Intercontinental Jubail

... a camel. Later on you might see a mirage of a camel. You may have seen the outskirts of a desert town. Later you might see a mirage of the desert town.<br><br>Well, we chugged along, and at around 1:00 PM, we made an entrance into the beautiful town of Al Taif. I was a bit awed. We had just entered, it was just after mid-day and there wasnt a soul on the mainstreets. Later it reminded me of some town in Austria (minus the greenery), with the feel of hills sloping down into the ...

17/10<br>Time to be honest. We're heading home.<br>The last country is a stop-over in Bahrain (for 2 hours) as we fly through the night back to England<br>We wanted to surprise a few folks so have sneaked home quietly.<br><br>Never the less, Bahrain International Airport looked very nice at midnight, all lit up. This small island state lies in the Persion Gulf alongside saudi ...

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<br>

... 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!]<br>

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

Well, a few of the girls at work and I got together and decided to take a weekend trip away... Was originally planned for Beirut, but as we couldn't get a timely enough flight for us all to be back at 12 for our Saturday shift, plans were changed to BAHRAIN!<br><br>Bahrain is a little island just off Saudi, with a booming economy, literally expanding coastline (a lot of it being reclaimed land) and is rapidly becoming the next Dubai... Very tourist-oriented, very ...

... bar but couldn't stay since you couldn't hear announcements up there and our plane wasn't on "the board" yet.<br><br>Mike grabbed McDonald's---a "McArabia" which he'd been eating all over here---a pita-like wrapper with chicken inside---it looked good.  We headed downstairs to see if we could track down some information on the flight via the airport transfers staff (unlike in the U.S., where each airline has dedicated re-booking and transfer staff, these ones are shared at the ...

... before I got picked up, but I got to straighten things out for my transport to the Bahrain airport later that day. <br><br>The guy that picked me up was a quiet Indian guy that worked in maintenance. I threw my bags in the bed of his truck and jumped in. The guy&#8217;s English was decent, but he wasn&#8217;t a natural conversationalist, and I didn&#8217;t force it much. <br><br>The shortened day ...

... gold (that&#8217;s less valuable, right?---question for Nan I guess). I wasn&#8217;t really interested in the first place, so we walked out and back to the mall/car. No way were we getting any decent deals with me there (blue eyes, Western business clothes, and little Arabic). <br> <br>Rode home and dropped off around 9PM. Watched TV, unpacked the laundry I had had done during the day, and worked on the last 2 days&#8217; entries until about 4AM.

... work and headed over to Erwin to see what he thought. He agreed and I offered to by all three (better safe than sorry on traveling start-ups). I wanted to look around a bit, but the store started closing for prayer, so we quickly bought the rollers and moved on. <br><br>Since it was going to be 30 minutes of shops closed for prayer, we decided to head over to our next stop Carrefour. On the drive over, you could hear the speakers blaring prayer outside the car ...