Day 10, Summer in Asia ~ Doha, Qatar
One mediocre movie with Matt Damon fighting on the Great Wall, a spicy vegetarian dinner, a floppy-headed night’s rest, an even spicier vegetarian breakfast, and the 13 hour flight from Chicago to Doha was done. We were all surprised how quickly it passed- it used to be that flying to Europe was a long flight.
Qatar just made public its goal to capture ten percent of the American Airlines company–big goals for such a little country. But they quickly snapped up our attention with a base price under a hundred dollars to fly from Chicago to Bangkok. They also provided a free tour of Doha during our layover, so we were more than happy to give them a try.
Each person gets a little comfort kit, an eye mask, socks, earplugs, and a toothbrush kit. Liking this so far, Qatar.
Doha was 102.2 degrees when we landed, but a pleasant dry bake, as far as triple digits go. There were palm trees throughout the most affluent airport we’ve ever seen. Despite its upscale presentation, there is a huge separate terminal for only the royal family, which sadly, did not include us. There was lots of ultra luxury shopping, a free Mac computing area, a playground, TV watching areas, and a napping room. These luggage carts are like the little ones for kids, but for adults! Great for relieving a sore back and shoulders from lugging a 2 month trip laden backpack.
Qatar is a small peninsula only sharing a single border with Saudi Arabia. There are only 2.6 million people in this country. Since we had a long layover we went on a free city tour offered by the airline. We learned a few stats on our tour, that only 15 percent of the 2.5 million people who live here are citizens, the rest are foreign workers. The tour guide said that if they are not wearing the black or white traditional dress, they are foreign. They are building 12 air-conditioned stadiums for the World Cup in 2022.
Since it is the month of Ramadan, and the majority of people are fasting, we were not allowed to eat in public between 6am and 7pm. The restaurants in the city open at 7pm and the airport ones stay open 24/7.
There were only three people checking us through immigration with Ramadan being blamed for the understaffing. We waited for two hours which cut our tour of the city a bit shorter. The highlight was the Doha Souq. The architecture was so perfect and idealized, it looked like you were walking through an Epcot snippet of a quaint foreign country.
A fellow passenger on the flight and I were comparing Dubai to Doha and we both agreed we prefer Doha–which has a warmer City personality that we prefer.
After the city tour, our next flight left from the swanky airport at almost 2 am and flew for another 6 hours to Bangkok. I would have slept but found a cache of Ted Talks on the plane entertainment device of happiness. I only got through about a third of them. A few hours with Ted reminds me how little of my brain I’m using. It also confirmed that we’re not too shabby at making the things happen in our family life that we want, like travel.