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

The Trip begins... Stage One- The Middle East

G’day all,
Well the big 7 month trip has begun and my first stop is the United Arab Emirates. I left Galway on Wednesday and spent Wednesday night in London with my cousin Dave before Flying to Dubai Thursday morning. I decided to give this couchsurfing.com thing a go and I had an Aussie guy called Rob meeting me once I arrived in Dubai and I have been staying on his couch for the past few nights. He met me at this massive mall in Dubai where we sat down and had dinner together overlooking skiers sliding down an indoor ski slope in one of the many hi-tech super shopping malls they have in Dubai. Rob actually lives in the city of Abu Dhabi about 2 hours away from Dubai. I was pretty excited to finally be in the Gulf and driving through Dubai at night on the way to Abu Dhabi was a sight to see in itself with the crazy sea of futuristic skyscrapers surrounding these huge 10 lane highways weaving throughout the city. After arriving in Abu Dhabi we decided to go for a couple of cheeky beers at one of the big five star hotels in town. Abu Dhabi itself is a large skyscraper filled city which also has just been built over the past 30 years and just seems like a smaller version of Dubai. It was a weird feeling being warm again and wearing a t-shirt after being in Ireland for the past 9 months freezing but that joy wore off on Friday when we visited the desert. Rob is an Aussie lad working here as an engineer and I was lucky enough to get him at a time where he has 2 days off work and a company car with free petrol. We decided to head to Liwa on Friday, which is the largest sand dune oasis in the world where some dunes are 300m in height. The drive was long, straight, sandy and very hot as we headed almost to the Saudi Arabian border. We couldn’t believe it when we got there as it just looked like something out of a movie with beautiful white untouched sand dunes reaching out to a bright blue sky. After driving around the dunes for a while and passing some camel farms we arrived at the end of the road and without much luck tried sliding down the dunes in a cardboard box. Next thing some bloke in a 4WD comes cruising up to us and offers us a drive through the dunes which was great fun. At times it almost felt like we were going to roll over and at the end of our ride we went down this massive hill which was a good adrenalin rush. The man then offered us to rent his sand board which we jumped at the opportunity although it wasn’t as fun as it seemed. After 20 minutes we gave his board back to him as we were so hot and tired we couldn’t walk up the dunes anymore. I slept the whole way back to Abu Dhabi before sleeping some more then having some more cheeky beers with Rob and another couch surfing buddy from Sweden called Kristofa. We ended up going into this weird Arabic club afterwards where we all felt so out of place as a room full or Arabs stared us up and down as they smoked their pipes. As we tried to sit down a man ran over and told us it’s reserved so we sat in the back room and sucked back one more cheeky beer before heading home. Yesterday Rob took me to one of the most amazing thing’s I’ve ever seen before, the ‘Grand Mosque’. It’s a brand new mosque which is just being completed now and I honestly found it more impressive than the Taj Mahal. It blows your mind just the size and the design of the thing but even better is when you get inside. As you walk inside there sitting in front of you is the largest carpet and the largest chandelier in the world. The carpet took 600 women 1 year to make by hand and the chandelier stands 6 meters long. It was definitely a must see and will be a big tourist attraction in years to come. The other major attraction in Abu Dhabi is the Palace which was closed to tourists yesterday. I found out today reading the paper that they had a huge auction in the Palace yesterday where a car number plate with the number 1 on it was sold for nearly 20 million Aussie bucks. They seem to have more money than sense over here and as you look around I don’t think you could see anything more materialistic apart from perhaps Hollywood or Beverley Hills. The shopping malls here are amazing and are so spotlessly clean and are seen as old if they are over 5 years in age. It’s a weird combination of the world here and it’s quite odd seeing a queue of Muslims with all the gear on lining up to order their Mc Arabia meals at McDonalds. There are also some nice beaches on the cities edge where it was a surprise to see men wearing speedos and women wearing bikinis after being told not to wear shorts around as people look at you like your naked. Apart from that and all the modern buildings there is not much else to see and do in Abu Dhabi but it’s a nice experience all the same. So far couch surfing was a huge success for me and Rob was brilliant in showing me around and having me stay with him for the past 3 nights and we got on great. Next stop….DUBAI!!!

Keep it real,

Woodsy