets, then the seats from an old couch, followed by a rusty saw, some silverware, and a number of folding chairs. With that done, I scrambled out.

Then we all gathered around the clearing while Hossam and his friend changed from their city clothes into their country clothes: this meant flowing pants and undershirts.

In the meantime, Scott had already headed out to search for firewood. I was about to join him when I decided to question our dentist friend as to the chances of us getting caught in this little ex-Syrian military breaking and entering escapade we had found ourselves participating in. The entire vibe of the experience felt safe, but the last thing I wanted to do was run afoul of the law in this police state.

I was most pleased to learn, however, that Hossam had just been joking, and that his aunt actually owned this land. From there I relaxed considerably, and headed off to search for firewood with much lightened spirits.

We came back with a bunch of firewood,  to find that Hossam had been hard at work putting together the kind of ground meat kebabs that the Russians call “Lula,” meaning ”gun barrel.”

Scott set to work flexing his old Eagle Scout skills and putting together the fire, while the girls gathered around a central plate and started chopping veggies for a salad, and to skewer into shish-kebabs. I had the great pleasure of lounging on the old couch cushions with the dentist and playing the ukulele. Soon the fire had raged down to a good solid burn, and Hossam headed over to start cooking.

He began by filling a couple of wire rack presses with spiced chicken. He then followed up with the kebabs. From time to time he would use a piece or two of the gigantic stack of flatbread that we’d bought as hot mitts, or as tools to transfer the hissing and fat dripping meat from the grill back to the picnic spot.

For each of the kinds of meat, a piece of bread was used as a plate, and as the soft flatbread soaked up the juices, I began to realize I had not eaten all day and was damn near delirious with hunger. Suddenly I heard a chorus of shrieking over by the grill. It seemed that Hossam had realized some of the kebabs were done and, rather than risk them drying out, he had just grabbed the red hot metal with his bare hands, and screaming in pain, but refusing to drop the skewers, made his way, huffing and puffing in brave agony, to the pile of bread. What a fellow we’d found!

We then all sat down to feast.  The girls had put together a very impressive salad, which we squeezed lemon over and salted.

The dentist cut a hole in a large bag of the magnificent Syrian garlic mayonnaise, and squeezed forth a giant pile of that onto a plate. Meanwhile Hossam sliced a similar hole in the corner of the bag of hummus, and squirted a giant spiral of that into another bowl. They spread both sauces out with a spoon, and poured olive oil over them, and then it was time to eat.

And my goodness, dear reader, did we eat that day! By the time we wandered down to the river to get the melons that had been chilling in the water, I was nearly bursting with some of the most succulent meat, bread, and salad I had ever tasted in my life. It was just too good.

The sun shone, and birds sang in the trees. Feral cats wandered up to us, and we gladly threw them pieces of chicken and lamb bone. “Life is good!” the dentist cried out, as he rolled back onto his cushion, stuffing his face with a slice of what turned out to be one of the sweetest and most strongly flavored watermelons I had ever encountered.

Hossam laughed and clapped his hands “Life is too good!”

And with that, we began to transition into a phase of feast-induced drowsiness. We just laid around in the shade of the trees. I played relaxing tunes on the ukulele, and time slide by.

Eventually the sun was sinking and our hosts indicated we needed to go, so we hustled to clean the place up and pick our way back through the grass to the car.

The sun was just setting as we made our way back into Damascus. It had been a beautiful day. You’re right Hossam, life is too good.

That next morning we collected our clothes from the line, stuffed them into our bags, and hit the road, soaring back down the hill and into town. We were sorely in need of some food that did not make us feel sick after eating it, and Scott had found a place in the Lonely Planet that appeared to offer some semblance of price to performance. So we headed off in search of it. We got hungrier and hungrier as the locals directed us this way and that, unsure of where the spot was. In the end, we were directed by a woman in an alleyway toward a large restaurant she claimed was the place we were looking for. It did not have the same name or the same menu, but by then we were becoming more beasts than men and women, so we just sat down.

It turned out to be your basic traveling management consultant’s fare, the kind of thing you might get at a sit-down restaurant in LAX. It was okay, but nothing amazing. And the LAX analogy extended easily to the pricing. By then we were coming to expect these kinds of manufactured experiences, and were beginning to just roll with them, in a sort of of grouchy Scrooge McDuck way.

We ate our medium food, and poured a bunch of the complimentary nuts into Claudia’s purse to save for later, and headed back out. We were unable to find the same kind of bus depot that we had in Beirut, and were informed by a group of cackling old men that we would need to take the local. So we pedaled to the bus stop, folded up our bikes, and soon the bus arrived.

We climbed on the thing and were immediately confronted by a shamelessly predatory bus driver, who insisted that we buy no fewer than 15 tickets, despite the fact that all our things and our bodies took up no more than six seats. We argued tirelessly with him, holding up the bus for quite some time, but in the end our imminent departure and frustration wore us down first and we just paid him. He handed me a giant roll of flimsy receipt-style tickets, which for the rest of the ride proved an unending source of laughter for our fellow passengers.

And so we rode on, along the beautiful coast of Lebanon, gritting our teeth and looking forward to choosing freedom in Syria. Finally the bus arrived back in the snarling traffic of Beirut. The driver stopped the bus, and came back to yell at us to hurry and unload our things. I muttered and bit my tongue.

We were unfolding the cycles and strapping our things down to the rear racks when the usual group of passersby began to form around us, interested in who these weirdos on the folding bicycles were. Among the crowd were a number of grimy street children, one of whom came over to us and asked to have some water. Having bought a six pack of two-liters the day before, we were happy to give him a bottle.

We then watched, aghast, as he walked over to the side of the road and began to pour the drinking water all over his head in order to cool himself. One of his friends came over trying to get some water, and the two of them exchanged a brief series of blows, with the newcomer eventually turned back empty handed. With our water completely poured out onto the ground, and empty the bottle littered in the street, the two kids had the audacity to return together and ask for another bottle.

That was it, it was time to wheel out of here. We hopped on the cycles, and began to pound down the road. Insane Lebanese drivers whipped by us, honking and careening. I didn’t even care, by this point I had one thought in mind: get back to the bus station and buy a ticket to Syria.

And that’s exactly what we did, arriving just in time to catch the last three seats on the next bus for Damascus. We made friends with a Syrian chap on the bus platform who made a point of chatting up Scott for the majority of the ride back over the Ante-Lebanese Mountains. He was interested in all kinds of things: American culture, sports, the World Cup, acronyms, and the English words for all kinds of things.  “What does FIFA mean in English?” he asked Scott.  “Well it’s an acronym, composed of the first letter of each word in the name of an organization.  And FIFA is actually the first letters of four French words.”  We reflected on how strange a concept this might have seemed.

He wanted very badly for us to come back to his village with him and sleep in his house. His home was three hours outside Damascus, though, and we just couldn’t spare the time. He kept at it, however, asking again and again, and eventually we were forced to give him the partially dishonest “maybe.”

When we crossed over a ridge and the city of Damascus spilled out below us glowing and wonderful, our new friend turned back to us and exclaimed “Damascus, Ya Habibi!” (Damascus, My Darling). We could not agree more!

It felt wonderful to be back in Syria… like a breath of fresh air. We goofed around with the crowd of locals who gathered around us as we unfolded the cycles. None of them were preoccupied with ascertaining who was cooler: us or them. None of them were worried that their pants were “in” this season. They were just people, and we were just people too, albeit absurd foreigners rolling around Damascus at night on folding bikes. That’s  all there was to it. Glorious.

As we wheeled down the highway back into town, we found ourselves marveling at how patient and relaxed the traffic seemed, compared to how gnarly we thought it was when we had arrived in Syria the first time. Traffic in Lebanon had been other worldly, just hellish. We passed by a giant wedding party at one of the many liquor stores that lined the road to the bus station, and stopped to take a peek.

There was singing, dancing, screaming, rice throwing, and general merriment. A group of machine gun-toting soldiers was watching the proceedings, laughing and swaying with the music. When they saw us they whooped out in supportive tones, encouraging us to engage in a giant circular marriage dance that was beginning. As tempting as that was, we decided to keep wheeling into town.

Back at the Ziad Al Khabir, they were ecstatic to see us once again, and the owner proudly showed us to a new room, something like the flophouse version of the presidential suite. Furthermore, we could stay in this fancier and rather gigantic room for no extra charge, he explained, for we were friends now.

Damascus, Ya Habbibi, indeed.

Our friend Hossam was also just thrilled to have us back in town. As we headed out the next morning into the bright sun and dry air of that most delightful city, we got a call from none other than Hossam himself. He was interested in eating lunch with us, introducing us to some of his friends, and solidifying plans that he had been cooking up for a large group barbecue.

We felt great about all of those things, and headed out into the old city market where we met the man, looking as dapper and put together as ever. We wandered through the old city together, investigating shops and restaurants that showed potential to provide us with lunch, passing by ornately dressed tamarind juice vendors and navigating the throngs of people.

We stopped at an amazingly ornate and ancient bathhouse on the way, which was a strong reminder to Scott and I how long it had been since we’d been to one, and how much we loved visiting public baths.

Of course, having Claudia around, we couldn’t indulge just then so we continued on, past all kinds of stalls selling everything from exotic spices to fresh made bulk hummus. The bulk hummus fellow stopped us and insisted that we try some.

“You can sample anything in this market,” Hossam explained, “and you will never be obliged to buy anything ,whether you approve of the sample or not. It is the Syrian way.”

We loved the Syrian way, and continued to snack on bits of dried fruit, succulent olives, and neon colored pickles as we made our way along. Finally, we passed a particularly formidable looking organ meat restaurant and decided it would be the perfect place to eat.

And so it was. We delved into a truly magnificent meal of intestines stuffed with rice, tongue, brains, and mysterious milky looking soups. We ate the innards in the traditional Syrian style, grabbing them with flatbread, and then sprinkling onion, cilantro and lemon salt on top. It was unforgettably delicious.

As we ate, Hossam told us jaw dropping stories of his time in the Syrian military, where he had been sent out into the desert with just a knife, and expected to survive for days. He had eaten bugs, sliced himself and sewn the wound shut with his sewing kit (he had the jagged scar to prove it). At one point he even startled us all by putting a cigarette out on his tongue. What a character this guy was!

Conversation soon turned to the BBQ. We would need to do it tomorrow, it seemed, for as much as we loved Damascus, we needed to move on to other cities in Syria. So, with a little more discussion, the date and the menu were set.

We parted after agreeing to meet up again before the BBQ to purchase meats and vegetables.

We decided that night to indulge in a little Damascus night wheeling. We began by buying three cheap Syrian flashlights and some very nice British-made hose clamps. We used the clamps to attach the lights to our handlebars. The fellows at the hardware store that sold us the goods approved wholeheartedly of the system.

The streets were delightful at night, with reduced traffic and plenty of lighting.

And so we wheeled on, into an unexplored and rather maze-like part of town. Part way through the wheel, we stopped for some more of that garlic mayonnaise-soaked Syrian shawarma that we loved so much, sitting down on the curb to eat three giant wraps, the bill for which totaled less than $1.00.

Finishing up the night, we played cards and looked up curiosities on the wiki reader, becoming quite the curiosity ourselves in the process.

The next morning we woke up and began furiously doing laundry in the bathroom of our room at the King George Inn in Jbeil, better know as Byblos, in Lebanon. Claudia was feeling much better, which was a great relief. She seemed glad to be joining in the activities again, scrubbing a pair of jeans furiously in the shower in her bathing suit. After cleaning, rinsing, and hanging up all the clothes that were not currently on our bodies, we began thinking about food and wheeling.

We had, during the great bargaining fiasco of last night, given up our rights to the generally included breakfast at the King George in favor of a reduced rate, so we needed to find something in town.  King George himself strutted around the hotel’s entrance, tending to the garden in the front of the property and producing a nasal murmur into his mobile phone.

We found our bikes outside, where we’d parked and locked them, right in front of the great black Mercedes in the manager’s parking place. Someone had been courteous enough to cover them with a large gray cloth, perhaps to deter thieves.

It was as we were pulling the dusty great cloth off our bikes that I realized I had left my bathing suit in the room (you see, dear reader, we had plans to head to a beach again), so I excused myself to run back up and get it. When I attempted to unlock the door, however, I found myself unable to do so. Either the lock or the key had ceased to cooperate.

So we brought the proprietor’s son, Tony, into the picture, and he too struggled with the door, eventually giving up. We were locked out of our room, with my bathing suit inside, but he assured us he would have the problem solved by the time we got back from our wheel. So we pulled the cloth off the cycles, and figuring I could just buy another suit or go in my ExOfficios, hopped on my Speed TR, whooshing down the hillside and back into the city.

Inside town, we wheeled right by the Librarie Al Jihad. “Jihad,” Claudia explained to us, in reality has a totally different meaning than the whole Alquaida-ized version with which we are familiar in the west.

It refers more to an interior battle for enlightenment, she explained, which sounded good to us, and fit very well with the idea of libraries. So we rode on, giving it the AsiaWheeling-well-named-library seal of approval. As we made our way deeper into town, the call of our growling stomachs began to grow in strength, and we began, with increasing mania, to dash in and out of restaurants in search of food.

We ended up finding it at a sort of down-home snack joint, where we were able to a get a large plate of French fries, some hummus, and a few smoked fish wraps. The food was tasty, but left us feeling very heavy, sluggish, and a little sick.

There is a Lebanese practice of sneaking French fries, as ingredients, into dishes where you wouldn’t find them.  The result is often tasty in the short term, but an uncomfortable belly bomb in the longer term. We figured there was no better cure for the heavy greaseball stomach and sluggishness than wheeling though, so we climbed back on the cycles and continued exploring, albeit at a slightly slower pace.

Soon we came upon the seaside, where just as in Beirut, crystal clear blue Mediterranean water, lapped invitingly against a coastline scattered with hotels, resorts, and clubs. Interested as usual in the people’s beach, we wheeled on, eventually to be rewarded by what looked suspiciously like a public beach.

It was blazingly hot that day, and we were all too happy to spot a small convenience store. Our previous efforts to buy water in this city had been met with Tokyo-esque pricing, and similarly Japanese volumes. But this place looked a little more down home, and to be honest, we were getting so thirsty that we would have paid whatever we had to. We haggled a decent deal on six two-liter bottles, and as we were leaving, we noticed a large system of closed circuit televisions and cameras, which allowed the proprietor to keep an eye on the ice cream cooler outside. When we asked about the elaborate system, she explained that people had been stealing from her ice cream cooler. “So you’re saying the ice cream is not just free?” Scott joked.

“Nothing is free in Lebanon,” she said with a shocking deadpan. And with that, we made awkward goodbyes and climbed back on the cycles.

As we were wheeling down to investigate more closely, we ran into a Lebanese man who lived in Philadelphia. We spent a while chatting with him. He was far from the only foreign Lebanese in this country. Lebanon sports an external population of over 10 million, living in other countries all over the world. And not only do these Lebanese send money home to their families in Lebanon, but many of them come home to visit for the summer.

This might explain, at least in part, why we were finding Lebanon to be so startlingly expensive. During the summers, at least, it was filled with all the affluent Lebanese from foreign countries coming back home to flash a little.

Meanwhile, we had found a good spot at the beach, and Scott and Claudia had used a nearby seafood restaurant as a changing room. I just took my pants off near the water, hoping I was not scandalizing the populace too much. Then, leaving our stuff in a great trusting pile, we headed off into the blue water. We swam out, away from the coast, enjoying the cool of the water. It had been startlingly hot, and it felt amazing to be in the cool blue sea.

Just then a chiseled and well tanned man in a row boat came over. He explained to us that we had better get back to shore, for the water here was filled with jellyfish. Some of them were really big, he explained, throwing his arms out dramatically.

It was then we noticed that, indeed, none of the other beach goers seemed to have ventured out this far. So we began to swim back. And the rumor proved true, for as we swam, I began to notice stings, and then Claudia got struck as well. Then I caught a really bad one on my leg. We all began swimming faster and eventually reached the beach running back to our pile of things, with yelps and hollers.

We were quite happy to be on dry land again, and wiled away the next few hours reading about the Lebanese economy on the wiki reader, and singing songs on the ukulele.

That night, we returned to the hotel, and called a great meeting of the AsiaWheeling field team. We needed to reevaluate our plans. Lebanon was proving startlingly expensive, devastatingly touristy, and for one reason or another, we felt a pull to move on. With the marked exception of our meeting with Mueen and the Red Bull team, our interactions with the locals had been some of the most mediated, most predatory, and least pleasurable of the entire trip. The Lebanese food that we had looked forward to turned out to be a choice between swanky $20-per-plate type places, or cheap greasy street food, which consisted mostly of hidden French fries.

Frankly, I was fed up. I didn’t feel welcome. Furthermore, I felt that the way to be welcomed was to come and spend a lot of money. I thought back to the humble little city of Genshui, in southern  Yunnan, where we had been taken under the wing of that restaurant owner, and continued to return back to his shop for more feasts and long conversations, to meet his friends and family, to be brought into his life. And that fellow didn’t even speak English.

Everyone here spoke English. Despite that, for the first time in six months of rambling, we were consistently unable  to connect with the place in anything more than either the most superficial or most intellectually mediated way. I know, I know, dear reader, this is an atypical stance for your humble correspondents to take. And please don’t get me wrong. Lebanon is a beautiful country, just bursting with natural wonders and rich history. But I just don’t think it’s the place for AsiaWheeling.

It felt artificial, manufactured, and mediated. The men of this country are engaged in a never ending cycle of competition to see who has the fanciest car, who frequents the coolest night clubs, who has the best pair of acid-washed designer jeans, or the newest sunglasses. The women are so painted, so packaged, and so modified as to appear only partially organic life forms.

In an effort to gain Internet access, we inquired with the staff of the King George whether it would be possible to plug in our laptop to their network.  After Scott was shown various dead Ethernet connections on multiple floors of the hotel, Tony, George’s son invited him to sit on the steps outside their personal residence on floor two.  As the Internet trickled wirelessly, syncing emails and uploading posts to AsiaWheeling.com, shouts and hollers of domestic dispute flowed forth from the residence.  Business with family seemed tough, especially the hotel business.

Lebanon was an important place to visit, an awesome cultural and economic spectacle, but after about an hour of discussion, we decided it was time to go back to Syria, where we felt at home.

That next morning, as we woke up amidst the sleeping hordes at Talal’s New Hotel, Claudia was not feeling well. She had managed to pick up a food-born pathogen that Scott and I had somehow escaped. As a result, the team was moving very slowly, hopping from bathroom to bathroom, making our way from the hotel to breakfast, which we decided it would be easiest to execute back at the Le Chef.

Moving so slowly through the city gave us plenty of time to notice and appreciate the strikingly European buildings that were all around us. It was still AsiaWheeling, but there was certainly not a lot of Asia in this place.

Breakfast seemed to do little to help Claudia’s state, and so we returned her to the hotel, where she would spend the day relaxing. Meanwhile, Scott and I headed out to the meeting with Red Bull, with Claudia safe and sound, and hopefully on the mend, in the company of the owner of Talal’s New Hotel. The owner was unfortunately not named Talal. He was, however, a self proclaimed nurse and promised to take good care of our dear West Asia Cultural Liaison.

So with that we hopped on the Speed TRs, just the two of us again, and began wheeling toward a certain Starbucks, a few kilometers down the coast in the less touristy business district of Beirut.  Wheeling to the place was certainly raw. We made our way along a very large and busy road. The traffic was fast, and cyclists were very uncommon, which meant that our fellow travelers knew little about what to do when they encountered a cyclist in front of them. At one point on the wheel, Scott caught his long broken dynamo hub-powered light in his spoke, which made a sickening sound and savagely bent the thing. We stopped to tear the broken light off and tighten the spot back up, then hit the road once again. We rode fast, signaling our intent early and often, and eventually we made it to the Starbucks.

Not long after we’d sat down, and well before our sweat soaked shirts had begun to dry, we spotted a laid back, sunglassed character wandering into the shop, making that kind of tentative eye contact that is so common among those who are scanning a room for someone they’ve never met before. It must have been Mueen, our Red Bull contact, and we walked over to make ourselves obvious.

He was indeed Mueen, and he stuck out his hand, and introduced himself. We then sat down and enjoyed the biggest cup of coffee we’d had since we’d arrived from the Gulf. We discussed AsiaWheeling’s philosophy of travel, our adventure to date, and the role that caffeine plays in our lifestyle. You see, dear reader, we ride, day in day out, on some of the gnarliest traffic in the world, literally taking our lives in our hands each day. Preserving our lives requires alertness, vigilance, and lucidity. The number one thing that we can do to encourage that state of mind is to sleep plenty each night, and practice good wheeling technique. But sometimes that just won’t get you there. So thank goodness there’s also caffeine.

We had enjoyed the added lucidity and energy that came along with all the Red Bull we drank while road tripping the Gulf, and we were excited to add it to our lifestyle again.

With the coffees done, we headed around behind the Starbucks, and folded the cycles throwing them into the back of our new friend’s SUV, for the drive over to Red Bull HQ. As we rode, we discussed Lebanon and Lebanese food. “You know of this salad called the fattoush?” he asked. Of course we did, having been eating it nearly daily for a month now. “You see there was a time in Lebanon when there was not much food to go around. We invented this dish as a way to avoid wasting our stale flatbread. The hard, stale bread would be crumbled, blended in with greens, and dressed with oil..” The notion certainly sounded great to us.

Mueen then asked us when we’d last eaten. The answer was, of course, a few hours ago at the Le Chef not far from our hotel. But that seemed enough time to him to be justified in insisting we stop at a restaurant on the way, specializing in a local flatbread called Manakish.

Once there, Mueen ordered us two, and a couple of bottles of Ayran, the local salty yogurt drink.

We finished those as we battled the traffic to get the rest of the way to the headquarters. Inside, we were quickly introduced to the team, all of whom were fantastic people.

We spent a particularly large amount of time chatting with the head of the “sports” division, which in Lebanon, at least, consists largely of motorsports. To give us an illustration, he and Mueen shared a few of their “drifting” videos with us.

For those of you who do not know what drifting is, it’s a motorsport in which the driver exceeds the amount of torque that can be placed on his wheels sending them spinning in smoking, screeching blurs against the ground, and launching his car sliding around a parking lot, drifting like a pat of butter in a hot pan, left and right on burning rubber. Red Bull had sponsored a number of such competitions in Lebanon. And I must admit, the videos were pretty impressive, with the drivers squealing in manic arcs through open lots, around cones, and even through the tight corners of parking garages.

Having finally caught our fill of drifting videos, we headed out to grab some cases of Red Bull and strap them to the bikes.

It felt great to strap so much delightful elixir to our Speed TRs, and we made sure to pause for a group photo before splitting.

And then off we went, back downhill and into town, working our way toward the hotel where we hoped to find Claudia  on the mend.

It took us a while to get back, as we battled traffic, laden down with Red Bull, and confused by the lack of signage.

We were forced to stop quite a few times to ascertain our position. Luckily, plenty of the locals spoke bits and pieces of English and all knew where our hotel’s night club district was. So eventually we succeeded in arriving back at Talal’s New Guesthouse to find Claudia looking better, but still far from 100%.

From there, the three of us wheeled to the bus station, which was hidden in an enclave underneath a giant raging highway. In true AsiaWheeling style, we bought the last three tickets on the next bus to Byblos, and commenced sitting around and waiting for our departure time.

I sat down on the side of the platform and played the uke, while Scott chatted with the locals, and Claudia snoozed against a pile of bags, cases of Red Bull, and folding bicycles. In a short while, the bus arrived and we climbed on.

It was a surprisingly short ride to Jbeil, which is the Lebanese name for the city, which surrounds Byblos, and it seemed only seconds later that we climbed off into the night. It was not a touristy bus, evidenced by the fact that we were the only people to get off in Jbeil. With all our bags unloaded and piled nearby, we took a moment to take stock of our surroundings. We were on a street corner, next to the inter-city highway. There were a group of Lebanese army officers nearby us, holding fancy automatic weapons, and scrutinizing our behavior. We openly scrutinized them back, and watched as a few more of them arrived with bags of falafel wraps, handing them out to all the soldiers.

Claudia headed over to ask directions to the center of town, while Scott and I unfolded the cycles. Then we were wheeling again. It was not a big place, and finding our way to the center was quite easy. We checked out a few of the hotels in the city center, but found them all to be well over $100 a night. Even with Claudia sick, we needed some place cheaper, so we wheeled on.

It suddenly became apparent that it was time to eat again, so we pulled over at a shawarma place, and ordered some wraps.

The wraps were delightful and we were even able to plug in our computers and consult the Lonely Planet. The news was not good. It seemed that the entire city was essentially devoid of reasonably priced accommodation. There was one place though, called the King George Inn, which was only $60 a night. This, we decided, would be our next target.

And so with that, we left Claudia to look after our stuff, and continued to compute, while Scott and I headed out on what turned out to be quite the lengthy uphill battle toward the King George.

When we finally arrived, we found the place to be staffed by a very friendly young man, by the name of Tony, and his somewhat curmudgeonly father. The asking prices turned out to be significantly more than what was printed in our perhaps outdated Lonely Planet, but after a fair bit of inspecting of rooms, and heavy bargaining with the son, we were able to arrive upon something that we figured would be manageable for a couple days at least.

We then began haggling over what would be a fair price to have them drive us back down the hill to pick up Claudia and the bags. That too was a tedious affair, but eventually we found common ground.

So we climbed into the father’s shiny black Mercedes, marveling at how Lebanese people all drive such fancy cars, and headed down to pick up Claudia. The man spoke very little English, but was quite fluent in French. So I tried on my old French skills from Grinnell Public High School and began to converse in a most broken way. As we drove on, chatting imprecisely, the father began to renege on all our agreed-upon pricing and started once again inflating the room toward $100. When he found that Claudia was also going to be sleeping there, he redoubled his efforts.

We waited him out, though, and eventually through continued exhausted bargaining and general pricing shtick, we arrived at the same price as before, turned over our passports for registration, and collapsed into bed.

We woke up once again amidst the sea of bodies at Talal’s New Hotel in Beirut and headed out in search of breakfast and connectivity. The hotel had advertised wireless Internet, but the wireless network was actually more like a tiny drizzle of information, which was being split between countless unwashed laptop-toting backpackers, where actually loading a page was an excuse to celebrate.

We had been corresponding over e-mail with our Red Bull contacts in Lebanon, and we needed to call them to confirm a meeting for the next day. Doing this over Skype, on this network, at least, would be impossible, so we set out in search of SIM cards.

Before we got too deep into that endeavor, however, we would need to feed ourselves. Today we headed out in the opposite direction, searching for breakfast.

We ended up selecting an interesting and quite delicious place, by the name of “Le Chef.” It was decently affordable, and massively tasty. The staff was also quite fascinating, for they had been trained to yell at people as they passed by on the street, and to whoop in celebration when people entered the place. However, in all other interactions they were the most somber, understated and disinterested service people you’d encounter anywhere. They were particularly baffled when Scott and Claudia came in, but I lingered outside, doing some quick repairs on Claudia’s bike, whose chain had lost tension. They ended up whooping twice in false alarm as I busied myself with her Speed D7.

Stomachs full, we picked up once again the search for SIM cards. After repeated attempts to purchase them, however, we were sorely disappointed to discover that even the cheapest cards were in excess of $50 USD. After paying only two or three bucks in most of the countries we had visited to date, this seemed positively ridiculous. So we decided to head out in search of a payphone, ducking in and out of the little call shops which are attached to many of the gas stations here. Payphone prices too seemed unreal, charging 60-75 cents a minute for local calls, so we wheeled on, determined to find a way to make the contact without paying more than a night in a Chinese business hotel to do so.

Finally we were able to locate a seaside beach-resort-restaurant-and-bar type place, which allowed us to make a call for free on one of their waiter’s cell phones. Scott paced around, triumphantly talking with the folks at Red Bull and scribbling data onto a spare AsiaWheeling business card. Meanwhile Claudia supported our benefactors by purchasing some ice cream.

With the meeting all set for tomorrow, and directions to our meeting place in hand, we left in high spirits and climbed onto the Speed TRs. We headed back up the hill that overlooked that classic Beirut seaside view, and made our way back down the gentle incline toward the city’s many beaches. We had strapped swimsuits and sunscreen to the bikes and had all intents and purposes to spend the day at the beach.

Most of the beaches, however, were attached to swanky clubs and restaurants, and charged for entrance. We were much more interested in finding the people’s beach. So we wheeled on for some time,  when we spotted a particularly beautiful section of coastline that was not your classic sandy beach, but did appear to be a people’s swimming hole. We decided to take a Rauschenberg and head in to investigate.

We made our way down the cliff, along a rather treacherous stretch of gravel road to the seaside, where we found plenty of people swimming and fishing in close proximity, along with a plethora of cobbled together structures that  housed restaurants, bars, and hookah spots.

We locked the bikes next to a bunch of fisherman’s mopeds, and headed out on foot, picking our way over the rock formations and following the sound of people yelling and splashing in the water.

The swimming hole we found was gorgeous. It consisted of deep, crystal clear blue water, surrounded by startling picturesque cliffs. The water was easily approached by the network of large plate-like formations that were so emblematic of this coastline. We found an open spot on the rocks and began to relax.

I whipped out the ukulele, and we began to strum and sing. Soon we attracted the attention of some picnicking Lebanese chillers, who invited us over to join them. They were all college age chaps, enjoying an idle summer soaking up rays in Beirut. They spoke only a tiny bit of English, but we managed to joke around and even find a few songs that overlapped between their taste and what I knew on the ukulele.

Before we knew it, the sun was sinking low and it was time to jump in the water. So in I went. The water was cool and welcoming. It was also plenty salty, making it quite easy to float. Getting out of the water, on the other hand, was none too easy. The tide was low enough that the rim of the rocky plate was about two feet above me. So I watched the other swimmers and studied their methods. It seemed that the way to get back on land was to wait for a wave to come in, and let it take you up high enough to grab onto the edge of the plate and scramble up.

I swam over slowly, biding my time, and paying attention to the approaching waves. As I got closer to the edge of the plate, I could see that it was indeed a very lively place, covered with sea plants, and all kinds of little spiny creatures moving around, squirting out little jets of water, and generally being crustaceous. I took a deep breath and hoped I was not about to get a torso-full of sea urchin spines and began to scramble.

It worked, and with only a few minor slices, I made it back onto the rocks. It must have looked gnarly, for neither Scott nor Claudia followed me in.

We continued to idle there with our new friends until the sun sank below the horizon.

We woke up in our room at Talal’s New Hotel in Beirut, Lebanon. Despite the fact that it was well after 10:00 am,  we picked our way over the bodies of the other sleeping guests, which were strewn all around the place, in order to get outside.

The first order of business was, of course, eating. And we found a reasonable looking place not far from our hotel. It was a kind of a delicatessen, advertising falafel wraps, hummus and the like.  Being accustomed to the normal Middle Eastern practice of ordering a number of plates and eating them with bread, we did so.

The owner was more than happy to oblige us, making sure, however, to caution us that plates would be more expensive than sandwiches. The sandwiches were very affordable, though, so we figured all would be okay. Wrong we were, for when the bill came, it was so large that it could have bought 25 sandwiches easily.  It was probably time to protest, but, perhaps in a moment of weakness, we just paid the bill and left in a foul mood, hoping that a little wheeling might help to erase this expensive and distasteful experience from our minds.

And that it did. We headed first down to the oceanside, where we began to skirt the coast, taking in the city of Beirut, which rose into the hills to our left.

It was quite an impressive place, bustling with giant new construction projects, and already punctuated with modern-looking high rise apartment blocks.

Looking to our right, the geology of the coastline proved not only interesting, but strikingly beautiful.  On top of it, giant cast concrete shapes provided an intended erosion barrier between the beach clubs and the sea.

The city was perched on a bank of cliffs, overlooking the luscious blue of the Mediterranean Sea. As the cliffs made their way down to the water, at the point where the surf made contact, they spread out into large plate-like structures which served as the perfect spots to harbor all kinds of sea plants and animals. The structures themselves, I had a suspicion, might even be the result of many years of habitation by creatures that left some kind of sediment behind. These days the wide seaside plates, also acted as a perch for the many sun-baked local fishermen who dotted the coastline.

Traffic was, in a completely unprecedented way, completely insane. We were becoming accustomed to the sound of squealing tires and the smell of burning rubber; the sight of young Lebanese men in luxury cars drag racing at stop lights was also no surprise. I even saw a few cars pull hand brake turns in relatively empty intersections.

Given all this automotive madness, we were quite glad to move off the street and onto a kind of seaside promenade, which had been constructed in what one might call the European style. We rode along this, enjoying the sun, the water, and the various seaside operations that were scattered along our route, many of which seemed to be focused on scraping muck up from the seafloor and monetizing it in some way.

We were forced to join traffic again when the road rounded a corner and we began to climb, following the cliffside as it grew higher and higher above sea level. Soon we were rewarded with a grand view of the Mediterranean Sea.

It was a vision we were familiar with from the posters that hung in most Lebanese restaurants in the U.S. It was the impossibly blue-green glassy ocean, out of which giant golden rocks jutted, accented with tufts of green plant life. The idyllic scene was only slightly marred by a giant flotilla of plastic post consumer waste, which had, due to the prevailing currents, been corralled just below the epic rock face.

On we went, tearing ourselves away from the view and continuing to slug up and over the hill, which spilled out into a long easy downhill back toward sea level. Partway down the hill, however, we spotted a bent and crumbling barbed wire fence, which separated us from a giant abandoned lot overlooking the sea.

We decided that with the fence in so dilapidated a state, and with Lebanon being, as it is, mostly devoid of government, it was likely no one would mind if we just wheeled right on in.

Inside we found a grid of half finished concrete streets that might, at one point, have been intended to serve a small grid of housing blocks. They had long been neglected, though, and were now strewn with trash, and overgrown with coastal grasses. We continued to wheel on into the abandoned lot, past a number of shipping-containers-turned-housing structures. Most of them showed signs of at least semi-recent occupation, but we did not run into any inhabitants.

All around us were the remnants of half built buildings, and the refuse of vagrants. It was delightfully raw. As we rode on, we wondered: what had ceased completion of this housing project? What had taken this prime piece of seaside real estate and turned it into a post apocalyptic wasteland?

At the end of the crumbling half-built road, we were rewarded with a delightful view of the rich blue sea and the patchwork of plate-like formations which were to be found where the cliffs met the ocean.

We took a moment to sit down and rest in a makeshift cliff-side bungalow, where we found a couple of serviceable plastic chairs and a little shade.

We spent a while taking it all in, perched up there with the magnificent view, before climbing back on the cycles and riding back to the main drive.

We headed on, past a rather large road-side sheep-selling operation, which heralded our entrance into the older and poorer part of the city. Lebanon is a very mixed place, with Muslims and Christians of many ethnicities living together, now at least in relative peace. We had been staying in the richer, Christian part of town, but we were now heading into the poorer Muslim section.

We rode on past fruit sellers and countless auto parts shops.  The architecture in this part of town took a turn for the fascinating, with the return of the Damascus-style intersection between traditional Islamic buildings and 1970s brutalism.

Our pining for Syria was only strengthened by this bit of pro-mayonnaise graffiti.

On we went, deeper into the Muslim part of Beirut. Not more than 20 years ago, these two parts of the city had been at war with one another. And though peace had returned to the city, one could defiantly feel that the Christian part of town had come out on top. The streets here were more crumbling, filth was more prevalent, children wandered with no shoes, and the general nature of the buildings and businesses around us was less about flash and glam, and more about getting things done, putting food on the table, and the like.

Speaking of food, we noticed we were hungry and stopped when we saw a few vendors selling bananas and  Arabic sweets out of the back of a bread truck.

The sweets were amazing, though the vendors proved particularly grumpy when they discovered our order was just a small sampling of each.

So on we went, wheeling harder now, really pushing ground by. We stopped at a couple of bike shops, in hopes of buying some new bike lights, but it seemed that in Beirut all bike shops were actually toy stores, which just placed bikes outside to lure cyclists in and them sell them beach and sandbox-related products.

As happens from time to time on AsiaWheeling, we took a wrong turn and ended up in a family’s yard.

This one was particularly interesting as it contained a smiling child holding a rifle. He was more than happy to point us back toward the main road, and waved us off leaning on his firearm.

Soon the city fell away and we were out into a rocky desert. Up ahead we could see a large tunnel looming, and we decided to take it. It was a particularly hairy mission, pedaling through that deafening tube, enduring strange puffs of wind, and close calls with mad Lebanese drivers.

We discovered it was a tunnel underneath the Beirut airport when we found ourselves suddenly outside again, squinting in the sunlight, ears ringing, and surrounded by barbed wire fencing and radar towers. Perhaps even more interesting than the airport was the fact that we had found ourselves also at a giant sewage outlet, where it seemed all the excrement of the city of Beirut was being let out into the sea. We paused to catch our breath and watch the complicated merging of the river of filth and the beautiful blue sea.

When we climbed back on the cycles to head onward, we found ourselves riding though a remarkable wasteland of trash. The garbage was piled high along the side of the road for kilometers. It was as though a thousand buildings had been torn down, still full of stuff, and all the refuse piled along this freeway.

Now well out of the city, and free of traffic lights, pedestrians, and other obstacles, the traffic speed picked up greatly.  Once again, it seemed prudent to move from the road proper onto the large sidewalk that ran alongside it. And once again, like in Jordan, this sidewalk proved to be just littered with broken glass. We once again trusted in our Kevlar tires, and our general ability to avoid especially pointy bits, and wheeled on.

Not far after the sewage outlet we found ourselves arriving upon a new city, by the name of Saida. There, we decided begin our journey back to the Beirut. We seriously considered making some great loop, but it appeared to us that one might end up trapped in some restricted airport zone ahead of us. So we pulled our Dahons around, and started the long retrace back to the city.

We arrived just as the sun was setting, and we were absolutely starving. We dined that night at a pretty swanky Lebanese place, ordering our usual Middle Eastern meal of hummus, salads, kebabs and flatbread. The meal was glorious, and at a white tablecloth, multiple-forks-per-person type place.

As I ate I tried not to let the fact that our mediocre breakfast at a random sandwich joint had cost almost three times as much…

We woke up the next morning and checked out of the Hotel Ziad Al Khabir in Damascus. We had developed quite a warm relationship with the place, its staff, and its grungy Sudanese vibe. We were none too excited to leave, but we had a whole bunch of Lebanon to visit. We would get a chance to see more Syria on our way back through, heading toward Turkey, but that doesn’t mean that our departure was not without some pulling on the heartstrings.

The owners let us leave our things at the hotel while we went out in search of breakfast. We ended up finding one of the best restaurants of our time in the Middle East. Furthermore, it was right across the street from our hotel, startlingly affordable, and downright luxurious.

The name of the place was the Al Negma, and it comes most highly recommended to any AsiaWheeling readers who find their way into Damascus. We sat down in the Al Negma and ordered a splendid feast of salads, pastes, roast chicken, and pilaf.

We ate and read about the history of Damascus on the wikireader, savoring our last meal in this fine town.

After paying the bill, we chatted with the owner for a while, and he directed us as to how to properly make our way to the bus station. We thanked him and headed back up to the Ziad Al Khabir to get our bags.

In the lobby, as we were saying goodbye to the staff, a particularly talkative old man appeared, and though he spoke no English, vehemently and perhaps drunkenly joined in the conversation. As he spoke, he would emphasize his phrases by reaching out and touching Claudia’s arm or thigh. She would brush his hand away, gently scolding him when he did this, but the behavior continued. The entire experience was becoming decidedly uncomfortable and inappropriate by the time we were happily surprised by the old man’s sudden departure down the stairs toward the street.

Glad to be free of him, we loaded up all our stuff and filed one by one down the few flights of crumbling stairs and hallways that lead from the Ziad Al Khabir out to the street. I was taking the lead and already beginning to sweat, lugging all my things down the ancient and slanting spiral staircase. As I focused on making my way down, I barely noticed the same old man returning up the stairs, passing me on my way down.

Once I got outside, I began to unfold my bike, looking up from my work to see Scott and Claudia appearing as well. Claudia looked upset. It turned out that the same old man had gone at her once again, this time in the stairwell, as she was passing. Hands full of all her stuff, and teetering on the stairs, she could do little to stop him from grabbing at her body. She yelled at him and eventually he stopped.

As she told the story, once again Scott and I found ourselves in a situation in which we were unsure what to do. Should we go track down this old man and give him a talking to in English, Chinese or Russian? The police would certainly be no help. The owners of the hotel also seemed happy to stand by and let this kind of thing happen as well. We also needed to get to the bus station. But the question still stood, at least, as to how we could prevent things like this from happening in the future. Perhaps we just needed to stay more vigilant, stick closer together when we felt things were unsafe. Whether there was a better response or not, we decided to focus on being supportive to Claudia , who while upset, seemed to be shrugging off the entire experience quite valiantly.

And so it was that in a mood somewhere in between anger, befuddlement, and pity, we climbed on the cycles and began to make our way toward the bus station.

We headed back out of town on the same streets that had brought us into the city, pedaling hard through now familiar territory. We were forced to stop, however, when a large red Land Rover pulled over in front of us, and four men in matching white polo shirts climbed out.

They ended up being a group of travelers from Bahrain who were doing their own adventure, Bahrain to England, in this shiny, decal emblazoned, Land Rover, and blogging their adventures on their website www.friendshiparabia.com.

We shared a little of our own tale with them, and had just enough time to pose for a group portrait (scroll to the bottom), before we apologized and explained that we needed to get to the bus station in time to catch a bus that wouldn’t get us into Beirut in the middle of the night.

So off we went, through a large roundabout, which seemed to be centered around a giant, ornate, stained-glass, upside-down cross. Claudia pulled over to ask a taxi driver with some obvious engine problems about how to get to the bus station. He was more than happy to point us in the right direction.

And so we began a long, but gentle incline that took us many kilometers up and out of the city, eventually piping us onto a highway that climbed, long and slow, up to the bus station. We knew we were getting near to the place when street began to be lined on either side with — of all things not stereotypically Middle Eastern — liquor shops.

Now, dear reader, booze is not hard to buy in Syria. It is easier and cheaper, in fact, than in Jordan, and about a thousand times easier and cheaper than in the Gulf. But this retail concentration was unprecedented. The street was just jam packed with booze sellers. It’s true, some of the booze they were selling was from Lebanon, but most of it was local… I just couldn’t fathom why such a strip might be conjured up here, in the middle of the desert outside Damascus. I continued to be startled, as we rode for about a kilometer of just roadside liquor shops. It was nuts.

At the bus station, there was plenty of conflicting signage, and a number of lying cab drivers who were attempting to convince us that the only way to get to Lebanon was by cab. All the red herring information had us riding around in circles for a bit before we finally made our way into the passenger terminal. Inside we were quite quickly approached by a one legged man, who hobbled toward us on a makeshift crutch.

“How the hell are you doing?” he said in what sounded startlingly like a Kansas accent. “Where’re y’all from?”

I’ll have to refrain from the transcription going forward, for his level of obscenity reached such heights that were I to publish it here, AsiaWheel.com might be banned in Singapore. But, to give you the gist, he explained that he was an old Syrian navy man, who had worked closely with the U.S. He learned to speak English and to swear like a sailor from the real thing. He now lived here in Damascus making his money helping English speaking tourists to haggle for bus rates.

He was just enough of an endearing character that we decided to give him some business. He showed us to a bus and haggled dramatically with the guy for a bit. Then Claudia and I loaded the stuff into the car while Scott took everyone’s passports and followed our galumphing one legged guide into the crumbling ticket shop to get the tickets validated.

We were, of course sopping with sweat from the wheel, and before climbing on the bus, we emptied our pockets of all our hot, sweat-coated, Syrian coinage, dumping them into his hands. He made no complaints as to the sweaty nature of the money, and tried only once to convince us that it was not a big enough tip, to which Scott replied, “It’s plenty big.” To which he replied, “You’re right; it’s plenty big.”

And then we were off. The air conditioning system of the bus began to ramp up, and the sweat began to dry off, leaving a salty crust all over our skin. It had been a hell of a wheel getting up here, but now we had nothing to do but watch the Syrian desert go by as we climbed over the Ante-Lebanese mountains toward Beirut.

I awoke from a nap to discover that we were at the Lebanese border. Everyone was climbing off the bus, and in the same way that we had observed in Jordan, rushing frantically to get through customs. Everywhere we looked, there was the Lebanese crest of the cedar tree and heavily armed military. Despite that, the vibe was not too threatening, and people bustled around like crazy, pushing each other in line and waving handfuls of currency around. We were once again some of the last to get through, having to first find an ATM, since the Lebanese border folks did not accept Syrian pounds.

It was my turn to Warbucks, and I stood before the giant red, cedar tree emblazoned ATM, guarded on both sides by men with machine guns, and wondered how much I should get out. We had neglected to consult any sources as to the proper exchange rate, and our questioning of the armed guards around us resulted only in gruff and inconclusive responses. Finally I just chose a number that I knew was significantly larger than the cost to buy visas for all of us. We’d heard Lebanon was expensive, and with Scott having lost his ATM card somewhere in Jordon, we would almost certainly go through all the money and more during our time here.

With newly printed Lebanese visas, entry stamps, and a nice wad of Lebanese Pounds, we climbed back onto the bus and headed into the country. Instantly, things became greener and more American. Signs began to show more English, and the numbers changed back to our familiar Arabic numerals. The sun was just setting as we drove into the outskirts of Beirut, but our way was well lit by long forgotten emblems, like signs for McDonalds and Pizza Hut. Also, the cars around us instantly became much more expensive, and the speed of traffic rose.

The sun had completely set by the time the bus dropped us off in front of a closed flower shop, somewhere in the hilly outskirts of Beirut. We looked around us, at the shining beacons of fast food restaurants and the xenon headlights of BMWs whipping past.

This was certainly a new country. We wheeled a couple blocks downhill to a gas station where we consulted the staff as to how to get to the city center. There were not many cheap hotels in Beirut, according to our research, but we had heard that searching in a neighborhood called Gemmayzeh might yield options, and there was at least one youth hostel there, which we believed to still be in operation.

The workers at the gas station were all dressed like frat brothers, in bright polo shirts, and Abercrombie shorts. They giggled at us when we explained that we were going to ride to Gemmayzeh saying that it was over seven kilometers away. Considering we’d ridden at least 20, uphill, to get to the Damascus bus station, we assured them it would be no big deal. We gave them all a chance to take the Speed TRs for a spin around the gas station before bidding them adieu.

So off we went, climbing uphill toward a large intersection, and following the gas station fellow’s directions, we took a left onto what was probably the most dangerous ride of the entire trip.

We pulled onto a giant unlit highway, and quickly realized that the drivers in Lebanon are unprecedented in their insanity. They soared by us, literally burning rubber, blinding us with ridiculous after-market super bright headlights, and blasting vanity horns that sounded more like police sirens than normal car horns.

As we rolled down this unlit highway, we struggled just to stay on our bikes as giant trucks whipped by us at over 100 kilometers per hour, pushing giant walls of wind, and honking deafeningly. To make matters worse, the advertisements along the roadside contained strobe lights that flashed at you as you rode by, perhaps to produce a paparazzi-like experience, but really just blinding and disorienting the poor wheeler.

Eventually I called a waypoint on what a generous person might have called the shoulder of the highway, and I turned back to the team.

“We need to get off this highway, before we die.” And I meant it with all my heart.

So we backtracked, heading up against the murderous traffic for 200 meters, perhaps, until we saw a spot where we could hoist our bikes over a barrier and into an active construction site. The entire construction site was flooded by some recent water leak, and so there was a kind or bright gray muck everywhere. As we began to climb back onto the Dahons, we were caught in the light of a giant steam shovel that began barreling down on us. Following the headlight beams of the steam shovel, we sloshed our way through the gray muck and made our way back down into the streets.

We pulled over at another a gas station, where the man behind the front desk spoke perfect, American accented English. He was more than happy to draw us a little map to Gemmayzeh, and assured us that we were not far off. He was also more than happy to expound on his views on American-Lebanese policy. He liked America, had even traveled there, but he was no fan of our presence in Lebanon.

“Lebanon is a government-less place,” he explained. “We are a weak country. We are a poor country. We have no oil. America gives us all this money to spy on our own people, but they won’t give our military weapons to defend our land.” It was interesting to hear his views. I don’t consider myself well enough versed in American and Lebanese policy or history to really comment here, but I invite more knowledgeable readers to chime in. I can say, however, that as we pulled back out onto the street, doing our best to dodge BMWs and not be blinded by strobe-covered Prada ads. It certainly did not feel like a poor place.

Indications of poverty continued not to present themselves as we worked our way into Gemmayzeh, which turned out to be a rather swanky, young night club district. After traveling for so long in strictly Muslim places, where most of the women were encouraged to dress quite modestly, it was downright startling to see the Lebanese all dolled up for a night out.

Lebanese women are naturally quite beautiful, but what really sets them apart from women elsewhere in the world is the presentation. They are unafraid to cake on the make-up or to squeeze themselves into startlingly skimpy clothes. The popular style of clothes in that part of town, at least, was pretty uniform, and very much in line with the types of things sold in American malls, at least when I was last at one: tight tee-shirts with names or slogans of businesses that don’t actually exist; tight shorts with brand names on the rear; designer jeans with bits of sequins and glitter; lacy camisoles; clothes that had been industrially distressed to provide a “on their last legs” look to them.

Frankly, the place felt like a strange manifestation of the dreams of American clothing manufacturers. People all dolled up, popping in and out of chain restaurants and swanky night clubs, fancy cars whipping around, lots of strobe lights disorienting people, and not a bicycle in sight.

Well, while this street was interesting, we were exhausted, and we needed to find a place to rest. We poked our heads into one hotel, which, while it looked like a totally shabby flophouse, attempted to charge us a startling amount. We wheeled on, looking for what had been, according to our research, the only cheap hotel in Beirut.

But try as we might, we just couldn’t find it. We finally stopped a couple of night-club goers, sporting quaffed hair, tight jeans, and glittering Dolce and Gabbana tee-shirts. They seemed to know where the place was, and led us down a dark alley and into an unlit building.

Scott ran in to check it out, and sure enough it was the place. Furthermore, by some strange stroke of luck, they had a room for us. The magnitude of our luck became all the more apparent as we made our way upstairs. This hotel had plenty of guests; most of whom, at appeared, did not have rooms.

People were sleeping on couches, on pads on the floor, on balconies and on the roof. Right outside our own window, we found a nest of Scandinavian backpacker women, snoozing on cots. As we threw down our bags in our own very strangely laid out room, we began to realize Lebanon was going to be a very unique chapter.

As I drifted off to sleep that night, I found head filled with many more questions than answers.  Hopefully the next day’s wheel would help to settle some of these.

The next morning we woke up in our room at the Ziad Al Khabir Hotel and hopped right on the cycles to head out in search of new experiences in Damascus. We wheeled directly out of the Sudanese flophouse district, near the old city, and into the newer, richer, flashier, university district.

We ended up selecting some food from a “Chicken from the Machine” joint, and supplementing it with a few salads from a nearby salad joint. While Scott and Claudia dealt with the chicken, I headed over to the salad place, to make our selection. While I was waiting for the diligent chaps there to put together our order, I chatted with the owner, who had spent the last 15 years working and living in Saudi Arabia, in the kitchen of a similar salad place.

When I asked him about his views on the country, he described it as a clean place, with lots of money and opportunity. “It is a place for good Muslims and rich Muslims,” he said. When I asked him what brought him back to Syria, he commented, “Damascus is my home,” and added with a chuckle, “and I must say I was neither a rich nor a good Muslim.”

And with that he handed me my salads. We bid each other farewell. He assured me that if I returned, he would happily call his friend to hold down the shop for a few hours so we could drink tea and talk more about the world. I thanked him warmly for the offer and walked back out into the dry warm air and the sunshine. I was falling hard for Syria as I walked back toward the park where we’d all agreed to meet.

I found Scott and Claudia setting up shop at a picnic table. A group of schoolgirls had gathered round them, and were in the process of queuing up to take the Speed TRs for a ride around the park.  While they took turns riding the Dahons, we dug into our little picnic feast.

With that done, we headed out in search of coffee and a little wifi, which while it had been nigh on impossible to find in Jordan, proved quite plentiful here in Syria. We decided to have our first cup from a roadside espresso bar ,which we cycled past. The coffee was delicious, and the fellow who owned the place was a delight to interact with, humming little haunting bits of melody as he pulled the rich frothy shots.

We ended up more fully setting up shop at a café a few blocks down the way, where we were able to, for the price of a few more cups of coffee, connect to the Internet and finally begin to make a more serious dent into our long neglected electronic lives.

After working for a few hours, we hopped back on the bikes and began pedaling once again through the fascinating streets of Damascus. We stopped on a large triangular median so Claudia could ask a couple of fellows, who were sitting on plastic chairs watching the traffic, for directions. They were supremely helpful, if somewhat boisterous, and we hung with them for a while discussing our trip to date, and our quickly growing infatuation with Syria.

Back on the road, we quickly found ourselves engulfed in quite the traffic jam, which encouraged us to head out on a more atypical route, attempting to avoid the smothering exhaust of the gridlock, and bringing us, somewhat unexpectedly, back around to the other side of the old city. So we decided to work our way through the old city, riding through the tiny streets, and reveling in the richness of our surroundings.

Suddenly it was time to eat again, so we picked up a few 30-cent shawarma wraps on the street. Here in Syria, the shawarma comes with the most delectable garlic mayonnaise. In case we had not underlined it in previous posts, AsiaWheeling has a real soft spot for mayo, and this was certainly some of the best mayo of my life.

Armed with the sandwiches, we headed a block or so down the road and leaned our bikes against the ornate doors of a museum.

However, no sooner had we begun to eat than, low and behold, the great iron doors began to open. We hustled to move our bikes in time to let a team of grunting and sweating fellows move some giant panes of glass into the place.

On our way back, we headed to the large covered market, to give it another once over. It was certainly an impressive concentration of buyers and sellers, and thanks to the giant patchwork of tarpaulin that covered it, the midday heat and sun had done little to slow the rate of commerce.

On our way out of the covered market, we passed a couple of fellows with this modified bicycle.

It had been modified so that it could be powered by a tiny little deafening gasoline engine. They offered us a ride on the thing, but, not confident in our ability to pilot the beast, and fearing for our lives, we declined. Instead, we just settled, rather, on a demonstration of the starting of the motor.

From there, we headed out of the old city, and found ourselves briefly getting trapped in a large and smoggy bus terminal.

Navigating out of the byzantine overpasses, we stumbled upon a quite ancient looking courtyard, where a number of people had set up touristy shops.

As soon as we got off the bikes to poke around, we were swarmed by children interested in taking the Speed TRs for a ride.

We obliged, and while we wandered around, the kids raced in circles through the courtyard, whooping, yelling, and generally exhibiting the common response among individuals first exposed to a folding cycle.

From there, we headed back out onto the streets. The sun was growing low now, and we paused outside a large unsettling-poster vendor, while Scott wandered around through the Syrian rush hour pedestrian traffic, chatting with his parents on the phone.

From there, we found ourselves unexpectedly wheeling into a mechanical components dealership part of town. When we caught sight of an NSK bearings dealership, we immediately called a waypoint. NSK is our favorite bearings manufacturer, and we decided we might as well indulge in a few spares, in case one of our wheels started eating bearings again as Scott’s had in Laos and Cambodia. The fellows in the bearings shop seemed very interested in our ridiculous look. We attempted to flatter them by complimenting their bearings, but they would have none of it. They knew their bearings were the best in the world, and no amount of flattery could do any more than beat a dead horse.

Outside of the bearing shop, we ran into a German man, living in Damascus and studying Arabic.

He was quite the gearhead, and we spent the next 40 minutes discussing bicycle engineering and in particular the Speed TR’s SRAM internal planetary transmission.

We had been quite happy with ours, and as it turns out he was in this neighborhood looking to buy a planetary transmission for his own bike.

We bid him farewell, wishing him luck in his search for the perfect planetary transmission, and headed back to the Zaid Al Khabir. At the advice of the front desk, we hauled our bikes up to the lobby, where they would be safer from vandals and rapscallions.

We paused for a moment to admire the front desk’s phone before heading back to the cozy confines of our somewhat crumbling room.