We took the 2.15am flight this morning to Tripoli, the largest city in Libya.  It was a long flight, 7 hrs to Dubai, waited almost 4hrs to transit and fly to Tripoli from Dubai, another 6 hrs.

We were received by Tan Kian Lee from Salcon and CJ Foo, the Finance Manager based in Al Marj, the same project that we will be working together.  We experienced the Libyan way of driving, lane markings seem to be transparent to most Libyans, driving in the middle of the lanes are common and we were told that 2 lanes can become 4 lanes during heavy road traffic conditions, wow!

Along the way, we saw many dates trees, satellites in almost every floor in all the houses on the road, the roads are pretty quiet, not many buildings, I felt like we have entered into another era, maybe like 80s or even 70s in Singapore or Malaysia?

Tan has kindly arranged a hotel room for us to stay for the night so that we can rest and take the domestic flight to Benghazi the next day.  I guess they figured out we may drop dead if we continue with another flight after travelling 17hrs from Singpore.

I am relieved that the hotel room was nice.  We checked in and dropped off our luggages hastily as the 2 guys were waiting for us at the lobby to bring us around.  We went to the ‘largest’ shopping centre at Tripoli and moved on to the villa that Tan and his team is staying.

 

 

Villa is pretty and cosy, with a cute furry puppy outside the villa.  We told that he was picked up from their site, heard that the Libyans don’t really fancy dogs, good that he is well taken care of now.

After making home calls using skype and dinner at the villa, we were driven back to the hotel and that’s call a day in Tripoli.

I was feeling a bit thirsty and started looking around for water in the hotel room. Alas, no drinking water in the fridge, tried to call but hey, no dial tone!  I have to push Kelvin to go down to the reception to get some water for me.  He said the staff will bring it up shortly. We waited and waited till we zzZZZ…