We got our flight out of London at 8:30pm. We had to fly to Doha, Qatar first. Anyone heard of this place, we hadn’t! It is a small country near Saudia Arabia. I don’t know if it is part of the United Arab Emirates, but Qatar did not show up on the list of countries for the map on this site. So I choose the Emirates since it is right beside it.
We flew for about 6 hours into the night to get there. With the time change it had us landing at about 6:30am local time in Doha. Qatar airlines was excellent. The service was top notch. The plane was very modern. I think it was a 330 Airbus. It had a bit more space than other flights we have taken. The bathrooms were a bit bigger too, you could actually turn around in them. The entertainment had dozens of choices and you could start the shows when you wanted, they were not on a set time. They even had remote controls for the screens that came out of your armrest. There were on screen games as well to play, like Who wants to be a millionaire, Tetris, and many others. The food was great, hot towelettes were brought out several times. It was also the smoothest flight we had ever taken. Thumbs up for the airbus planes! Then when we landed and got to see the airport facility it and the plane confirmed this was definately and oil rich country that had money to burn.
When we go off the plane the sun was just sitting on the horizon in the distance. It was glowing over the sand. The landscape was flat desert for as far as you could see. We could harldy believe there was a city plunked in the middle of it. The temperature was already 26.C at 6:30am so you can imagine how hot it gets by midday here.
We entered the airport to find all kinds of interesting sites. The duty free shopping was incredible. You could shop to your hearts delight. It really felt different than anywhere we had ever been. You could definitely sense we were in the middle east. There were men all over in their full length white robes and white arab head dresses. Many women were completely covered in black with only their eyes exposed.
The airport was undergoing major construction and expansion, probably due to the Olympic Asian games they are going to be hosting here.
After a couple of hours we were on our next flight to Bangkok.