Greetings From the Middle East

Tuesday, January 23rd - 6:00pm Gulf Time (Kuwait City)

Hello from the Persian Gulf and welcome to my travel blog. I never thought I would have a blog, but it seems the best way to keep everyone informed of what is going on in my world these days.

The above map shows the countries I will be visiting with a rough itinerary mapped out. Double click on the map or any image to enlarge.

A few housekeeping notes. The blog was written while on the road during my three week adventure. I have now returned and have begun to revise and improve, putting more images and cleaning up all the errors made in typing and facts while trying to first find internet access and have the time then to record my experiences. I feel what I wrote on the while on the road only began to describe my adventures.

I write this now after returning to Prince Edward Island and have now been home for 24 hours. It is actually February 11 as I rewrite the beginning of this first post. Over the next two weeks I will be gradually updating the blog, starting at the beginning. So if you check back each day or two, you will see many changes including many, many, many more photos.

Thanks to everyone for your comments about the blog. Sharing my adventures in the Arabian Peninsula has been as fun as the actual experience.

Thanks also to everyone on the trip. This includes the tour gang and especially Aili for leading us, as well as some of the phenomenal people we met along the way - many of whom I hope will get a chance to see this and participate by commenting or sending an e-mail.


Also, some of the description on the blog (anything italicized) is taken from Adventures Abroad materials. This is the tour group I went with. I just couldn't improve on their description, nor can I say enough about them. Here is their website and anyone wishing to travel to this region would be 100% satisfied to choose them.

http://www.adventures-abroad.com/newweb/

Finally, this was a whirlwind trip through five countries that have many similarities as well as many differences so I have tried to keep the facts straight. Just e-mail or comment on any errors and I will correct immediately.

I hope everyone enjoys this blog and I help introduce you to this magical, mysterious, sometimes crazy, and often much-misunderstood part of the world.

You will notice that from here on in there will a mixture of writing style. Some was written during the trip. Other parts were added later.

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Let's start at the beginning. Almost without exception when I told anyone to where I was travelling I received the same response - a look of astonishment with... "Are you crazy...why would you want to go there?".

Why not? Life is an adventure.

The region has always fascinated me so I decided to see it for myself. In the days ahead I hope to share some of what I see and experience.

To begin, I arrived safely. I wish I could say the same of my luggage, but I will detail that later. My flight from Frankfurt to Kuwait City was full of wealthy Kuwaiti kids returning from a weekend romp in Europe and US soldiers being mustered in Kuwait to move into Iraq. It was quite a contrast. Before leaving I wondered if we would fly over Iraq. Indeed we did - right over Baghdad according to the map on the screen of the aircraft.

I found me a taxi and set off for my hotel....or so I thought. The very elderly Bedu gentleman spoke no English and, somewhere, something got lost in the translation and we ended up at the wrong hotel By the way, to get into this hotel compound we had to go through a checkpoint, pop the trunk and hood, while soldiers with mirrors looked under the car for anything unusual.

As the driver pulled up to the hotel, I said "La" (Arabic for "No!") and showed him my hotel name from my reservation. He couldn't read english so this was of no use. Fortunately I had the hotel phone number. Fortunately again, before leaving Canada, I learned my arabic numbers. Well, the titling of numbers is a long story because arabic numerals are really the ones we use in the west. Check out this site for an amazing and fascinating discussion on this.

hhtp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals

So I transcribed the phone number for him into "Arabic" . He called on his cell and we were in business. Oh yeah, my luggage didn't arrive. It didn't make the Frankfurt connection. I would have to RETURN to the hotel the next night. I was really looking forward to that.

The next day (Sunday) I slept until 1pm, explored a bit and then met up with the group for dinner. All Canadians and Americans. There will be 15 of us by the time we reach Bahrain tomorrow evening.

So, Kuwait. During the Iraqi invasion, Kuwait City was extensively bombed and damaged. Buildings were fired upon, set alight, and demolished; roads and bridge links were the target of explosives, and landmarks were defaced. After the invasion, foreign investors and the Kuwaiti government are actively involved in modernizing the city and transforming it into a world-class, state-of-the-art business hub. Today virtually all traces of the invasion have been cleared, and consstruction cranes dot the skylline. Quite remarkable when you think that eighty percent of the city was destroyed during the Iraq invasion of 1990.

Three excellent sites to tell you anything you want to know about Iraq, from its fascinating history to all sorts of stats, can be found at:

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwait

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ku.html

www.arab.net/kuwait/index.html

The population of Kuwait is 2.5 million with about 80% being foreigners, mostly Asian, who work in the service industry. Kuwait City is quite large, but only has a permanent population of 50,000 as everyone lives outside the city.

The city is a strange mix of tradional and modern culture. It is not uncommon to see two young Kuwaiti friends walking together. One in the tradional dress and the other in blue jeans. Similar with the women. Everywhere you see women dressed and veiled in black with only their eyes exposed. You will also see women who look like they just stepped off a Paris fashion runway. It's a surreal mix, but seems to work for everyone.

Today we visited three museums which gave a nice background and history of the country and region. One museum, the Tareq Rajab Museum - a private collection of the Rajab family - had an unbelievable collection of ancient Islamic art. Here is their website http://www.trmkt.com/startmain.htm

This particular museum is tucked away and is mostly underground. During the Iraqi invasion, the soldiers came and said they were going to take everything, even though the Kuwaitis had put up false walls to fool them and protect the priceless antiquities. They were smarter than that and knocked down the wall. The commander, however, was an educated, cultured man and it is thought that he prevented the looting by his soldiers.

We visited the Kuwaiti towers and went up the 180m largest tower of the three. These were also badly damaged by the Iraqis when they pulled out. Most of the damage was interior. They used the towers as a command post because of the 360 degree view of the city.

We also visited the fish market/auction and a souk (market). That was/is day one and we are having dinner tonight and then flying to Bahrain, an Island state in the Persian Gulf.

PHOTOS OF KUWAIT:



Bedu tents on the outskirts of Kuwait City. We drove out of the city to see the Islamic museum that was saved from looting my an Iraqi and the oil refineries.

One of the oil refineries on the Persian Gulf on the outskirts of Kuwait. Along the way we saw many beautiful villas. This is where we got to know our local guide, Eddie Fernandez, and took the opportunity to grill him on life in Kuwait. The first of many guides and drivers that we bombarded with questions.

Fish vendor at the Fish Market in Kuwait

These are photos of pictures that were inside the observation level of the Kuwait Tower. They show the destruction the Iraqis did before trying to flee from the U.S. Military during the liberation of Kuwait. The quotes on the plaques were amusing as the wording was a bit humerous and with considerable passion. Wording like 'total destruction' and 'shameless attack"

Date vendor in Souk. This was the first picture I took of a local in the region. I offered him a small tip to say thank you but he would not take it. The first of many to decline a gift.


This was the view from my hotel room in Kuwait City. We were in the business district. A nice hotel. This was taken the morning we left to fly to Bahrain. I often would go down to ground floor to have a cigarette so I got to know the 'door kids'. They were all Indian and Bangladeshi. Amir was the brightest guy of the bunch and very warm and kind. I think their boss up in the reception area (I guess the equivalent to me at the Centre) was a bit of tyrant. This resulted in an incident surrounding the ordering of the car to take me to the airport the second night to get my luggage. I was waiting in the reception for Amir to get things sorted out and there was as some sort of weird phone call between boss guy and Amir, then boss guy yells "Come up here". Then Amir was in his office for 10 to 15 minutes with the door shut. Anyway I would have great chats with Amir and his friends about their live here and their families back on the Indian continent. Thise was the first of many interesting encounters I had with the people living (both foreigners and natives) in this crazy part of the world. I tipped the door kids well. A few bucks was worth more to them than it was to me.

At the Kuwait Towers. First day of organized touring.