Pars International Hotel Manama

Out of the widow Bahrain looks like lots of dust with skyscrapers on. Inside it is a strange mix of Christmas decorations lots of tour groups who look like they might be going on pilgramage, 25k rolexes in duty free, mcdonalds,costa and free internet to keep us amused. We've got 2hrs to kill - body clocks already out of sink! Am going to try and learn some nepalese from a podcast.

... wee hours.<br><br>Well, towards early morning I got into a deep sleep, and when I awoke it was way past 7:00AM, and when I rubbed my eyes, thought AM I IN THE MIDDLE OF A FOLKTALE FROM THE ARABIAN NIGHTS! Well, the desert looked superb with the view looking somehow infinite but at the same time very defined ( I dont know how to describe that), and it was basically sand, hillocks and scattered shrubs. At this point, I wondered: exactly how far were we from Jeddah?. I mean, I ...

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 ...

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... insisted that I must pay not only the meter price but also additional fees, I didnt have change and couldn't argue the point. He got away with the money and I walked away disliking the whole country. I found a hotel that seemed to be within my budget. As I was shown to my room a couple of girls that looked thai said hello to me through their open doors. After negotiating the room down to the best price I could, the bellboy asked me if I wanted any girls. I then ...

... lobby was staring at me. When I got to the bar door, the bouncer said, "sorry sir, we don't allow prostitutes in our bar" ****, what an idiot, i just helped two prostitutes try and get into my hotel bar. So I immediately told the guy what happened and ran back to my room as the two prostitutes were being escorted out.... So in 10 mins in a 5 star hotel I was able to cause more problems then they had seen all week.

... which was entertaining but pretty mindless (a fitting review), we hopped back in the Explorer and went South to find the hash group for walking. James had gotten the coordinates from a contact and had his GPS. We got to the general location pretty easily, but got sidetracked and entered restricted property which was controlled by the Bahraini government. We realized this after we got stopped by a security patrol for ...

... complex, lurking deep in my unwashed hair, ate that one up. It had a field day with everyone else as well, mostly American and English businessmen who just looked like they were having a ball--red faces, cups of coffee in their hands, sunglasses, talking about deals and money and suits and cars and all that. I thought, they must be in paradise! This is what they went to business school for--to fly halfway around the world to a place where they could hobnob with the richest ...

... desert fighters.) We had a mixed plate and a greek salad. The mixed plate had spiced lamb pastie sort of things, which were just heavenly, spinach samosas, potato dumplings, hummus, lebneh, and "spicy sauce," as well as pita and some veggie garnish. Roswitha had a strong Turkish coffee, her first coffee in 6 months, while I had pomegranate juice. A short taxi ride took us to the Al Fateh Grand Mosque, which is open to non-Muslims. We had to remove our shoes, and Roswitha had to don ...

... they wouldn't work; she had forgotten to put the contraption on her head. We arrived in Bahrain to find that our flight to Rome was leaving at 1am the next day instead of 10.40pm. This would have been a disaster except that Gulf Air had provided a room in the rather sleazy Basrin Hotel, located right in the middle of nothing much. Our accommodation was modest to the point that it didn't include a bath towel, let alone tea and coffee making facilities ...