The USD

Last week over عيد الأضحى (Eid Al-Adha) holiday I traveled to Syria and Lebanon. One thing that I found very interesting was the popularity of the USD. My currency was everywhere! Seriously. At the Syrian border they only accepted USD or Lira (the Syrian Pound). And in Beirut USD and Liban (the Lebanese currency) are both widely accepted. You can even pay for the same items using both currencies. Wallah!

It's the strangest thing to go to an ATM on the other side of the world and have the option to extract your currency. I even smelled my dollars to check their authenticity, ha.

Generally I have noticed that people in the Middle East are complete loyalists and nationalist. Everyone has so much pride for their nation. Which is wonderful to see, but for the same reason I was surprised that the USD is so commonly used. Wouldn't you want to use the currency of your own nation.

For some reason it just doesn't feel right....it feels illegal.