Tell me a word with q not followed by u!?
What about Qatar? It can save you in a scrabble game (ask Sally;)
Well, on our way back we decided to have a 20h stop over in Doha, Qatar’s capital and (almost) only city. We arrived from Kuala Lumpur at 6.00 in the morning after having spent the whole day before walking around KL. Pretty tired we decided to take a cab and go downtown. Doha is a 400.000 city and it’s business district stretches along the coast of a small gulf for about 9 km. Since it was so early we decided to stop half way and then walk on the “corniche” to the “center”. Walking along the sea at 6.30 in the morning breeze was pretty enjoyable and it was interesting to see a mix of expats and typically dressed peoples making their mornings sport…
Around 8 we were getting cold (this was the first temperature shock 31->18) and went into a huge shopping mall with ice skating rink… Imagine the temperature ;)
After some coffee and window shopping had a look around the ultra modern buildings that they are building everywhere, in fact, the feeling you get walking around the business district is that you are doing something wrong, the roads have 6 lanes, everybody moves by car and the whole thing is in construction.
A short nap on the corniche and we take a cab to the camel market. Getting there gets us through the city outskirts wich are very different to the center, here you feel that you actually are in the middle of a desert. Everything is pale yellow/gray and covered in sanddust. The market itself was cool, nothing to do with a lively asian market (probably because we’re more likely to buy a fake Billabong tshirt than a camel), foremost since the traders where not interested at all in selling us anything and happily tried to give us some information using handsigns ;) just in case you are interested, a work/meat camel goes for 1000 to 3000 USD, racing camels for much more!
As the evening approached we tried to visit the islamic art museum wich was closed and then moved on to the impossible quest of finding the number 1 attraction of Doha, the old Bazaar. I say impossible because the map we had had a kind of bizarre variable scale. As we had almost given up we tried one last little road, and there we were, a beautifully restored city in the city with spices shops, falcons shops, restaurants, lots of locals and, yes, tourists!
After a huge iraki dinner we went back to the airport with the feeling that Doha is definetly interesting enough for a stop over, but not a 20h one :)