Bahrain Hilton Manama

Not much - just waiting at the airport for the flight! Bahrain was both nicer and more boring than I thought, the weather is a lot more forgiving but it's not worth more than about 3 days exploration tops.. Unless you like to get really nittygritty :P

... and also not having any male family members with us [women are not allowed to cross solo, nor are they allowed to drive in Saudi!], we didn't even bother to attempt to cross the real border to go into Damman [although I wanted to..], so Saudi exploration will have to wait until I'm married :P [I have no brothers and my dad would much rather go anywhere else but a hot desert!]

Bahrain!

Got here yesterday, the flight in was only an hour and you got a really good view of all of Qatar from the air! [stupid wing blocked photo ops though]. No problems so far, immigration was a breeze, found the hotel OK and after relaxing some more [yes, we're lazy!] my mum and I hunted down a taxi to see the few sights in the built up north of the island

Firstly we drove through the big banking district, and I was reminded of a less-trafficy, shorter ...

... was powerless to provide any.

Mike invited a bunch of guys for a beer and headed up to the airport bar.  I stuck around because it was clear now that with an 8-9 hour delay and a 6 hour layover, I wasn't going to make my connecting flight to Seiyun (I think I was "special" as the only one with this circumstance).  Eventually everyone wore themselves out berating her and knowing nothing would change, leaving me as the last one.  She had promised that there was a person that was ...

Last day in Saudi…woke up, showered, packed, and headed up to the usual breakfast. I called the front desk before I left and asked for a 9AM taxi. Breakfast was the same as before except this time there was mango juice. Was really good and reminded me of the stuff I had in Korea. Brushed my teeth and packed the last few items and went to check out. It took like 15 minutes to check out (U.S ...

... much the same way with mailing lists, with the difference that you are calling hundreds or thousands of people at the same time, and consequently you can expect a lot of people to get upset if you consistently send commands to the list address." V - Vision -- apparently having it is optional if you want to drive here. W - Windmill Building. It was built with three windmills in the middle to provide the building with energy. Unfortunately, because the engineers didn't take into ...

Yay for wonderful bed and sleep in! Oh, and yay for A/C too! I believe it was 36 degrees all day today. Our day got off to a bit of a late start. I slept in, and by the time we threw in a couple of loads of laundry and had breakfast, it was 1pm! We drove out to the tree of life. A big tree that grows in the middle of no where and no one can figure out why ...

... me for 6 dinars, I laughed at this knowing that no where in the city should cost more then 5, so I talked him down to 4. I probably still got ripped off, but he had the advantaged of knowing the distance to my hotel. The drive to my hotel was nice, fairly short and as it turns out my hotel is in a very good part of the city. I checked into my hotel room without any problems, tidy-ed myself up and hit the city. I can best describe Manama as a Dubai 10 ...

... would have not been a problem, but at the age of 35, having quit drinking heavily since 1992, drinking with this group was not one of my smartest moments. Fun as hell, but equally as painful the next day when we left port. I would love to tell you where we went, and what we did, but the facts are a bit fuzzy. I remember laughing a lot, playing pool, and I think I ate some chicken wings or something. The rest of the specifics elude me. So to sum up my 2005 visit to Bahrain ...