In June, we drove to Qatar for an overnight visit to see Mike's cousin and her husband, who live there. It was really fun to go! We had a lot of ups and downs, though, so we hope to be able to go back again and have an even better time our next trip.
By the way, Qatar rhymes with "butter." It's not /kuh-TAR/, it's /KUT-ter/. But if that seems unnatural or hard to adopt, you'll love the name for people who live there. Think Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Asteroid, Pong: Qatari, /kuh-TAR-ee/!
Driving to Qatar is not hard. There is only one road. It is not numbered or named. It's just called "the-road-that-goes-to-Qatar." I even read an article in the Arabian Sun recently where the CEO of Tamimi/Safeway here was quoted as saying something like "we are excited to be opening a new Safeway just outside of Al-Hasa on the road that goes to Qatar." So when we wanted to go to Qatar, guess what! We got on the Road That Goes To Qatar. All roads lead to Qatar, since there's only one.
The trip takes four hours driving, plus border crossing time. We made it in five hours, which included getting lost four times trying to find Mike's cousin's house.
So here is The Road To Qatar:
On the day we went, there was a really big shamal. It was hard to see much out into the desert. It looked like fog. Sand was blowing across the road, just like snow does when it's starting to snow and hasn't quite begun to stick yet.
See how the sky is white? Yeah, that's all that sand and dust in the air. We are breathing that air. Yuck.
Can you see the construction equipment out there? Lawrence sure did! It's not all that far away, but there's so much dust it's hard to see.
I was a hair late taking the picture. You can still tell that it says "Welcome to State of Qatar."
There's a wide swath of presumably neutral land at the border crossing, and I didn't take any pictures of the border for security reasons. The one thing that we did notice is that while the Saudi side is littered with acres of trash, the Qatari side is very clean! It was immediately evident that we were no longer in Saudi Arabia, a.k.a., Nation That Likes To Pretend It's A Landfill.
After our border crossing, we drove to the capital, Doha. Doha looks like a nice place. It's still Middle Eastern, but much cleaner and less depressed than Saudi. We saw these signs up all around as we drove through the city. "Catch Your Goal, Then Call." Can you figure out what this means? No really, try to figure it out.
I'll put the answer under the next picture so you have to think about it!! That animated guy sure looks friendly.
The lobby of our hotel was ok. But I have to tell you that once we got to our room, we discovered that this was ABSOLUTELY the DIRTIEST hotel I have ever been to in my LIFE. It was DISGUSTING. We just powered through it, but WOW. From the mildew in the shower to the ripped up carpeting to the torn sheets and holes in the duvets to the foot-blackening floors to the flies on the breakfast buffet, we endured it all. Cheerfully. Yay, Middle East. We'll be staying with Mike's cousin next time!
Not only because she and her husband are lovely people and so much fun, but also because they live in this awesome house in a nice neighborhood:
This is their front door. It's a multi-unit building, like all residences here it seems, and it has a wall (far right) and gate that we had to drive through. I didn't take any pictures inside, but she has done a beautiful job decorating, and they have a really neat backyard with cleanable fake grass that looks VERY real. The kids loved it there. We also fell in love with their two sweet dogs. She had snacks waiting, and wine for the adults - (YAY!!) - and we got to meet her husband, too.
No, I didn't forget about the sign. I just wanted to make sure you scrolled down enough so as not to see the answer without trying. Catch = recieve = obtain = get (to), and goal = destination. So, Arrive At Your Destination, Then Make Your Cell Phone Call. It would have been shorter to say "don't talk on the phone while driving." Ah well, what's another poorly translated sign?
Mike's cousin and her husband were wonderful hosts! After a relaxing and happy snack time and happy hour (did I mention she had wine??) they drove us in to Doha for a dhow ride. A dhow is a kind of boat common in the Middle East and India that was invented possibly as early as 600 BC for sailing, trading, and pearl fishing.
On the waterfront (called the corniche) in Doha, you can get a dhow ride in the motor-powered dhows for sightseeing. There are lots of dhows, and they all have fancy lights and decorations. Very touristy! How fun! (And refreshing! Saudis forbid tourism. Surprise, surprise.)
Here is the dhow we chose, on the right.
View of the Qatar skyline from the corniche.
Lawrence was TERRIFIED of the motor noise on the boat. So I stayed behind with him. I was afraid he would regret his decision to stay behind once the boat left, but he didn't! He did the right thing for him.
Mike's cousin and Everett were good buds. Checkin' out the view.
Catherine had a good time, too!
The skyline of Doha from the dhow. Get this: all this has been built up out of the empty desert in approximately the past eight years. Eight years!! Apparently, the old, conservative king died and the new king got rid of all the ridiculous rules (like the kind Saudi has). With the money from the recent oil boom (yes, your $4 a gallon gas money goes here) they built this beautiful, new, modern city from scratch! In eight years! GO QATAR!
Saudi Arabia makes One Billion Dollars PER DAY from oil. PER DAY. It costs them 200 million to get/make the oil and run the business, so they net 800 MILLION DOLLARS...PER DAY. They have had more than 80 YEARS to build something significant, invest in their country, and/or make themselves into a world power. Yet most of their population still lives in corrugated metal shacks or tents in the desert. In the cities, there are large sections that do not have running water or sewer. Electrical power may be on or off at any given moment. People cook food literally on the ground.
Qatar puts Saudi to shame. Imagine what Saudi could have done, could have achieved, could have become, in the 80 years of this bounty. All thrown away because a very few people are unimaginably greedy and use religion as a weapon to keep their power. It's shameful.
Coming to Qatar was very eye-opening for me. I began to fully realize how much of its opportunity Saudi Arabia has wasted. It could have easily become the most powerful country in the world, with the most educated populace and the highest standard of living. Look at what Dubai has become. Look how far Qatar has come in such little time. But no. Apparently, Allah wanted people to live in corrugated metal shacks. What a terrible, terrible waste.
(pause to regroup.)
Anyway, they had fun on the dhow!
It got late pretty fast (because we were having fun!) so we had to head back to the hotel and put the kids down for the night. Then we ordered room service for dinner. Some of the menu got lost in translation! Check it out:
No, really, read it. It's funny!
Yes, that says "mayonnaise of chicken." And do you like See Food? How about some Chicken Beef?
How about this one?
I think I'll skip the grenade molasses, thanks.
(By the way, I think that is one of the VERY FUNNIEST THINGS I have seen since I have been here!! A little too true, perhaps!!)
Most people don't have central ac in the Middle East. Everyone has window units!! Why??!?! I am still at a loss here.
Our "suite". Notice how the curtains are falling down. It was so so so dirty on that floor.
Our "panoramic view of Doha" was less than expected. Looks like they forgot to finish washing that rug with the hose there.
This is Mike's cousin's neighborhood. We found it the first time when we arrived there the next morning from the hotel.
Theirs is the one on the corner. After we got there the next morning, they drove us out to a new waterpark.
On the way, we passed this ENORMOUS new building. It is still being built. It is more than a mile long! I took this picture after we had been driving by it for 1/2 a mile. It continues off into the distance as far as the eye can see. It just kept going, and going, and going, and going,
But - BOO! The shamal was worse this day!! It was really hard to see, and once we got onto the outskirts of Doha, it was really, really windy.
Yes, this bad.
Here is the entrance to this super-cool looking water park. Notice the palm trees and fountain are being blown by the wind. A lot.
It was SO sandy! And SO windy! We went inside the gate to check it out, but it was just too sandstormy to make a go of it. We ate lunch at the waterpark restaurant, and then we had to say Maa Salama to Aqua Park Qatar. So sad. The kids were really crushed. But they handled it very maturely. I think the weather was so bad that even they could see that it wasn't a go. We promised them that we would try to come back.
Hard to overemphasize how windy it was.
Driving back to Dhahran was very difficult. Imagine driving 70 mph through 40 mph winds which are carrying SAND. It was just a visibility issue - the sand is not slippery, like ice or rain.
Welcome to Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It was right about at this point on the way over on the previous day when we saw a guy get out of his car, walk 30 yards away, pull up his thobe all the way to his chest, and proceed to poop on the ground. At the time, I was so shocked and disgusted to see this guy naked and pooping on the side of the road that I didn't realize the appropriateness of his act. I'm sure he didn't either...he just had to go, and there are no bathrooms for 200 miles. And as all cats know, sand makes a great place to poop.
The folks who live in the corrugated metal shacks around here must have a vehicle they like to do donuts with on the highway. Hardly anyone is ever on this road, so I bet it's a good place to play like that. It's not like there's anything else to do here. But wow, that is a lot of skid marks.
We got out of the car at home, and WOW! Our car! Yeah, I guess driving 70 mph through 40 mph of blowing sand was not a great thing for our car. Sigh. Poor Rosie. She got sandblasted. Front hood, front bumper, side panels, rear view mirrors, headlights, fog lights, and look at our license plate! It had lots of black numbers and letters on it before!
There was sand EVERYWHERE in Rosie. In the windows and window tracks, in the doors (our back passenger door would not open or close for a week, until we got some of the sand out), and here is the sand buildup on the back bumper. It was like Rosie had taken a shower in sand.
On camp, it was windy and sandy that day too.
The high winds even knocked down a bunch of trees! Here's one of them.
Our front patio, where you can see where I turned on the hose. That's sand and dust covering everything.
So our trip to Qatar was great, and we are really looking forward to going back again. Mostly because we really like Mike's cousin and her husband, but also to go again when there is not a shamal. Mike says we'll fly next time. Because we're not responsible for repainting the plane.
