Qatar Went Quickly

..and so ends my time in Qatar.

I saw the sights, I ate the food, and I took some photos. There isn’t really much more to Qatar. It’s a small country.

Its a fine place. Nothing wrong with it. It isn’t really what you’d call exciting, however. . Sure, you can go ride a dune buggy in the desert, but you can do that anywhere with a desert.

The place I’m staying is cheap, but it is sort of far away from the action in Doha. Getting a taxi is a crap shoot and there is a ton of construction around here and major highways. It isn’t really conducive to walking. It makes it difficult to want to stay here longer when transportation is so difficult.

There is construction in Qatar, but it is nothing on the level of what you see in Dubai. They are doing there own artificial island project here too, but it doesn’t seem as large as any of the Palm projects in Dubai, either.

Doha would be a much more interesting place to visit I think if I hadn’t spent as much time as I did in Dubai. It is to Dubai what Des Monies is to Chicago.

Tomorrow I’m flying to Bahrain, which is sort of a joke of a flight. It is so short you have to begin landing as soon as you take off. The flight is so short, that it should be replaced in a few years by a bridge. Taking a bus to Bahrain is an option, and one that I considered, but getting a special transit visa for Saudi Arabia seemed like a hassle just to sit in a bus for 5 hours. Saudi Arabia does not make it easy to visit their country.

I’ve gotten the impression that Bahrain is sort of the Vegas of the Middle East. It is where Saudis go to drink. I’m sure “Vegas of the Middle East” has to be put in context and it is probably more like the “Branson, Missouri of the Middle East”, minus the Lawrence Welk Theater.