Doha: Squalor to Splendor

On Saturday, we moved out of Abu Dhabi and migrated to Doha in Qatar. When we would tell people in the UAE, either Dubai or Abu Dhabi, they would offer comments such as, "What will you do in Doha for two weeks?' or "Why are you going to Qatar? Why not Bahrain?" or "Doha? They are 5 years behind the UAE" or "Doha? They are 10 years behind the UAE" or even at one point "Doha? They are 20 years behind the UAE." We were primed for Doha. Beth Traxler and I anxiously monitored the Ramada Plaza Doha website to try to understand all these comments.

When we arrived, the Ramada was lovely. We had to negotiate our check-in, and while we did that, a nice lady came around with a tray of tasty chocolates. The rooms are small, but that is okay. My specific objection is the tasteless decoration. There is a nasty triangular mirror, and most intensely horrific pink urn stuck to the wall. [insert photo]. The evening that we arrived we took a tour called "Charms of Doha" and I would at a colonated subtitle "Squalor to Splendor".

Our tour included a "camel yard", a vegetable market, an equestrian center, and the "traditional" Souk Waqif. The camel yard was tragic in terms of the suffering of the camels and the humans. Why do humans do this? I guess the camels and the humans were both so tough they could withstand the heat, the dust, and the crowding. But my heart broke, and I stood at the edge of the dusty parking lot and wept.

The vegetable market was less stressful since the vegetables did not have eyes like camels do. It was hot and green. Everything was imported from somewhere else: Jordan, China, Syria, Egypt etc. There were ancient men with few teeth who pushed green wheel barrows after one asking in an ancient language if we would like them to push our purchases around. We smiled because we did not know what to say. One wheelbarrow man was quite insistent about his right to demand that he carry Brian's purchases. Brain was carrying a plastic bag with four bananas in it. Wheelbarrow Man pushed his wheelbarrow up against Brian's leg and continued to incomprehensibly lecture him about the fact that the bananas belonged in the wheelbarrow. Brian walked away, wheelbarrow man shadowing him in case he should change his mind. It was as poignant as the camels.

From there we moved on to the equestrian center, poster child for splendor. Air conditioned stables, a private box stall for each exquisite arabian horse with a way for each one to look out and see each other. As we walked into their palace, they all looked out of their cedar bedded stalls to inspect us with great well-groomed curiosity. They were so pampered and loved. One man was hosing down a horse outside the stables, and the horse was clearly loving it, stretching its nose out to play with the water. Quite the contrast to the Camel gulag.

From there we went to the Souk Waqif, a rebuilt replica of how a traditional "Gulf Style" market might have looked. It had a kind of Egyptian flavor, but there were a lot of Indian restaurants and clothing areas in addition to the abaya stores. There were also trinkets and falcons. The falcon shop was clearly a specialty shop, full of dusty equipment, two falcons, and two very languid guys to let us walk around their shop. In the restaurant area, it looked like it could hold a lot of people, and our guide, Suriya, said that the place was packed in winter when the weather was nicer because at night it would get down to 75 F.