Exploring Doha, Qatar — 1
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Doha metro was probably the cleanest, the most shiny and luxurious I’ve taken all over the world. Like in the airport, they took every possible opportunity to advertise Expo 2023. The red line metro goes all the way north to Lusail, the second-largest city in Qatar about 25km north of Doha. I would take the red line and transferred once to the yellow line today.
The seats, the floor, the screens…..Doha metro looked like the gran class of some sort of luxurious Japanese trains. World class metro was not something one would expect in this part of the world.
Exiting the metro at Souq Waqif station, the old market that is arguable Doha’s most important attraction. But I decided to go rest a bit in my hotel first. Via Qatar Airways stopover programs, I booked a hotel with $27 a night.
The hotel looked close to Souq Waqif on map, but walking there was a different story, thanks to my sleep deprivation, heavy backpack and the desert sun. Outside Souq Waqif was the not-so-touristy area of Doha, with stores selling food, cloth and electronics to locals, or more specifically the expat workers working here to support their families at home. Qatar is a country where only 10% of residents are citizens, while the remaining 90% are immigrant workers from South Asia or Southeast Asia. They often work in horrendous, exploitative conditions, behind the scenes to create the superficial luxury and fanfare of this country, such as the fiesta an year ago known as the FIFA World Cup.
Walking in an area packed with one hotel after another, I was impressed by the density of hotels that I had never seen in other countries. Qatar’s entire travel industry built upon layover passengers staying here for a day or two, which apparently provided a huge market for hotels. But behind the facades of these hotels lied some less attractive and polished parts of Qatar. A block or two away from the main road, I spotted some open construction sites and dumpsters by the road.
I thought this served as the epitome of Qatar itself — a country looking so fancy at its surface, but with many social issues hidden beneath.
Next to this weird looking building was a monument of Doha Asian Games 2006, my first impression of Qatar when I heard it on the news as a child. Fast forwarding less than 2 decades, the country had managed to host the biggest sports event not of Asia, but of the entire world (though via means not without controversies).
The hotel staff was kind enough to let me check-in so early; the room was also a lot nicer than what 27 dollars normally get me. After taking a much needed shower, I suffered from a combination of cold, allergy, exhaustion, jet-leg etc and could no longer tell what caused my specific symptoms. I tried to sleep a bit on the bed, only to realize the air-conditioning was set way too cold (some 20 degrees Celsius) in the room. My circadian rhythm also kept stopping me from sleeping in peace.
Finally hunger prevailed. I ended this half-asleep half-awake cycle around noon. The Pakistani restaurant I found on Google map was the only eatery nearby, and it turned out to be within another hotel.
There were no other customers dining there. But to my surprise, food here was pretty affordable. Also considering the price of my hotel, prices in Qatar seemed a lot lower than what I would have expected in this small oil-rich gulf state. Perhaps the price reflected to some extent the income of the vast majority living here, the underpaid immigrant wage workers.
Here comes my first meal in Qatar — fried rice. Before you laugh, Pakistani Chinese cuisine is actually a real thing. This huge plate of fried rice didn’t taste like ordinary Chinese fried rice at all (because of some special spices?), but I’m extraordinarily bad at describing food, so I’ll skip that part. The small sweet milk tea, Karak Chai, originated in the Indian subcontinent, but was prevalent in the gulf thanks to the immigrants. In fact, the two waiters in this restaurant (so as most servers, waiters, and taxi drivers I would meet here) were both Pakistani immigrants who barely spoke English.
After the huge meal, I hopped on an Uber to the Expo site, the most important reason that brought me to Qatar this year. Given how much the entire government had been advertising it, it must be a fancy one, hopefully rivaling its neighbor UAE’s Expo 2020?
- Exploring Doha, Qatar 2 — Expo 2023
- Exploring Doha, Qatar 3 — Souq Waqif
- Exploring Doha, Qatar 4 — Doha Port, National Museum of Qatar
- Doha — Ho Chi Minh city Qatar Airways QR974 Flight Report / Vietnam arrival
