BEIRUT | LEBANON BEAUTY & THE CHAOS
good morning everyone here from beirut the capital of lebanon this is going to be the last country of our little trip around the middle east we had been to uh egypt jordan oman dubai and then now here this will be the last one and we arrived here two days ago but we haven't really done anything yet we've just been working so today's gonna be our first day of exploring bay route properly right now on the balcony of our airbnb so we're not staying in a hotel we're in like a local neighborhood here so the buildings look around here pretty quiet neighborhood and the airbnb is really cool so as you can see it's kind of like a old building you can tell from the big doorways and this was 44 at night for the big apartment and this is our bedroom here also very nice and spacious has a really good internet so that's good and you can probably see all these cool wacky paintings so the owner is an artist so all these paintings are his art got loads of cool artwork all over and even besides the art there's loads of like cool patterns and stuff on this table the rugs and here you have like the original floors all the rooms have these cool designs on the floors so this is like another area with a bed kind of like a living room i guess and still loads of cool artwork all around and then through here we have the kitchen so we've got a nice kitchen you know the cook food and through here the bathroom carol's getting ready yeah good morning i'll show you something unusual here that we didn't really expect to see already so you can see that building there those are all uh bullet holes loads of bullet holes and our building also has bullet holes here that's the the living room that does not mean we're in like a super unsafe area by the way that's bullet holes from the civil war in 1975 so a long long time ago but here around beirut from what we've seen you see many buildings the old buildings that are still here from that time yeah they're all like covered in uh bullet holes so even some of those ones across the road that i showed you they have some bullet holes well it's kind of creepy really because if somebody had been shooting at our building i guess there was like a gunman in our building or something i don't know it's kind of weird never been in a place like that before so we have come to lebanon and a extremely bad time for the country it's kind of been like crisis after crisis so since 2019 they've been in some huge financial crisis and the inflation's gone like super high even worse than venezuela apparently we'll be talking about the money stuff later on so there's that and then obviously the year later there was kovid and then also in 2020 i think there was the huge beirut explosion it was like an accidental explosion but that was here and that damage lost stuff we're actually right next to it probably i'll be able to show you where the explosion happens so yeah there is a lot of stuff going on from what we saw walking around though it actually feels quite normal it doesn't really feel like a country that's in like some extreme crisis but that's just from what we've seen around our neighborhood but in this video we're going to see a lot more so as usual we're gonna get around mainly walking so from our spot to light the main downtown area where the beach is it's over an hour but yeah there's a few spots that we can check out along the way so this is what i was mentioning before like the streets do look very normal and it's like super clean as well everywhere that we've seen so far is uh very clean it's just a mix of like big modern buildings and then you get like older buildings around here this looks like a fancy apartment block right there we were saying this actually reminds us just of brazil right this is how brazil looks yeah like a mix of like everything like golden all the new yeah there are many uh fancy cars like porsches yeah we've seen loads of like mercedes and stuff right not sure if it's only this year but you'll find out today yeah so that's another example you can see all the bullet holes in this whole building here so so since the region that we're in is very close to where the blast was you can see a lot of these buildings here have no windows they're destroyed and abandoned like this one here look at this it's insane no windows at all completely empty and a lot of these are under reconstruction right now so this destroyed building here has a sign there solidarity with beirut says that it's helping families return home before winter from what i read the the blast displaced 300 000 people in beirut 300 000 so this street here is a famous one called armenia street it's known for its like bars and uh restaurants here probably be more lively at night a lot of the bars are closed right now i can see already all these look like they're bars and restaurants beirut's actually known for its like nightlife right yeah like party place yeah we haven't checked it here maybe tonight i don't know yeah maybe oh wow look at this yeah this must have been from the the blast that's crazy a gas station didn't expect to see anything like this though so i mentioned that this place had seemed very normal in the previous days but that's because we were walking inland so inland you don't really get all this destruction it's because we are close to the port now so obviously because of the situation you see a lot of artwork about it a lot of messages all over the bedroom so this uh entire wall here yeah so this is the area where it happened had an interesting sculpture here made out of metal i don't know if they made that afterwards but yeah that was the building that i saw on the news the huge blast at the port sent shockwaves across the city destroying many buildings and blowing out windows several miles away this was the fire in beirut port the flashes they say were fireworks then something much bigger ignited media it was ammonium nitrate which had been stored there since 2014 it can be used as fertilizer or to make explosives the damage is spread across the city the shock will run much deeper and this tragedy risks pushing the lebanese further into despair probably a lot of you guys saw the explosion as well it was like all over the news the sad thing is the nitrate had initially nothing to do with beirut from what i read it was like a cargo ship that was going to mozambique and then i think it got kind of stranded around the port here so the government of beirut at the time had to store it in that building there i think it was stored for many years and then a fire broke out and then the explosion happened but yeah they never planned on really having all that nitrate here and then that's what happened sad though this is like our first time ever seen anything like this right yeah yeah and it's kind of recent so maybe that's why they haven't been able to reconstruct everything especially with the financial crisis so it's a very bad situation it's very sad yeah so all these buildings just got hit full force terrible so from my understanding this wall here has uh drawings of all the people that passed away during the explosion they're in english they matter so the wall all the way all the way down here has pictures of different people like a memorial kind of thing so now we're at one of the main sites which is this mosque mohammed al amin mosque so this is the biggest mosque in lebanon i think it was constructed in 2008 so it is quite modern it's also known as the blue mosque because it has like a blue dome not sure what this is like freedom fighter kind of symbol or something yeah i don't know so the mosque is closed the guy said it only opens uh 4 p.m now and uh i think it's around 1 20 right now so fortunately we couldn't go in there but look what's interesting so over there we have a church and also have a church here as well and below us are the remains of some roman ruins so yeah all in the same area you have a bunch of different things i don't think we can go in there though in the roman ruins so from this side much better angle not against the sun anymore of the mosque and it's actually on the same road as the church back there right next to each other so lebanon is a very interesting country in the middle east because around 35 to 40 percent of the population are christian which is a huge amount for a country in the middle east and you can actually see that while you're walking around does seem very different compared to the other countries that we've been to so far so so we were trying to walk through here but there's all these huge cement blocks i think it's like military cement blocks and it's probably because that's the government palace right there so i guess because of protests and stuff they're trying to keep people out checking you can't go down any of these streets these are all streets here and even down there was the same so there was other streets and they're all get blocked off yeah so this was another road that we wanted to go down i can't get through looks like all these windows there have been smashed up i don't know if that's during the protest as well hard to know what's going on here to be honest so we just checked on google maps and it is what we thought so all those are like government buildings lebanese parliament uh there was a palace like we said and also all the major banks that caused the financial crisis right so i guess that's why they boarded it off because all the lebanese was smashing it up yeah so there's basically like politically motivated art everywhere here all around you see it where is my future so this part looks a bit more well developed now really nice building here the town hall like kind of arabic design but this area even behind me here it's all like boarded off yeah look at all this here i guess from the protest as well just covered in barbed wire yeah we were not expecting to find the better like this but i think there is some amazing things and also i'm excited to try the food yeah especially because in brazil we have some food from here that are very famous there so yeah there are many positive points of being here yeah we're going to go to the other coast now which is supposed to be really nice yeah with the rock so yeah yeah we'll head down yeah so the area that we're in right now would normally be like shopping streets but everywhere is closed there's a saturday so you think that places would be open but literally the whole place is empty so all these would be stores here i guess it would be a lively area buildings are really nice though in this area i like the architecture the sandy looking buildings as well it reminds me of the center of rio a little bit here it's more uh nicer yeah here it's a bit nicer yeah the better condition i would say of the buildings yeah in rio all this would be like graffiti and stuff but it is uh really well kept really nice but just not open so it's really weird you can walk like two blocks and then you just get like a super nice area like this yeah so we're going to look for some food around here but all the nice vegetables different things i like the designs on the buildings the little zigzags so i think we're going to try some street food here it is so they let us try out the food first that's like a kiwi in it yeah that's what we call in brazil kiwi and cow got a bunch of stuff we'll show you soon tastes good though so we got to the market a bit late it looks like everybody is pretty much closing now shutting up shop i got this monster kiwi never seen a kitty that size look at the size of that bigger than my hands and you got what is that this is something with spinach it's very similar to what we have in brazil called the spira in brazil here they have another name but i couldn't understand and then there's like a little mini pizza there and what's this other one here i don't know he said it's very good yeah so all the food costs 150 000 lebanese pounds and then we also got some fresh lemonade and fresh orange juice here and that was 30 000. each okay 60 000 overall how's the spinach very good is it just spinach or is the cheese inside no finish with a bit of tomato sauce gonna fly away the food so it's different to the one that we have in brazil because this one's like kind of hollow i think in brazil it's just a full and it's smaller like the one that she gave me for a taster because that one wasn't hollow right that was like full of things yeah and it wasn't smaller like i said this is like a huge huge skippy it's like a give hamburger a hamburger and we mentioned that we have this food in uh in brazil and that's because lebanese food is very popular in brazil right we have a lot of people from lebanon in brazil i think uranus is the place where there are more lebanese people outside of lebanon right yeah from what i read it's like around six million which is the same population as lebanon so we have lebanon within brazil but i think that six million is like descendants there's a very strong lebanese culture in brazil that's why i was excited to come here and also see the country and also taste the food like i'm doing right now the famous sphere and in brazil these kind of snacks are like very common it's not something that we consider from outside of our culture consider it brazilian yeah but wait i know that it's from lebanon but yeah it's very good very good check out this wacky building here futuristic buildings what is that girl you think it's like a museum or something yeah i don't know i have no idea i tried to search on google maps but it's something new i think there's nothing there on google maps so i'm not sure what it is it's like a dubai building yeah it's building straight from dubai it goes all the way down there so we found out from some locals that that wacky building is a mall it's going to be a mall in the future and the area that we're in now seems to be more like hotels and stuff some fancy hotels this is a hilton hotel i guess that's a hotel right there as well it seems more like the business district of beirut yeah so here you have some fancy looking apartment blocks apartment buildings all around so i guess this is like the rich area of lebanon looks like it so the contrast is bizarre right yeah this area seems to be very a very rich area and the buildings are like super fancy look at the car there fancy cars everywhere yeah here's a porsche it makes me wonder what do the rich people do around here in lebanon like for jobs they're probably earning 13 oh yeah probably i don't know yeah i guess if you're earning dollar around here with the currency being so weak hey you can make a lot of money check out those cars there as well so we're making yet again another unplanned stop this is called zaitonai bay i think that's how you pronounce it so i guess this is another one of the rich areas of lebanon and beirut all these fancy boats here like a big marina area and then around here there's loads like cafes and stuff probably more expensive starbucks there this is like the monaco monaco of beirut yeah something like that just cooling down a bit now some drinks it's getting really hot to keep walking around it's a really nice area to come here though those are like families and stuff eating oh look at all the fish there hello so so we've now come to what might be the most famous part of beirut if you search beirut this is always the photo that you see like the postcard shop of beirut so it's called pigeon rocks and yeah that is the iconic spot right there like a big archway i don't know if you can pass through there with a boat or something right now it's way too rough though super windy i mean look at yeah look at it at least it's nice and cool though yeah i like it and we were saying once again this just reminds us of brazil like by ear or something bahia has like a boardwalk like this along the coast and yeah it's very similar really doesn't feel like we're in the middle east feels like we're somewhere else some mix so we found the pathway down and it's pretty funny a guy's getting a haircut right here well he's not getting a view because he's looking at the buildings yeah the hairdresser's getting a view yeah we saw that there's actually some cool restaurants here if we hadn't just eaten right now we'd probably eat at this restaurant here because yeah you get amazing view probably more expensive but i think it's worth it for that view it's funny that the guys are still selling boat trips in this yeah i'll throw up the ocean is very rough but i think they sell it anyway yeah i'm not sure i'm not sure where the boat's gonna go though ready to go diving carol yeah well i'm not getting any closer than that that's crazy drop i didn't realize this area would look so nice though yeah and the color of the ocean is very nice too yeah it is quite a nice color yeah this is a mediterranean that's why how did you go on a boat tour i don't know that no there's no way they were doing the boat touring this well they were operating yeah man this is so wild that's crazy they're actually lifting up the boat there right now so we said that this place reminds us of brazil here still does this walkway back and even more so cause look at this giant beach here so we're gonna head down to this huge beach right now but we're way further out from the downtown area now and even everything here is pretty much nice so yeah as you can see there's loads of nice areas in beirut i mean this all looks pretty new pretty modern so it's a pretty nice feature if the weather was a bit better it's all like misty and super windy obviously i'll write down the name because i don't know how you say it at all yeah not that many people here on the beach today but i think on like a nice sunny day i think this place gets really busy still some people swimming in there though yes i think in the next video we're going to be going to some nicer beaches right yeah yeah and i hope that the weather will be better and not so windy as it is today because i want to swim and enjoy the kids yeah so the next video won't be beaches in beirut we're going a bit further up north we're back at our apartment now and before i close out this video i'm just going to talk about the money issue here that i mentioned that i talk about at the beginning of this video definitely important because yeah if you don't know this it's going to cost you a fortune to travel to lebanon so we went to argentina recently that also was in a financial crisis and now they also had two rates like the official rate and the black market rate the difference there though is that the official rate from the government was double which is already a lot right you're going to be paying double for things but here it's way more insane it's like 18 times more than the black market rate so basically when their money was just dropping the government capped it and said that one dollar is a thousand five hundred of the pounds which just isn't realistic at all and that's never changing then there's the black market rate where one dollar is around 27 000 pounds so that's why it's like 18 times cheaper but even though i say the black market everyone operates here with the black market value nobody does the government one so the only way you're gonna get hit with the crazy government one is if you use your card like a credit card from abroad you can never use that because you're gonna be paying 18 times more on things so something like super cheap will just be really expensive and i can actually show you an example so here's a receipt from our shopping the other day just got about six or seven items so just a wine that's like a milk chocolate bar tangerines greek salad greek yogurt and some bacon and some fish as well so look at what it would have been for all that if we had paid with our card 560 dollars look how insane that is so for us since we exchanged our dollars at the black market rate which is basically just the normal rate we just paid 31 which is a normal price right but that just shows how crazy the government rate is imagine paying like what was it 569 dollars for just those items it's just yeah it's just insane so here like i said nobody operates at that government rate if you ever go to a place even if you pay in dollar i think they'll always give you the money back in the black market rate yeah so nobody operates with the government raid at all and yeah you just got to keep that in mind if you're coming here definitely got to bring money and they also have western union here just like in argentina so if you do run out of money you can send money there and picking up from there but yeah the best is to just bring the cash into the country already and i imagine just like argentina has to be one of like the main currencies probably like the euro dollar and pound i think if it's not like a prominent currency they might not um exchange for you here so it's best being one of those three i only know about the dollar so maybe it's best just to bring dollar if you can so i did ramble on quite a bit there but yeah it is pretty confusing and very important to know if you come in here and as we mentioned before the next video we're going to be going to another like beach town up north and uh yeah that's going to be the next video looking forward to it so if you like this one just drop a like to support us subscribe like see more videos like this follow us on instagram and we'll see in the next you
2022-05-23 17:43
