I’d tried to do some research on Doha before coming out on this trip and honestly there wasn’t a whole lot to be found so we weren’t really sure what to expect when we got to Doha. Turns out Doha is a Dubai-wannabe. It is trying to compete pretty hard with Dubai for the tourist dollar and certainly the rate of construction is equal to if not superior to what is going on across the water but it is quite a bit behind in terms of a developed tourist trade. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing but honestly it did make for a bit of an unexciting visit. On the other hand we managed to catch up on some lost sleep which was rather necessary especially for Jules who’d had to do that mammoth drive from Plett to Cape Town Airport the day/night before.

One of the quirkier aspects of our trip was what the locals seemed to think was interesting to the tourist – there seemed to be a big emphasis on the man-built thing such as shopping centres and the stadium where the Asian Games were hosted. I did like this giant shopping trolley though – look how small I am in comparison!

Photos are here.

The Experience

As we didn’t really have too much information at hand the first thing we did was to arrange a couple of tours which where the first indications that Doha hasn’t quite got their tourist system going well just yet:
– A city tour and
– A safari/sand dune tour.

Our city tour was actually a private one and although the guy was friendly we had severe communication issues – his English was okay but when we started to ask some probing questions about the culture etc. it definitely got confusing for everyone. After a while it was just easier to let our questions slide. I’m not sure if it’s the Doha thing or our particular tour guide but check out some of the sights he took us to (and in order of stops):
– Main stadium of the Asian Games
– A shopping centre (and then we hiked over to the shopping centre next door to get a photo of the giant trolley). Admittedly it was a nice shopping centre including a “sky” ceiling but in the middle of a tour? Very strange.
– The cattle and camel souk
– The Al-Corniche which strangely enough he would drive part of it, stop, then drive on and stop. Admittedly it is a very long promenade (as we later discovered that evening!)
– The national museum which was shut. Most things shut at around 12-4pm.

And that was our “City Tour”.

After a quick lunch at an Indian/Chinese place that served such delicacies as Chicken Lollipop and Chicken 65 (don’t ask me what they were as I didn’t try them) it was time for our desert safari. Okay the sand dunes weren’t huge but our driver wasn’t exactly adventurous either. When we asked for a bit of adventure it merely involved going down, an admittedly, steep dune but very slowly. It was so second class to the equivalent Dubai experience. The path we travelled was like a normal motorway almost. The saddening thing was to see all the litter in the dunes. Such a beautiful natural heritage destroyed by man’s rubbish.

For the rest of our time in Doha we just did our own thing including:

– Visiting the souks at night. There was much more activity at this time of day and we got to check out the falcons. There was one guy who was very friendly about it. I just wanted to take a photo but he was like come in come in, come sit next to the falcon, touch the falcons, get a photo with the falcons. It was feeding time as well so it was kind of weird to have these birds literally tearing these chicken bones up in front of us.
– Walking along the Al-Corniche. We didn’t realise it but it must have been about 7 kms one way from where we started near the Old City all the way to the Sheraton in the City Centre. There were lots of people out and about and strangely enough when we were coming back (around 11pm), considering it was a Sunday night, it was still quite busy with lots of little kids around as well.
– Making the mistake of trying to look for a local cinema with a dodgy map in the heat of the day. Finally clueing in on the fact that taxis were oh so cheap. As a result we ended up going into the City Centre to one of their giant malls (which also contained an ice rink!) and watching a movie plus doing some ice-sliding! What a concept. The guy at the slide was so funny – I guess he liked talking to tourists and he kept saying “one more time”. It was a lot of fun but I was totally soaked after the event. Here’s some footage – he really wanted to make sure we had some memories:

It was kind of ironic that our last hours in Doha were spent in a shopping mall Making It Mucho at Applebees …