I Finally Visited Qatar in November 2022, But Not For The World Cup
Published:
My sister has worked in Qatar for the past 8 years but I’ve never been to the country as all the previous oppurtunities never worked out. Thanks to coronavirus vaccines and the World Cup, I managed to get tickets to the 2022 FIFA World Cup. For reasons I don’t want to explain, I couldn’t actually go to Qatar to see the match I got tickets for, so I settled on spending a weekend in the tiny petrostate. While I enjoyed my time there and thank my sister for hosting me (and a bunch of guest every week for those 2 months), it doesn’t seem like the plae you can stay as a tourist for a long time.
Wednesday: Heading Outta Zim and Into My Sister’s Apartment
After a bit of work issues on the Wednesday, I headed to the airport just in time to walk straight from check-in right into the plane without waiting for boarding. I sort of understand why they make you walk up to the plane through the tarmac1, but it made me realize how unfit I was. On the plus site, you get a spectacular view of the A350 as well as all the ground operations needed to get it running.
Had a hard time picking a picture to include here, but I liked how imposing the plane is here. The other picture had a tractor though
Though it was an A350, it’s cabin wasn’t as good as the one I got coming from the US. Still, though the food wasn’t that good, it was a good flight with attentive crew and plenty of time to sleep. Before I did that, I watched Elvis which was a well made look into the life of the King of Rock n’ Roll. I liked how it showed how much inspiration and reverance he had towards black culture, though the movie ignored the whole liking to date teenagers part. Anyways, after I watched that, I got some sleep and woke up in Qatar at 6:45 in the morning. The plane seemed to be parked quite far, but I got through immigration and baggage collection without a hitch. Would have been faster if I could duck under the guiding ropes at immigration, but I might have gotten shouted at for doing that.
Once out, I noticed some people marketing SIM Cards. I would have ignored them, but they said I would get unlimited call and texts as well as 2022MB of data, though it only lasted for 2 days, 1 day shorter than the 3 days I’d need it for. Still, it was a sweet deal. Some more walking later, I headed to the metro where my sister was waiting for me. Poorly signed, but I made it eventually. We got to meet and we laughed at the toilet signs which had the same logo for males and females, with the only difference being that the female’s logo was black to signify their abayas.
About half an hour on the metro later, I got to her apartment at the Pearl which was a very fancy location. There I met the dog Atlad my sister was watching over who would pout whenever you ate in front of it. She had to head back to work so she scheduled me for some dune bashing that afternoon. In waiting, I took a bit of rest, watched the dog and took a slight walk around the place to get a bite to eat. I settled on some incredibly flavourful dosa from an Indian place with a few tasty candies, though my sister suggested the Turkish place.
Flavourful stuff this was.
Interestingly, people don’t lock their doors here as it’s an incredibly safe country. You could say it’s the culture, but it’s mostly expact so I guess the fact that CCTV is everywhere and the fact that punishments for such things are swift helps with that.
Thursday: Dune Bashing and Some Cinema
The driver picked me up in a Land Cruiser and after a long drive out of Doha, we reached a stop over point where I got to chill with a few animals while the driver was deflating the tyres to handle the dune bashing.
Camel. These have such an unstable ride, holy hell.
Falcon. These birds are well behanved. No wonder why they get to fly in an airliner.
After some tea which was strangly refreshing in this “heat”2, we started our dune bashing. The drove took the dunes rather agressivley but with a lot of care, though it wasn’t as frantic as I expected. We took a slight stop where I got to fail at sandboarding before we headed for the border. Throughout the drive, I was suprised that the route we were taking was well mapped on Google Maps. Even more suprising was how great the cell reception was—there was even 5G, though it didn’t seem much better than LTE and it took more battery.
Man this country has so much fucking money. Also, the fringing makes this photo way better.
Some time later, we reached the border with Saudi Arabia and it was incredibly beautiful, especially against the sunset. Sadly, we couldn’t just bolt across because we need borders apparantly.
None of my photos could do justice to just how beautiful this scene was. You should see it for yourself.
After a lot of oohs and aahs, we had to head back to Doha on the level yet unpaved road. Aparantly people chill here over the weekend? Anyways, before it got dark at 5pm3, I looked at one of the NG facilities which make Qatar such a filthy rich country. I wonder what they’ll do after the need for fossil fuels end?
After I got home, we headed out to the Gold Souk via the metro and some walking to watch Black Adam in the most beautiful cinema building I’ve ever seen. After spending the equivalent of $40 between us on a funny-yet-unremarkable movie, we explored the souk to see what was on offer. Given the World Cup, everything was more expensive than it should be so we settled on having some dinner at Bandar Aden Restaurant who had some tasty and affordable Yemeni food. There we noticed a closed partition where women muslim women were allowed to eat together without their abayas which was…something. After that, we headed home and to bed.
Friday: City Tour, Brunch and Helping My Sister With Some Shopping
Given that I went in November and I’m only publishing this months later, I’m embarrassed to say that I forgot what I did this day. That’s before I realized that we spent 3 hours having a Dim Sum brunch. Before we got there, we got to explore some of Doha along the drive before we pulled up to the Dim Sum spot. Never had brunch like this but my sister does it quite often and I see why. It was a good time to relax and catch up since there was no rush to eat everything since you practically had 3 hours to eat everything you want. I do wish there was a Dim Sum spot in Harare. Only issue was that they charged $10 for a bottle of water which I guess is where their profits come from.
I really should take more photos since this was just a still for a video I took once I finished.
I don’t quite remember what we did next, we eventually headed out to do some home shopping since my sister wanted to make a nice space for the dog to chill outside. We then settled down for ramen which was incredibly flavourful. While waiting, my sister headed out to get her self an iPhone 14 Pro which was on promotion. She mentioned it was a Japanese model and I thought it would have a non-disablable shutter sound4 but it seems that it doesn’t have it outside Japan now.
Saturday: Shopping And Seeing What I Would Be Missing Out On
In my last day here, I had to do some shopping. After a tasty breakfast, we headed to the Museum of Illusions which was a lot of fun. Obvious Instagram bait was obvious, but I still enjoyed it. I don’t want to put pictures of myself online, so I don’t have much to share, but a lot of these illusions were a trip. I’d post one of these collapsing cube illusions, but it might gice you a headache so I won’t unless you insist I do.
A bit of browsing the mall later, we headed to an Italian place for yet another brunch. Again I can see why she enjoys these so much. It was a delicious 7 course meal that I’d love to do again some time.
Forgot what this stuff is called, but it was pretty good.
After that, we headed off for some shopping. I needed to bring some groceries home, which I managed to do. I even got my favorite pack of noodles, the Mie Goreng Indomie flavour which are so hard to find in Zim. I also got some sweets to hand out. After that, we headed back to drop off our stuff before heading off to Lusail where one of the matches would be hosted. It was still under construction, so we had to walk from the drop off point to the boulevard itself. At this point my back was hurting big time. Turns out that being sedentary is really bad for you, and being incredibly fat isn’t much better. It’s not that I was tired, just that my back couldn’t take it5. Either way, while I enjoyed how lively the area was with all the people, the roads were a bit too wide.
After some more walking, my sister found a shop and decided to get me a cute little fan. I loved it a lot, but I destroyed it when it got really filthy. After yet another long walk looking over the stadium, we got to the train station and headed back to her apartment. Along the way, she talked about how great the train was as you don’t get stuck in traffic since it always takes the same time. The main drawback is that the headways can be 15 minutes wide at peak times, though at other times they are as low as 3. It also doesn’t have night service even though a considerable number of people need to get to work after 11, which is when Qatar Airways gets a lot of inbound flights. I also wondered why the train had different classes and it turns out that I would have been in standard class instead of family as I’d be alone rather than with my sister.
When we got back, we got a short dinner at the Turkish place and as I was running out of time, I took the meal to go, packed up and had to rush to the train station. I barely managed to get the last train out. If I hadn’t it would have been a nightmare since the promotional cell line was over and I couldn’t log into the train’s free Wi-Fi. Stop by stop, people got out of the train before I was left with another airport employee. It’s really cool how the trains are driverless. Shame it isn’t 24 hour service though, but you can sit up front at the fake train panel thing.
With a smooth checking and a few hours at the airport, I finally boarded the flight back to Harare.
Conclusion
Work was getting stressful so I’m glad that I got to take some time off. Not only that, I got to see Qatar for the first time in the 7 years she’s lived there. It kinda sucks that I couldn’t go to see a World Cup match, but I just couldn’t afford it. I wish I got to see the museums and all, but honestly, Qatar is a great place for a stop over and work but not long tourism trips, unless you’ll be bouncing around the gulf.
I really want to thank my sister for hosting me and for all that brunch. It’s really expensive for her and I hope to return the favour once I have more money. It would be nice if I could live independently but to do so I’d need to make many multiples more than I make now. One day though and I hope my writing will get me there.
I went there seven months from writing this and I’m embarrassed to say that I’m only writing about it now. I literally forgot what I spent half a day doing! I still need to finish my travel series on Cape Town and the US which are even older trips! For my future trips, I should also take more photos. I was very good at this—so good that I maxed out my 64GB iPhone in one week when I went to the UK for a school trip that was supposed to be 3 weeks long 😂!
When I went, Qatar Airways would spend 8 hours waiting and I doubt they wanna pay for a jet bridge for that long. They used to camp in the domestic terminal, but I guess fuel is too much for the petrostate. They now have a much shorter layover and leave at 12pm which is less convenient as compared to the 6:30pm flight. ↩︎
November is when winter starts, apparantly. Still hot as fuck. ↩︎
In Zim, it was getting dark around 7pm since it was summer. Despite the weather, I forgot that I was in a completley different season. ↩︎
Because of creeps called chikan. Did you know that Xbox fans in Japan were called this because the platform had a hentai game? ↩︎
She let mom know and she booked me for a doctor which cost $100 only for him to tell me to exersize. Then again, he ruled out particularly bad issues so I guess it was worth it? Either way, always have an emergency fund! It has helped me out so much. ↩︎