Ankur and Genny’s Meandering Tour

On Friday afternoon, we arranged for a dune bashing trip in Southern Qatar.  It's a pretty cool experience, and we definitely recommend it to anyone that has the opportunity to do so. 

Our driver had a Toyota Land Cruiser (another story on that) that we drove from the city to the outskirts of Sealine which is fairly close to Saudi.  Once reaching there, we saw some camels and then deflated the tires to about 18psi. 

Dune bashing is all about testing your driving skills and taking your 4x4 to its limits.  Genny kept grabbing my arm because of the steepness fo slopes and when we went around blind turns, etc.  Pretty cool.

It's actually a little dangerous also.  We saw a rolled over Land Cruiser which was pulled by another one.  They were cheering and laughing and having a good time.  Odd.

Alok is here visiting us for 2 weeks so we spent the first few days in Dubai. Compared to Doha it is a big bustling city with all the shops and amenities of any other big city in the world. Dubai is still growing though. On the map you see "u/c" next to everything which means under construction. Dubai has the most cranes than any other city in the world. I remember hearing once that a new company opens in Dubai everyday! Anyway despite Alok's jetlag and all the traffic in Dubai we managed to see quite a few things. We went to the Global Village which was part of the Dubai Shopping Festival (45 days of shopping craziness). They have different booths for countries around the world that sell "local" crafts. The booths are like Spring Carnival at CMU except on a much bigger scale and minus the booze. It was fun to go to countries where we would never normally go like Iraq, Saudi and Iran. Too bad Palestine wasn't open yet.

The next day we had lunch at the Burj Al-Arab (http://www.burj-al-arab.com). It was good to see for the sake of saying we've seen it now but not worth a second trip. No doubt this place is the definition of fancy but a bit excessive like everything in Dubai. They had a whole menu dedicated to different kinds of water! Alok had a mysterious truffle dish and I had some tasty art on a plate. My palate just isn't sophisticated enough to appreciate this kind of stuff. C'mon one of my favorite foods is a hot dog from Wrigley Field!

We hit the other big tourist spot next…Ski Dubai. We didn't go in though…skiing in the desert just doesn't feel right. We also tried seeing The Palms (the extraordinary new island residence where Trump is building a new hotel) but it's still under construction. We also went to Ibn Buttuta where the actual mall is more interesting than the shops. Each hall has a different country theme and the detail is amazing especially because it's just a mall!

All in all a good 3 days of good food and good fun. Alok may have a different story though…it was a lot of shopping for him :)

-Gen

Not only did Qatar make it to the finals for basketball but soccer as well. People here are crazy about soccer/football! We're lucky we got our tickets early and got to the stadium early. Originally the game was supposed to be at Al-Gharaffa stadium which holds 25,000 people. But since Qatar was in the finals, the head of the Asian Games and owner of Al-Sadd stadium requested the game be held at his stadium…or so the story goes. His stadium only holds 16,000 people. What happened to the extra 9,000 tickets sold? Tough luck! The game started at 4pm but you had to arrive between 1-3pm. We arrived at 2pm and had great seats. It turned out to be a beautiful day and fun game. Qatar won 1-0 but man those Iraq fans had spirit! They started chanting at about 3pm and didn't stop until after the medal ceremony.

Overall it was a really fun 2 weeks. I was really impressed with how they pulled everything together. I definitely had my doubts and was afraid the traffic would be horrendous. It was the opposite; all the events were well attended and organized. The venues are gorgeous and small enough so that you really feel the excitement. There was only one day when the main road was closed and it was pouring down rain which made the commute to work a hassle. It was sad when the games were over…I really had fun!!!!

-Gen

We went to see Taiwan play Qatar in the quarterfinals for basketball. There were probably about 5 fans for Taiwan including me, Ank and Dzila! Although there were only a few of us we were pretty loud. J Surprisingly the women or family section of the stadium was cheering really loudly for Qatar. It was an exciting but sad game. Taiwan was in the lead for the entire game until the very end when the score was tied. They went into double overtime. The first overtime should have ended with Taiwan winning except that the guy missed both free throws!! Unbelievable L I think by the second overtime they were just exhausted. Anyway, it was a really fun game to watch even though it was so sad to see Taiwan lose. In the end, the gold medal went to China who beat Qatar 59-44. Surprise surprise…China won 165 gold medals. The country with the second most gold medals was Korea with 58. More people here know China's national anthem than Qatar's by now.

-Gen

From Wikipedia: "Sepak Takraw (Kick Volleyball) is a cross between soccer and volleyball, a fast-growing and popular sport in Asia. A sight to behold is the smash, in which a player executes a bicycle kick to fire the ball into the opponent's court with great force. In contrast to soccer bicycle kicks, in which the players usually land on their backs (which would be both painful and dangerous on the hard sepak takraw pitch), sepak takraw players are agile enough to land on their feet again."

Sepaktakraw was my favorite event of the Asian Games. It was really amazing to see these athletes serve, spike and block with their feet! I have never seen anything like this. In addition to the crazy nature of the game the Myanmar fans were chanting their hearts out! I wish I had a recording of the fans…it was really fun to see everyone get so into the game.

-Gen

I went to my first Asian Games event tonight...the Qatar vs. UAE soccer game. What an experience. The Al-Sadd Stadium is really great...not too big but new and modern looking. There are no assigned seats so we were right by the goal only 4 rows back! The energy was fun and it was non-stop cheering...the 4 or 5 goals they made helped! To top it off the tickets were about $1.25 and food equally as cheap. But to get food you have to fight in line...you'd think they were giving away gold or something. It was pretty disgusting actually. My friend and I got attacked by a young boy...he literally punched and elbowed us to get through. But we stood our ground and didn't let him through. I have never experienced anything like this. The disgusting part is that the man responsible for this boy stood there and egged him on. All the men were encouraging this young boy's terrible behaviour. It wasn't just us he was pushing either, there were other children about the same age trying to protect their even younger sibling. The man responsible should really be ashamed of himself. He's certianly not doing the boy any good by not teaching him manners and respect.

When we finally got our drinks and snacks, the guards stopped us before returning to our seats. They removed the lid from our drink and then let us through. Why do they want us to spill pop everywhere? I'm not quite sure what the rationale behind that was. Are the plastic lids dangerous? I think spilled pop is worse especially when everyone is wearing white thobes.

They also had impressive looking guards all over the stadium...blue camoflage military uniforms w/riot police gear! Also the whole front row was some kind of volunteer security. All normally dressed guys but every time someone scored a goal the front row would stand and face the fans. Very strange.

Oh...one more funny thing...Qatar won a bronze in rapid chess and the women's name is Chen Zhu..strange.

And you've probably read the beach volleyball article on CNN...what a great picture and funny story.

Well, looking forward to seeing some other events...particularly sepaktakraw (volleyball but with your feet!).

Will post more pictures...

-Gen