Qatar R&R

I am sitting in a tent in Kuwait as I write this...I am on my way back to Afghanistan after my 4 day R&R in Qatar. Pictures are here.

The city we were close to, Doha, is an up and coming Arab city and it definitely shows that it is trying to westernize and catch up to the supreme Arab city, Dubai in the UAE. They are hosting the Asian games here in a few months and literally are building 20 huge sky scrapper hotels. I have never seen more massive cranes in a skyline in my life. Its also HOT. Not Afghanistan hot, which is not hot now that I know Qatar exists. It was 105/110 temp wise during the day, but the real kicker is the near 100% humidity all day. It really hits hard when you walk out side.

It was by most accounts, a very entertaining 4 days. We arrived at 930pm on the first day in Qatar, and were met at the C-17 by a liaison officer who took us to a briefing room. There they collected our ID cards, immigrated us into the country and loaded us on a bus. It was incredibly organized and quick. There were hundreds of troops coming off of planes either for pass or for leave, coming and going, but the system they had in place seemed to work well. They drove us through a place they called "grab and go" which was basically a food line setup to get a couple sandwiches, sodas and snacks. It was a nice touch, and was welcome being as we hadn't really had dinner. The bus ride to Camp As Sayliah was right at 30 mins, but then the fun started. They have 3 separate gates to drive though each one checking a different piece, orders / id's, the vehicle etc. It took a good hour to get through the gate, and its almost as slow leaving!! We have less security by a factor of 10 where we live than this place, and as far as I could see, there was NO reason for it to exist. Anyway, we did make it through, and got our assignments for living quarters. Basically the entire base is setup with warehouses, and then there is "stuff" inside. In our case it was a warehouse with tents inside. We set down our stuff, looked at the clock and noticed it was 1140 and decided to go get beer rather than unpack as last call was 1145! No need to panic, we made it!

Day two we signed up for a Dhow cruise in the Persian gulf. Yes, I have been there before, but it was a way to get off the base and allowed us to get some decent pictures of Doha. We ate dinner at Chili's, which was a real treat. Actual table service, the menu was a true Chili's menu and it was just great! Went back over to the Irish bar (Guinness, Kilkenny, Fosters and Heineken on tap) and had our three beers while playing some pool. I managed to stay up until about 1am this night just hanging out and then Steve wanted to head back to go to sleep. I wasn't really tired yet so I putzed around on the computer and decided at about 130 I should go as well, but as I was walking out Monday Night Football was coming on!! I went back, got a coffee and sat down to watch until about half time. 330am comes quick!

Day Three was the aforementioned boat trip, followed by another dinner at Chili's (note the theme) and then beer. It may sound all the same, but it was really a great time. I figured we would get beer in a can, or crappy bottled beer, but we had nice big Guinness and Kilkenny on tap. Good good deal. I can't complain in the least about the setup in country, they make sure you have a good time. Speaking of that, the only way to get off base here is to either take an MWR sponsored tour, or get an escort by someone that works there. LTC Girard from my USTC days is stationed here as a CO and was nice enough to volunteer one of her guys to take us out in town. Good kid, has been here 10 months and has the city wired. Took us to the Gold Souk, which is great because all the gold is 18k or more, and you pay by the gram. It's hard to get cheaper gold anywhere in the world. We also went to the city center mall which is by far the best mall I've ever been to anywhere. It was just enormous beyond belief and had every modern western store. Not to mention I loved seeing all the Qataris in their white outfits and white turbans sitting at Starbucks. I tried to get a picture, not sure how it came out as we aren't really allowed to photograph locals.

We ended up having to leave to fly, so now as I write day four, I am actually back at Blackhorse. Yeah for me!

Day Four was a pretty mellow day. We didn't have a tour or an escort so we just planned on sleeping in, eating and relaxing. Most of the day went as planned. We were told to come back to the briefing room at 7pm to find out when we would leave Qatar. We did that, and of course, they then said come back at 8pm. We came back to the girl typing happily away on SMS (the computer program I work for at USTC), it was my first time seeing it used in the wild! Fun!! We found out our flight was at 3am and we had to report back with all our stuff packed at 11pm. So much for relaxing. We ran back to the tent, did some laundry, packed up and headed back over early to get one last beer! With that finished, we got into uniforms and went to wait for our flight where they decided to send us to Kuwait (the wrong damn direction) for no particular reason. Kuwait had no idea we were coming, so we ended up spending 36 hours there. Ah well.

Anyway, 9 days later, for our 4 day vacation we are back at Blackhorse and its sad to say that I was really glad to be back. Good times, probably wont do it again as it was just a bit too much hassle for days off.

Gary