Fun in Qatar

G’day all,

Well I’ve just had a brilliant week with my 2^nd Cousin Barbara in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Barbara showed me around all week and organized a very eventful time for me. I arrived in Doha last Wednesday at 2:30am where Barb picked me up from the airport and drove me to her home and I got a nice sleep in. Qatar is not the dangerous Middle Eastern country I first imaged when hearing of it and instead it’s more of smaller and better organized version of Dubai. Like Dubai there are many brand new fancy skyscrapers and housing developments sprouting up everywhere however it seems to have more of an authentic cultural feel to the place. The local Qatari drivers seemed to have the same disease of pushing everyone out of the way and have a mindset of being in a rush to go nowhere. Qatar is a tiny country but amazingly the second richest country in the world with all their oil reserves and after spending a week here you can really notice it. A percentage of the profits from oil revenue is equally divided between the local Qatari people resulting in nobody needing to work unless they feel like it. It's a safe statement to say that the rich are filthy rich and the poor and rich here. The workforce seems to consist mainly of Indian, Nepalese and Philippino workers whilst the big super malls are loaded with local Qatari people with their designer, watches, glasses, shoes, jewelry, mobiles, and perfumes everywhere to be seen and smelt. It’s an interesting sight seeing these peoples so well off and so immaculately groomed sitting at Starbucks with their friends filling in the day chatting away so care free. Friday and Saturday are the weekend days here and Thursday night is the busiest night of the week for doing anything. I was lucky to have timed my visit while the Doha women’s tennis competition was on and on Thursday Barb and I got to watch Venus Williams and Maria Sharapova play for free. It was awesome, the Government seems to pay for everything here and we got to sit one row from the front and watch first class tennis without paying a penny. After drooling over Sharapova we got a good night sleep for Friday was our big desert day. Although I went 4WDing in the desert last week with Rob in UAE this time was much more extreme (as you can see in the video). At first I thought our crazy driver was just joking about going down the first mega dune but nope as I found out this was just the start of many steep and speedy dune descents. We had a ball and the adrenalin rush was sweet as gunned across the dunes at up to 140km an hour and felt like we were going to roll on a number of times. It felt as if we were just sliding down these massive dunes and half the time it looked like we were under the sand looking out of the window. We drove to the Saudi Arabia border and as we neared you could see the boarder police cruising around the sand dunes on their miniature dune buggies. The day ended with a camel ride and some local food and lots of loud Arabic music to dance to in the car. On Sunday I went out to the school Barbara is working at and had a tour of all the class rooms and got to meet all the little kids. Now this was a very interesting experience because all the teachers were women and every time I turned to head up a new hallway Barb had to yell out “Warning man in the school cover up”. It is Qatari tradition to completely cover your face to any men other than family so I felt like a real pervert walking around and almost seeing the girls’ faces. After a few hours of feeling like a criminal in the school Barb drove me to the local mall which again blew my mind it was so amazing. This mall had a Venice theme and every shop looked like a Venetian building with a canal running up the centre of the mall and Gondolas floating up and down under Venetian style bridges. On Monday night we went on a boat cruise around the coast and had a good look at all the skyscrapers at night which was really cool seeing all the fancy lights at night. Yesterday was my last day in Doha so I went for a nice walk through the (markets) and ended up being a thobe (traditional Qatari mens gown) and Barb and I had a laugh as we dressed up and took some photos in all our Qatari clothes. Barb took me out to the Ritz Carlton for dinner for my last night and we feasted on a smorgasbord of Arabian food. It was so fancy in there and I felt a little out of place being a scummy backpacker but it was a nice experience. All in all I had a great time in Doha and it’s definitely going to be big tourist destination in the future but it was nice to see it before the tourists start flocking to it. I’m currently at the airport in Dubai waiting for my plane to Cairo so I’ll update ya all next from Egypt.

Keep it real,

Woodsy