Bahrain

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Although I stayed in this small island country for only two days, it was a rewarding one. I was staying in downtown Manama, which is busy place with a souq selling gold. In day 2, I went to visit the excellent National Museum of Bahrain, which had a detailed introduction of the history of the country. Knowing only the minimal before I arrived, I was surprised to find that the island had a history of over 3000 years, starting from the ancient Dilmun civilisation, through the Tylos era, to the modern times. It is quite amazing because one could find such a small place to have its identiy through such a long time, especially when empires, nearby and far away, came and go.

As in the other parts of the Gulf, many people I met or on the street were not locals (i.e. Arabs). The majority were from the Indian Subcontinent while there were also quite a number of Philipinos working here. Maybe for this reason, most of my meals in this country were about chicken tikka masala, which I quite enjoyed.

Bahrain was a good conclusion of my travel in this part of the world we call the Middle East. For the past two weeks, I have been to so many places and met so many people, ordinary and extraordinary, on my way to explore this region, abeit briefly. I believe I have seen here some of the most friendly people in my whole travel experience (although they were the same people, not all, who overcharged me a lot!). For sure, it was an eye-opening and rewarding experience in which so much unexpected came to me, from the multicultural metropolis of Dubai, to the bare mountains in Oman. The region is certainly more than deserts and oil fields--it just needs to be explored. I wish I could come back again, and believe many of you who have been here would agree that the efforts of reaching this corner of the world worth it all.

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Photos

Manama
City view

Bahrain National Museum
Excellent exhibits