Tripoli                              

AFRICA
:Mr.Behi is a guy from Iran. 
Mr.Behi in tripoli  

                                                                                

Mr.Behi in tripoli      
                                                                 Libya, Slowly to modernity     November 06, 2006

Tripoli has many things for me to discover yet and I hope I get enough time to get to see it. The costs are not high compared to Tehran and the purchasing ability of one Libyan Dinar is almost like a 1000 Tooman bill in Tehran. There are not many good restaurant in Tripoli as I heard and  as they are few, they can charge as much as they like and you should pay for a little fast food what you pay for a full dish in Tehran. There is only one 5 start Hotel in the city that looks nice from outside. The city has many things to be done for it. The infrastructure needs a lot of attention and good care. However, everyone here says that is getting better very fast. You see many good cars around and shops with international brands available. The country suddenly opened up to the outside world after many years of isolation. The socialist system I guess is also one factor affecting the development and nothing big can be done before convincing the government and let's say sharing the profit with the government. There are immense opportunities for tourism here. Last weekend I visited one of the best Roman ruins of North Africa just east of Tripoli which was a wonder indeed and I still waiting for a chance of writing about it.

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  November 18, 2006

                                                                                       MONEY CHANGE

 I had a very amusing experience when I went to exchange some money in a local bank. Here you need to present your passport and fill a form to do so. Standing in the queue for 45 minutes, finally it was my turn! I gave the lady the passport, the copy and the filled form plus a 100 USD note. After inspecting the note, she filled a form in the computer and gave me a copy to sign. 100 USD becomes like 133 Libyan Dinars and she was about to give them to me in the form of 10 Dinar notes and some change. She opened her drawer and picked some notes (I needed all in all 13 of those). Then she first counted by hand, there were eight and then put them in the counting machine, a monstrous one. The machine could not count all at once so she had to press some buttons again and again. Then finally after three time counting by the machine, she assured that there were in fact really just eight 10 Dinar notes. Then she searched for another five in the drawer,  picked  them and  put them on the pile of eight she already counted and started the process of hand counting and machine counting again. I was trying so hard controlling my burst of laugh.  That was one cool experience...