Day 1: The Multi-Colored Baby Chickens of Doha

I arrived last night actually, at around 11pm. Lufthansa didn't tell me that we'd be making a quick stop in Riyadh. Riyadh was as advertised, which is to say not at all. We descended in the dark night sky only to find ourselves in the equally dark desert. It was eerily calm on the tarmac in Riyadh, as I could not see any workers. Most of the passengers disembarked while those of us bound for Doha were relegated to our seats to wait out refueling. A very bumpy 45-minute flight later, I was in Doha. The customs and immigration people were rather laid back, though I think they were a bit preoccupied with the Boeing 777 full of Indonesians and Filipinos from Jakarta that had just landed.

Day 1
It began this morning, Saturday, with a 9:00am wake up call that found me rather disoriented given the +7 hour time difference from Washington, D.C. A shower and a trip over to La Cigale for lunch proved a good remedy.


That wall is full of candy. It seems that Muslims, just like many of those recovering from alcoholism, replace alcohol with sugar, caffeine and nicotine. Not surprising I guess. This also means they have an exquisite selection of fruit and vegetable juices. I had lemonade with a bunch of mint leaves blended into it. Very nice.

From La Cigale, it was on to some primo Doha sight-seeing in Erin's surprisingly zippy Kia Rio. The white cars here outnumber those of any other color by at least 3 to 1. The native Qataris seem to prefer large BMWs and SUVs. The entire place is completely under construction. The streets, the lots, the buildings - everything.

We drove through downtown along the Corniche. The Corniche is the roadway along the waterfront of Doha, and is full of grassy areas where families will walk when it cools off in the evening. It was then on to The Pearl, a man-made island with lots of unfinished high-rise condominiums. From there we could see the "Ziggy-Zag" buildings.


Weird.

We then headed for the Old Souk. Souk is Arabic for "market", and this one had a wide variety of middle-eastern novelties as well as a bunch of more practical items. There was a pretty even mixture of tourists and Arabs. Many of the men were in traditional thobes (long white robes) and dishdashas (head wraps with black braids). Some accompanied women in full black abayas, though the styles of these varied.

The more observant Muslim women had their full faces covered, or only their eyes showing. The more moderate ones had colorful designs embroidered onto their abayas, their faces were fully exposed, and they had the head covering pulled back to reveal at least a little bit of hair. For those who recall some of the pictures from the Iranian street protests last summer, it can be quite a statement for a woman to pull back her headscarf enough to show her hair. One constant among all the abaya'd women was their multi-thousand-dollar handbags. Similarly, the shobe'd men were sporting iphones or Blackberries and designer sunglasses more often than not.

We also ran into the federal police on patrol on horseback.


After some Moroccan tea and people-watching, I was in the mood to purchase some multi-colored baby chickens. So we went to the multi-colored baby chicken store.

Now I love a plate of Buffalo wings as much as the next guy, and I'm not sure if it's illegal to dye baby chickens those colors, but it probably should be. Erin, it turned out, was more in the mood for a plate of bunnies. Thankfully, we found one not far from the multi-colored baby chickens.

Not yet tired of this completely bizarre place, we ventured over to one of the alleys and a small store in which a man was selling art. The art was the handiwork of a woman from Bahrain who works at her day job as a dentist. After some friendly haggling, we secured a reasonable price on some nice pictures and other souvenirs.

As we headed to the parking lot, I was able to get a shot of one of the nicer buildings in Doha, the Qatar Islamic Cultural Center.

It, along with the Islamic Art Museum are two of the more beautiful examples of traditional architecture in Doha. Unfortunately, buildings like this have been overshadowed in large part by the onslaught of western culture and food. Case in point.

Time for bed now, as it's late and we have a flight tomorrow afternoon to Muscat, Oman. I hold high hopes that the Internet connection at the Shangri-La is up to snuff, but if this little experiment goes radio silent until Thursday, you'll know why.