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Doha, Qatar
25° 17' N 51° 31' E
Feb 13, 2003 20:30
Distance 5228km

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Transit culture

Text written in: English

Landing in cities at night is always magic, and Doha is no exception. The lights reflect off the water and the layout of the town has a calm, planned serenity which is the total opposite of old cities like London or Paris.

For the most part, the place seems fairly flat, and everything is obviously pretty widely spaced. Makes sense, the whole of Qatar has a population of 600,000. That's less than the city of Cologne.

An approximate 30% of the population is Qatari and that is fairly evident in the number of immigrants, mostly Indians that are working in the airport. The airport itself is small and features a centre court duty free area whose shop names line up like the advertising listings in Cosmopolitan magazine. A few Arabs wander around in majestic flowing white cloth with chequered red and white head cloths but predominately the atmosphere is a little asian. At least that's what it seems like to me. Must be the transit passengers, Qatar is quite close to places like India and seems to offer a good stop-over point.

Most local people sport serious expression and there are quite a few moustaches. It's hard to tell if the women possess matching moustaches as most wear full black veils (burqa's???).

With a sudden desire to appease the inner consumer beast, I attempt to find a cyber cafe and purchase a drink, while I kill the time. I find a lone cafeteria, serving yellow rice with chunks of unappealing meat and burgers. It appears you buy vouchers using the local currency - Riyals and spend them at the cafe. They don't take cards. My request for internet access is met with an offer to sell me a phonecard. I decide to get some riyals and buy a drink as I didn't drink enough on the flight, but there is nobody in the currency exchange booth, which looks more like a soviet border control post, and doesn't advertise any rates.

I decide I can't wait for my return when I have a longer stop to probe deeper and check out the town itself.

The guy who had been sitting next to me was away chatting up the stewardesses. He had a fighting chance as he was part of the Qatari football team that were all on their way to play against Thailand. In matching shirts and trousers that looked a bit like beige overalls they all looked a little like MC Hammer. My companion's name was Hussain Yasser Rahmen. He seemed polite and had a big cheesy grin. When he mentioned his job and that was trying to get into Manchester Utd, I immediately decided to grab my chance and get a photo with him. After all, last time I went to Thailand I had bumped into that R&B singer 'Eve'.

Not being a huge fan of R&B, I had no idea who she was and I would have ignored her if it weren't for the two Americans whose jaws hit the ground when they spotted the big-lipped MTV Queen. I asked them, and was unimpressed. 'Eve?'. Well I'm Joe. I decided to find out who was behind the name and get a photo with her so that I could ask around later and see if I was really that out of touch with popular culture. Of course there was a chance some of her success and ramptant sex appeal might rup off on me purely by association, some sort of personal osmosis.

I needed an excuse to talk to her so I walked over to her and announced that 'my girlfriend is a big fan of yours' (seemed like a good enough reason as any) and that kicked things off nicely. She was friendly, open, easy going and seemed to be flirting with me. Of course, that's probably just the kind of impression she leaves with everyone which is probably why she's rolling in moolah. I drifted away after the photo and some polite comments to avoid her discovering my devious ploy to get the snapshot and finding out I actually had no idea who she was.

Fortunately Hussain was entertaining so delusions and I didn't need to offer some excuse about my mum collecting VCDs of all his games or anything, he just proffered his big clean white teeth for my snapshot.