Mike's Thoughts de Jour

After a 12.5 hrs of flying on a 777-200 LR, we landed in Doha, Qatar.  Our connecting flight is not till 1 pm so we had 7 hrs to explore Qatar.  Normally one needs a visa to travel in Qatar but we found they make an exception if you are in transit thru Doha.  We found a free, government sponsored 3 hr city tour.  So after going thru security and immigration we got on a bus for a tour of the city.

Ironically our tour guide in Napaleese.  He said only about 20% of the people in Qatar are Qatareese with the other 80% being people from other countries who come here to work.  Qatar has the highest per capita income in the world....or so I read somewhere.

We toured the new part of the city and saw some awesome architechiture and we toured a museum and an upscale mall and then we went to the old part of the Doha and toured the markets.  The market looked like that scene from Indiana Jones where they are fighting in the market.  There were many Arabs in the traditional Arab garb.  The men look pretty sharp in their crisp white robes but it just make me a little sick to my stomach and sad to see so many woman black burqas.  It was in the high 90s and I  was in shorts and tee shirt and sweating like a pig.

I took a few pictures with my iPad.  I've been using a little digital camera for most of the pictures but then I have no way to upload them to this blog so I try to take a few with this too.

Its almost time to board out flight from Doha to Katmandu.  I think this flight is only 7 or 8 hrs.  I tired and hope to sleep some on this flight.