I arrived in Qatar safely. There wasn’t much to the actual flight itself. It was only an hour in the air between Dubai and Qatar. Time spent in the airport waiting for the flight was much longer. The Dubai airport is very nice and on a par with what I’ve seen in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Qatar, on a per-capita GDP basis, is the richest country on Earth. From what I see on the ground, it doesn’t seem like it. Qatar certainly isn’t a poor country, but it doesn’t seem as wealthy as Dubai.
There is a fair amount of construction here, but nothing on the level of what you’ll see in Dubai.
I have real bandwidth for the first time since I’ve arrived in the Middle East. It is reasonably fast and there isn’t a cap on what I can use. I’m going to try and get caught up on my photo uploading before I leave here. I’m also staying at a real hostel for the first time in ages. They don’t really exist in SE Asia or Dubai. I probably haven’t been in one since I was in Australia.
I don’t want to comment too much on Qatar because I’ve only been here a few hours and haven’t seen much yet, but the first impression is that is it very similar to the other gulf states I’ve been to…which is to be expected.
On other news: Umar who I met in Dubai, has posted an interview he did with me on his blog.