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.

Thursday, January 24 - The Kingdom of Bahrain

Our VIP treatment continued today. We were met at the hotel by a TV crew from Bahranian National TV. They followed us around all day. Everywhere we went the locals didn't know what to make of us. There was a group of school kids at the Bahranian Natonal Museum and the film crew filmed us getting off the bus and the kids asked..."Are you famous?". Cute. Oh yeah, we made the paper too as a result of our photo shoot on arrival. I have a copy of the paper to show all when we return. The TV crew interviewed me too. All in a days work.

We started today visiting the Grand Mosque. It was built in 1988 for $20 million. Today's cost would be about $60 million. A volunteer gave us a great talk on Islam. I had gotten a lot of the background on Islam when I visited Egypt a few years ago, but this was much more in depth. It was a great overview of the religion and he explain how Jews, Christians and Muslims were all really one religion until the time of Moses, when the first spit occurred. I think I got that right. Too much detail to go into, but very enlightening. It really focussed on how we are more similar than different. Jesus is a prophet in Islam and Mary is held in very high esteem in Islam as well.

There has been a lot of disussion on the tour of the Muslim dress for women which I will try to go into more detail later. We also learned the difference between Shia and Sunni which is very interesting and relevant given all that is going on in the "rest of the Middle East". Bottom line is that they are historical/political differences, not religious. Bahrain is 60% shia.

The mosque holds 5000 people and Friday is their day of worship. Most things are closed on Fridays in the Middle East. Almost everything closes between 1pm and 4pm and then everyone returns to work. They go home, eat, pray and have a nap. In the summer temperatures can reach 50 to 60 degrees celcius, so taking those hot hours off is welcomed. Most muslims, even if they don't speak English, know the Qu'ran by heart - cover to cover....even older kids. Wow. I still wonder if I understood that correctly.

We then visited the Bahrain National Museum. It helped inform us of the history of the region and Island. It was the best museum I have ever been in. It is the second largest in the Middle East. The interesting thing in the region is that each Gulf Country tries to out do the next for the biggest this, the tallest that. They have the money to do so, so it gets ridiculous.

We then went across the King Fahd Causeway to the Saudi Arabian border. We couldn't enter because it is next to impossible to get in and they don't really even issue tourist visas. The causeway was built in 1986 for $1 billion US. Oh, gas is ten cents a litre here.

The Grand Mosque

My tour harem preparing to go into the Grand Mosque - a great group of ladies.

Our wonderful guide, Aili.

Our TV crew interviewing a sweet shop owner that we visited. This guy was actually on the cover of one of the big international travel magazines. He showed it to us and was very proud, as he should be.

This is as close as we got to Saudi (except that I will touch down there on my way home, but we won't be able to get off the aircraft.

At the Sheiks camel farm. White, black and brown juvenile camels.

Young camels frolicking.