"City of contrasts" a Baku Travel Page by Ruai

Baku is the capital of oil-rich Azerbaijan and you can sense (and smell) the oil in the air as soon as you get off the plane. The old town is pretty if very small and there are many fine houses left over from the last oil boom a hundred years ago which have been done up by those doing well this time round. But the money doesn't extend to the outskirts, where basic infrastructure stops abruptly and all that is left are the decaying remnants of what the Soviets had. Needless to say, outside the capital, things are much worse though fighting a war against Armenia in the early 90s didn't help in that regard!

The big question of course is where all the oil revenues are going . . . . . . .