Crossing the border back into Syria... on to Homs and Hama

Crossing the border back into Syria...

Sitting on the bus to Homs. This is a complete disaster and I regret that I did not take a service taxi. Felt like we spent almost an hour sitting around in the grubbiest part of the city, with more and more grubby, poor people getting on the bus and I had no idea when we were finally gonna depart and was unable to ask too as nobody spoke English. Now we are on the road and I sure am glad that I did not put Tripoli on my itinerary, oof!
I left Byblos this morning, after leaving a considerable sum of money there and am now looking forward to inexpensive Syria.
Bcharre was nice though a bit lonely as I felt like I was almost the only tourist in town. Met one other traveler who was staying in the room next to me in the Bauhaus pension. 30$ for a triple room with extra beds I did not need, and no service whatsoever, not even breakfast. Tony calls this "chalet style". I always thought, chalets were cottages...Well, it did have a communal kitchen that nobody seemed to use...
Here are my photos of Les Cedars and Bcharre in the beautiful Qadija valley which is the birth place of Khalil Gibran, the greatest of all poets... https://picasaweb.google.com/113264861998536374583/BcharreByblosBeiteddine# The image shows the hugging cedars in Les Cedars, Northern Lebanon

-------------------- In Hama now--------------------------------------------------------

One guy who looked like in a daze, with a bandage around his head and half covering one black swollen eye and an envelope with x-ray pics under his arm, got on the bus. When he kicked his suitcase down the aisle I felt scared because I thought, he acquired this injury in a recent fist fight. But maybe he was just too dizzy to bend over and pick up his luggage. Then a couple of young wives in headscarves, traveling with little kids. At the Syrian border they made me go in and finish my entry formalities and when I came back out, I could not find the bus and wondered if they had conspired to drive off with my suitcase and my rucksack with the netbook in it...After asking around, being pointed to a wrong bus full of strangers, I finally found it 100-200meters away around the corner, waiting. Then they dropped me by the side of the highway after whispering with the driver, and told me to get into a big yellow car there (a taxi without a sign??). The taxi driver again did not speak a word of English, and did not even know his way around in Homs, could not find my hotel that I asked him for. When he finally found it, he started carrying my suitcase up the staircase in a dilapidated old building with broken windows, in a dusty area of town, and I shouted, with the bits of Arabic I am capable of , thank God, from downstairs:"La, la!! La uhibbu!!" ('No,no, I don't like it!'), and told him to take me to a bank, so I could get some Syrian money, and then to the bus stop out of town with the buses going to the next city. He did, but he ripped me off- charged me 1000 Syrian pounds (about 16 $?) when for short taxi rides inside the city they charge only 50 pounds...
So when I got to Hama, and here they spoke English, were exceedingly helpful and moreover cheap (900 pounds for a room with shower and air con), I was so relieved...
Tomorrow I am off to the desert, to see Palmyra and meet the bedouins. = )

Mon, September 6, 2010 - 1:23 PM