For as long as I have been paying attention, Qatar was and still is the only country in the world starting with the letter ‘Q’. The first time I tried to go to Qatar, the emirate of Qatar was still paranoid about foreigners coming in. A sponsor, an expensive hotel booking, or residency was needed for a visa. Not having any of these, I booked a ten hour stopover in Doha, figuring I could talk my way in and get a transit visa on arrival. This strategy failed miserably, and I spent the next ten hours waiting in the transit lounge of Doha International Airport.
The lounge was reminiscent of a bus station. It was dark and dusty, with rows of plastic seats and a questionable cafeteria. As it was used almost exclusively by Gulf Arabs, most of the people were clad in long flowing gowns. Some of the women wore masks, while others engulfed themselves in billowing robes of black cloth. Although it was fascinating to be in such an intensely Arabic atmosphere, ten hours in a glorified bus station was not something I wanted to repeat, and I was determined that I would get through customs on the next attempt.
Three years later, I tried again. This time, I would do everything by the book. I called the Qatari embassy in Washington, DC, and told them that I wanted a tourist visa. At first, they seemed a bit confused, as I was probably the only person in the world who was dumb enough to go to Doha for tourism. After convincing them that I really was serious, they gave me instructions on how to apply. The woman on the phone told me that I did not need a sponsor, and that it would only take two working days to process.
I sent them my passport and an extortionate visa fee, and waited a week. At the end of the week, a man from the embassy called me and asked where my letter of sponsorship was. It seemed that the embassy reception had a different set of rules than the visa processing department. With only ten days before my flight departure, and my passport on the other side of the continent, I had little time to argue, and told the embassy that I would get a hotel reservation confirmation, and send that to them.
Thanks to the wonders of e-mail, I was able to get a confirmed hotel reservation through e-mail in two days. However, the visa people were not quite sure what to do about e-mail, and kept asking me to fax the letter of confirmation over. I tried to explain that the e-mail was my letter of confirmation. They did not seem to think that an electronic message was enough. Eventually, we compromised. I printed out the e-mail, and faxed it to the embassy. Everything was now in order, and they were kind enough to rush my application through the bureaucracy. I received my passport two days before the flight, and was soon on a plane to the Middle East.
For some reason, it was much cheaper to buy a round trip flight to Doha in Dubai than to purchase exactly the same ticket in Vancouver. When I arrived in Dubai, I went straight to the ticket office and tried to get a flight to Qatar. All flights were booked for the day, but I managed to get a flight the next day. After my booking was done, I emailed the hotel in Doha to change my reservation. The response was puzzling. They said they were booked solid, and could only give me one night there. Was Doha a well kept Gulf secret? Flights were full, as was my hotel. Maybe there was something more to Qatar than what the travel guides were saying. I was starting to get excited.
The next day, I caught my flight to Doha. A Dubai currency trader sat next to me, and spouted his distaste for George W. Bush. Strangely enough, it was not because of American imperialism but because of how imperialism was hurting his bottom line. It seemed that every time that Dubya made a speech about the Middle East, he caused the currency markets to crash. I pondered the thought that a capitalist half way around the world would hate a capitalist for being such a capitalist.
We landed in Doha, and I found myself waiting in the same line I had three years earlier. I was still not sure whether I would get through, even though I had jumped through all the bureaucratic hoops. After waiting several minutes to get to the customs desk, I proudly handed my passport to the customs official. He barely glanced at the visa, keyed in my passport number, and waved me through. Considering how much hassle I had endured to get the visa, getting through customs seemed so anticlimactic. However, it quickly dawned on me that I now had the final letter in the alphabet.
A mob of taxi drivers accosted me on the way out of the airport. After some negotiation, I got the taxi fare for 15 dirham, which seemed about right. I would later find out that the local rate was much less. Almost as soon as I sat down, the taxi driver said to me "So! Do you like Osama bin Ladin?" As diplomatically as possible, I told him that I thought that Osama bin Ladin was right to fight the American oppressors, but that his methods were unsound. This seemed to partially satisfy the taxi driver, who then pulled out his cell phone, and punched up a picture of Osama bin Ladin and a plane flying into the World Trade Center. I laughed conspiratorially, and quietely hoped that I would get to the hotel without any extra holes in my body.
Doha has been called the dullest place on the planet, and this is not far from the truth. It is a giant sandbar littered with unremarkable buildings and an inexplicable amount of hotels under construction. According to the Lonely Planet guidebook, the highlight of a visit to Doha is the National Museum. True to form, this was closed for renovations when I tried to visit. With little else to do, I aimlessly wandered through the city, and marvelled at the number of four star hotels that were being built. For a place with almost no redeeming features, they were building up for a boom of visitors. Could there be that many other people wanting to visit a country starting with the letter ‘Q’?
Apart from alphabetical travel tourism, it seems that Doha is sitting on one of the largest natural gas reserves in the world, and is just beginning to develop it. Business is coming to Qatar for the gas, and the Qataris are going to be a very rich people in a few years. Anything less than a four star hotel would just be too proletariat for a soon to be wealthy nation.
After three days of Doha, I was ready to leave. Doha had been a disappointment, lacking either old world charm or the bustle of a cosmopolitan city. Remembering how atmospheric it was at the airport, I left an hour earlier than I needed to and caught a cab to the airport. After paying the driver the local rate of five dirhams, I passed through customs, and stepped into what resembled an American shopping mall. It seemed that the Qataris had been busy renovating the airport since I had last been there. Armani graced the walls, and techno music filled the air. The old linoleum floor had been replaced with checkered marble. All traces of the old world had been eradicated, and replaced by sterile, modern consumerism. Perhaps Doha will have the same fate.
Rating
As mentioned earlier, there is not much to be said about a giant sand bar full of hotels. The one saving grace about Qatar is that it is home to the best falafels that I have tasted. Unfortunately, falafels alone are not enough to elevate the food ranking to that of other culinarily oriented countries.
Text and images copyright © by Curtis Marr. All rights reserved.