Around the world in 10 days!

November 14-25, 2009
I would love to say I just got back from a trip around the world, but I have been slow to add this post so I have to just say I did it and here's the story.

I was asked to go to Hong Kong for some meetings with a potential customer and put in my travel request. My boss came back to me with a request... "can you stop in Beirut on your way back?" Yikes! I'm not sure Beirut is actually on the way back from Hong Kong, but sure, I'll go there. I was in Beirut for a week back in 2001 and had a blast so it wasn't a tough decision. So, off I went... Hong Kong for 6 days and Beirut for 4 days. I flew from Seattle to Vancouver, Vancouver to Hong Kong (13 Hrs), Hong Kong to Dubai (9 Hrs), Dubai to Beirut (4 Hrs), Beirut to London (5 Hrs) and London to Seattle (9 Hrs). All in all, approximately 52 hours of flying and layovers.

Hong Kong was interesting in that we were pretty wrapped up in trying to land a new account so every night was out with the team. We had some great food... Italian one night, German the next and Turkish one night. At the Turkish restaurant there were two Chinese belly dancers who had taken all the classes and knew how to dance, but needed to eat a little more to get the right type of belly for a proper belly dancer. They just didn't have the look. On the last day we went to Victoria Peak, the highest spot on Hong Kong Island. It's quite a view from up there, but unfortunately Hong Kong has a problem with haze and the view wasn't as photogenic as I had hoped.

I arrived in Beirut at 10:00 AM and a couple of the guys from our office took me on a long drive over the mountains to the Beqaa Valley. The first stop was a national park famous for the Cedar Trees that are the center of the Lebanese flag. If you click on the picture above you'll see one of these beautiful Cedars. The drive was quite interesting. The road was rough and pretty narrow. There is a highway, but the guy driving didn't want to take that since the other road is more interesting. After we reached the top of the mountains (maybe 4000 feet) we could look across the valley at Mt Herman (the picture above). This is one of the reasons going to this part of the world is so cool. Mount Hermon is a possible site of Jesus' Transfiguration. We ended up in Zahle, the largest town in the valley and had a very good dinner (way too much food) and a nice cigar. On the way back to Beirut I was nodding off in the car pretty bad so I had them drop me back at the hotel around 7PM and was out like a light by 8:00. I slept straight through to 8AM!

It was Sunday and I was about to have the biggest adventure of my whole trip. There's a Starbucks at a 5 way intersection just down the street from the hotel so I walked down there to get a coffee and was sitting outside enjoying it and taking in the sights when a bunch of army trucks drove up to the intersection. Each of them had about 10 soldiers in the back. Several of them got out and started looking around the area, clearly scoping it out for some reason. Well, I had my camera with me and picked it up, snapped one shot and put it back down on the table. Apparently, that was a mistake. A couple of minutes later three of the soldiers were walking towards me and they did not look happy. Some questions were asked in the local Arabic dialect which I did not understand at all so I was "asked" to accompany them to see the commander. He asked me if I had taken a picture, I showed him, he asked me to delete it, I did and he then told me no more pictures. I agreed. Turns out it was one of Lebanon's many Independence Days and some dignitary or another was coming through that intersection later in the morning and you don't take pictures of the military.

I would not recommend flying all the way around the world in such a short timespan. I was pretty wiped out when I got back to Seattle. More than normal I think. But it is pretty cool to be able to say I've done it.

The next trip will be to Boston for the birth of our first grandchild. That looks to be the best trip yet.