Durex, Blast Damage, and Tanks

We arrived at Beirut airport at 11pm as expected. The place was pretty empty but they were obviously pretty paranoid about bombs because there was barely any seating and quite a few troops wandering around.

We went outside and slept rough behind a concrete pillar. Got about 30 minutes kip before a soldier woke us up by yelling. He didn't speak any English but it was clear he wanted us to move! We followed him back into the airport waiting room and got our heads down behind a bench. People were giving us some pretty funny looks!


Despite the annoying music and constant announcements regarding flights we got another couple of hours sleep before heading into Beirut centre at 8am.

Now, we didn't have any maps and our arabic is pretty ropey at best, but after a good two hours cruising around some of the rougher parts of Beirut trying to find a hotel, and doing some excellent tank spotting, the tiredness took us, and we stopped for a coffee at Cafe Deek. Very local place full of Lebanese guys, perfect.


We sat down with a couple of espressos to wake us up, and asked about cheap hotels. I was placed next to a guy who 'speaks good english', and this guy was quite friendly but clearly a total nut-job! "We are shackled by the people, the trees around us" etc.. with crazy eyes boring into my head. I just nodded and agreed with everything he said! Phew, interesting first few hours.

We found a hotel, got 3 hrs kip, then headed out for a meal. En route, a lady spoke to us asking us if we fancied auditioning for a Durex commercial. At first I thought this was an obvious scam for a mugging, but they were both arty, well-dressed, French types, and they detailed what we'd be doing so we went for it! Pretty fun actually, not as hands on as we were after, but lots of photos, profile shots, 'sexy' shots with our legs around a chair, that sort of thing. Then the acting part!!! Hilarious, we had to imagine we were reading a new and large bill, get frustrated or something, then our wife would come through the door and start stripping. We'd put the bill down, wink at the camera, and go off for some sex.

I got a good look at the ladies that had already auditioned on the director's laptop, they were stunners!! We acted our parts as well as we could, but, I'll be frank, I'm fairly confident we were shit.

Had a meal at a cafe with some real character, dead cheap and good. We went back and tried to sleep, failing beacuse of the ridiculous heat, high humidity, and the 7,000 mosquitoes eating our faces.

Today we looked at the many damaged buildings around Beirut, fascinating place, it must have been totally destroyed by the civil war. Now it's half brand-new, half buildings destroyed by gunfire of all calibres. In the photo below, the Holiday Inn in the background was a favourite spot for snipers. The whole building is peppered with small arms fire, and there are some very obvious spots where RPG's have smashed in some poor fellow and his room!