HOT… very, very HOT!
Thought of assembling my bike but decided against it once I went out for a 1 minute walk around the hotel and was immediately drenched in sweat.
There are some “safaris” available and some city tours you can get but besides being expensive, it requires a minimum of 3 people… so for a less money and more freedom I rented a car.
Desert and construction sites… massive structures… but mainly it feels like there is a lot of building and not enough people to fill all of these spaces and monuments. On the highway you see only trucks moving sand from one pile to another… here is a quick video… at the end, note that the car starts beeping if I go over 120 km/h! No way to turn it off… goes well with the no alcohol policy that exists here (only foreigners can buy/drink alcohol in certain bars of certain hotels…

In the cities you see “strip malls” selling everything from Jaguars, Bentleys to Fouchon from Paris, car parts, food and furniture. Went into one of the many huge malls they have around here. The mall is inspired in Venice – there even are some gondolas! Shopping is their self proclaimed pass time – I guess there is not much else to do when you have so much money – you shop until you drop 🙂 Here is a quick video of the locals shopping – since it is “rude” to take pictures of the men and practically forbidden to take pictures of the women here, I just held the camera as if it was off when filming:

And another one of the new area where all the new hotels are being built.

It is so HOT that at one point my camera simply refused to take pictures… I guess the level of humidity and the heat sent it into error…
In any case, after a little bit it decided to cooperate and I managed to keep on shooting:

Doha