Quick trip to Doha

I made a whistle stop trip to Qatar yesterday and landed the day after a sand storm. As you can see the air was still thick with minute particles throwing up a hazy flat light. As a consequence there aren't any spectacular pics today.

Doha is in the midst of a building frenzy reminiscent of Dubai in its "go-go" heyday. That gold rush ended in tears in the  UAE, but given Qatar has 35% of the world's natural gas reserves, its pockets are a bit deeper.

Since the 2022 world cup was awarded to this tiny place, they're determined to be ready and presenting a shiny western face to world.

Except there's no booze to be had .

Well very restricted access anyway.
This country of 300,000 doesn't have any football stadiums of note but will build 8 with a capacity of 90,000 each by the time the games begin. 

A seating capacity of 720,000.

More than double the population.

 If you do the math its easy to see that if all games are played at once and every citizen goes that still leaves 420,000 visitors.

Where will they stay?

Hotels are being built but there's no way you can create that many rooms for a one off event.

Solution?

Qatar is building a new city for 80,000 from scratch.

Yes,that's what they're going to do.

The stadiums will be state of the art.

Open roofed they will have an "artificial cloud" hovering above which will move with the sun to keep the field in the shade.

Really?

it will be circa 100 degrees F.

even at night.

What will they do with these palaces when the World cup is over?

Dismantle them and give them to African countries.

That's the plan.

Now anyway.

Stay tuned cause it will be interesting.

For Qatar's sake the next winters in Europe better be cold ones.....

That's it for today folks

Stay well

T

Dubai, Doha and sick as a dog

The Burj Dubai is finally finished (the structure at least). I've been taking pictures of its progress skywards over the past 3 years and its nice to see that despite the economic slow down the building's construction has survived the Emirate's staggering $80 Billion debt (there are only 1.2 million natives).
Regardless of the white elephant/monument to vanity/ derision which is sure to follow its final completion, I think its still an achievement in engineering.
Its not bad on the eyes either.
Sprawling around its base is the newly opened " Dubai Mall".
The biggest shopping mall in the world ( measured by total area), it covers 12 million square ft of shopping nirvana.
Featured attractions include: the world's largest Gold Souk with 220 retailers; the 850,000 sq ft (79,000 m2) Fashion Catwalk atrium; Fashion Island (Avenue), with 70 stores dedicated to haute couture; the Middle East's first Galeries Lafayette department store; Oasis Fountain Waterfall; and WaterFront Atrium. Other attractions include the region's first SEGA indoor theme park, SEGA Republic covering 76,000 sq ft (7,100 m2); KidZania, a 80,000 sq ft (7,400 m2) children's 'edu-tainment' centre; a 22-screen Cineplex, the largest in Dubai; and The Grove, an indoor-outdoor streetscape with fully retractable roof. It also features over 160 food and beverage options, 220 gold & jewellery outlets; a supermarket and an organic food mart. Among the shops is British toy store Hamley's, which opened a 32,000-square foot (3,000 m²) store that includes a replica of London's Regent Street, with the franchise owned by Retail Arabia.
Many shops, however, will remain shuttered for a long while to come. Bloomingdale's might open by 2010. It also has a 250-room luxury hotel, 22 cinema screens plus 120 restaurants and cafes. The Mall has over 14,000 parking spaces across 3 car parks, with valet services and a car locator ticketing system
So says Wiki
To me it appears much like any other mall with all the usual stores (albeit A LOT of them) except it has an aquarium and a ton of other non shopping stuff.
Oh and the tallest building in the world outside its door.

I arrived in Dubai at 5 am Tuesday morning. After checking into my hotel and grabbing a shower it was back to the airport and I hopped on a flight to Qatar.
Despite the extravagant monuments to capitalism, the airport hints that all is not going according to script .

The parking lot is littered with abandoned cars.

Expats who've lost their jobs and run up their credit cards have simply "gone home" to their bankrupt home countries.

These are the only pictures I've taken of Dubai and I only got a chance to do so because I made a foraging trip to the pharmacy to pick up bottles of water and Imodium.
I've been sick as a dog and had my first food tonight since Tuesday.
Food poisoning.

The tsunami hit around 2 am Wednesday morning.
I sprinted from bed to toilet all night and spent Wednesday in bed fitfully dozing, vaguely worried that dehydration would cause me some sort of permanent damage.
I couldn't hold down a tea spoon of water.
Forget about thinking I was dying.

I wanted to die.
The strangest part was the procession of bizarre dreams.
Over 22 hours of fitful sleep I came to understand these were simply cues from my stomach it was time to wake up and feed the porcelain god...
Happily I seem to be on the mend.
Spare a thought for me my American chums:
As you tuck into your Turkey, I've been fearfully nibbling at plain yogurt and dry toast.
The rest of the pictures are from my quick dash to Doha.
It feels like a long time ago since I took them , blissfully unaware of the waterfall/volcano brewing in my guts.
Yikes!

No matter how sick I felt, I would pass on that.

That's it for today.

I fly to the UK at 2am Saturday morning and hopefully see my kid the same afternoon.

Love to all

T

Doha, Qatar

Qatar has oil ( roughly 15 billion barrels worth) but it's real wealth is derived from natural gas and has proven reserves amounting to roughly 1/3 of the world's supply. That translates to circa 800 Trillion cubic feet.
What does that mean?
1 trillion cubic feet = 80 billion barrels of oil..........
That translates into staggering potential wealth. The total population is 950,00 of which only 350,000 are citizens. The rest are expats, the vast majority of which hail from South Asia and non oil rich Arab states. As in the rest of the region, these folks do the tough, dangerous and dirty jobs . As most of the expats are male, Qatar has a peculiar demographic make up and women are in short supply.
The ratio is 3.5 men to every female.Though heavily dependent on oil and gas, Qatar is trying to diversify its economy and fashion itself as an education and media hub.
Al Jazeera is based in Doha ( the English language service is quite interesting) and has established itself as a major player in the global news market. George Bush was so incensed with it's coverage of the Gulf war that he reportedly considered ( albeit briefly) bombing it. This would have been a dicey move given Qatar allows the US 5th fleet to use it as a base for the region.I had a limited amount of free time in Doha, but given the weather was a delightful 75 degrees, I took a walk along the Corniche, where I came across local people enjoying the sea breeze.
Imagine that.......

Qatar hosted the Asian games in 2006 and it was generally acknowledged to be the biggest and most successful in history.

Emboldened by this success they're bidding for the 2018 Football World Cup.

Given the present infrastructure, this feels a bit of a pipe dream at the moment, but all that wealth sitting underground will no doubt give them the financial muscle to host it one day.

Or not.

Though not as liberal as the UAE or Bahrain, Qatar is still considered a " progressive" practitioner of Islam. There's freedom of religion and though the country's legal system is based on Sharia law, a fairly "soft" interpretation is practiced.

Women can drive, censorship is abolished and alcohol is available at selected venues.

My hotel was dry.

I also spent an hour at the Waqif Souk. Its a "new" old Souk, and knowing it was a recreated version of the demolished 200 year old version, I went prepared for a "Disney-fied" let down.

I was pleasantly surprised.

I suppose, given the overwhelming majority of the people there were locals or at least Peninsula Arabs, it felt ( to me at least) an authentic representation of what such a thing should be.

People were buying "stuff" they would use.

Sure there was touristy junk piled high in some shops, but the herb stalls and incense vendors (for which the place is famous) were telegraphed by sweet smells wafting in the air long before you saw them.

Shisha smoking men and women ( 'm always a bit jarred seeing floor to ceiling black clad women smoking) lounge on pillows drinking Turkish coffee and watching the world go by.

Not a Starbucks or McDonalds in sight.

I'm in Dubai now and head to Abu Dhabi tomorrow where I'll be until Wednesday.

I'll post a bit more as and when.

Stay well

T