Friday, January 26 - Bahrain, onward to Qatar

Today we visited a couple of traditional Bahrainian homes. It is very interesting to see how they lived (these are older traditional, not current). Most were walled, forming an interior courtyard, with rooms along the interior of the wall and then open to the courtyard. The courtyard allows for the ladies to go about their daily business and be outside without having to worry about being seen without their abiya or veil. Often a camel would be tethred as a pet, and perhaps wool or milk.

The Middle Easterners do not have dogs or cats as they consider them unclean and there may be something in the Qu'ran about dogs, but I am not sure.

In the late afternoon we flew to Qatar (pronounced Cutter). An interesting question arose among our group about the veiled Muslim women and their passport photos and security. Here's the deal. There is a separate room for women to disrobe if necessary. Also, there are separate passport lines denoting "Femal Passport Verification". These are sheilded from the other lanes and staffed by female agents and the women will unveil themselves for the agents.

All in all, the air system here is quite efficient. Security is about the same as home except none of this crazy gel/liquid situation. Passport verification is done with great diligence.

Qatar borders Saudi Arabia. It has about 900,000 people. Only 240,000 are Qatari. The rest are imported workers, mostly Asian like the rest of the region. The Altani are the ruling 'Tribe'. I will leave the rest of Qatar for tomorrow. Get ready for camel racing and falcons.

All in all, this is an unbelievable region. It is totally misunderstood by us westerners. The people are so happy to see us...even the Americans! Each country get crazier and crazier. The wealth is unimaginable and I will write about that in future posts.