Blogs from Doha, Qatar, Middle East - page 21

About 99% of the cars on Sana a's roads would be sitting in a wrecking yard at Wingfield, I can not believe the heap I was in made it to the airport, again it was a scary half hour. Flew to Dubai and sat in the Irish Village bar for three hours talking to an English bloke who told me about the local Chinese prostitutes, he was a nice enough bloke, who had just spent about 5 weeks in Oz and was on the way home, he shouted me a Guinness which was might pleasing considering they were going for $12 a pop. My first impressions of Doha was the heat (40 degrees) quickly followed by all the buildings going up, it looks like a pretty nice town, but more on that later. I found the ... read more

I’m just about to leave for the airport to go to Hong Kong, but I thought I would write a quick blog before I head off for 16 hours of flying and 2 ½ days of partying. This past week, Doha played host to a Cultural Festival. Now, I thought this would be like Heritage Days where we use the opportunity to share information, food, etc. with other cultures. With 80% of the population being expats, I was sure this festival would be focused on showing us the Qatari culture. Obviously, I haven’t quite learned enough about this culture as I was naïve enough to think that the Qataris would actually do that. Despite the local English paper featuring a pull-out section highlighting the cultural events happening over the week, all signage and promotions were in ... read more

Hi again family and friends! I flew (just under an hour) from Abu Dhabi to Qatar, a tiny Arab country half the size of Wales on a peninsular of the Persian (Arabian) Gulf with a population of about 800 000 people, of which only about 200 000 are local Qataris and the rest expats. Martin met me at the airport. He is a kiwi cousin who has been working here 3 months and will be joined by his wife Mary this week. It's a shame I missed you Mary. Earlier last century Qatar had widespread poverty but has undergone a rags to riches transformation since the discovery of huge quantities of natural gas and oil. It is now a major global supplier of energy and in just decades has one of the fastest growing economies in ... read more