Kingdom of Bahrain - Unexpected Experience

When I was about to start my trip from Thailand to Germany, I was so not looking forward to what I was about to go through: 2 hours on a bus, 2 hours on taxis, 6 hours on trains, 2 flights 7 hours each, 10 hour layover. From Pattaya to Dresden my estimated travel time was nearly 40 hours!

To my surprise, upon arrival to Bahrain airport, where I was supposed to spend about 10 hours hanging out and doing a whole lot of nothing, I have been told to go throughimmigration. The angry looking arab stamped my passport and that little stamp was a 24 hour visa. As it turned out, Gulf Air arranged a hotel for all the poor ones with a huge layover - nice move.

Call me crazy, but no matter how tired I am, I would not trade a chance to see a foreign country, for a nice little nap!!! Although I was scared at first, some authorative people said it's ok to walk around. So, I found a map somewhere, asked hotel staff for advice and directions, and soon I was on my way to some Grand Mosque.




Bad news: The service was in progress and I couldn't go inside the mosque
Good news: I got to see the real thing - hundreds of men in white and women in black robes rushed in and out of the building, while the sounds of the prayer were coming out of the speakers installed on the roof of the building.








You can also see the modern buildings of the financial center behind the old mosque,
nice contrast.







Needless to say I was the only tourist there. The guard let me come into the hall of the mosquw, but not further. It felt sorta uncomfortable, but curiousity was stronger and the hotel taxi driver was there, waiting for me.










He took me to the central Market afterwards, which was near my hotel,
where I spent an hour just walking around and "soaking up the local culture".

Local shops sell tons of watches, electronics,
tapes, some very cheap crap and gold gold gold. There was also this guy selling globes.


OK, honestly, it's not as bad as it was in Egypt, where arabs expect tourists to be there,
so they try to talk to you, grab you and try to sell you something. In
Bahrain, I attracted a lot of attention, but nobody approached me. Although there were some women around,
it was pretty intimidating to be around all those men.
I am
not going to get into details about culture, I'm just going to say: I AM SO HAPPY I AM NOT PART OF IT!
Thank you mom and dad.

After buying a pair of HUGE "swiss made" watch for my grandfather (hope it will work), I've had enough.
I noticed an "Internet" sign and figured ahy not spend the remaining time in cyberspace.
The so called Internet cafe was an office from "Being John Malcovich" :) The ceilings were SUPER
low, so you had to really bend to walk around. There was not much place to do that though, the "cafe" only had one
computer :) It was just so random.

I left Bahrain feeling satisfied with my experience, but I don't think I will be coming there again!