R&R in Qatar

I'm on my last full day in Qatar, so I figured it was time for an update. My downtime here has been pretty decent. The food has been great (among other things, they have actual green lettuce!), the plumbing all works, the air doesn't make me choke, and the other cars on the street are unlikely to explode.

On the one hand it's all pretty awesome. On the other hand, it's kinda sad that this registers as awesome. In fact, on day 2 I found myself sitting in the bathroom and I was so overwhelmed by how clean it was that I almost didn't want to leave. I actually started thinking of ways that I could spend my whole day in the stall, just enjoying the cleanliness. Clearly my head needs to be recalibrated.

But I digress.

Since I arrived at about 0300 on the first day, that day counted as a travel day and not one of my four alloted R&R days. Once we were bussed over to Camp As-Sayliyah from the Air Force base where we landed, we were all briefed on what we can and can't do while we're here. We are allowed to have up to three drinks per day. We are not allowed to take pictures of the base itself. We are allowed to wear civilian clothes. We are not allowed to buy knives out in town. There's more, but it's not important.

While I'm here I'm sharing a room with seven other officers. The most junior is an Army captain and the most senior is a lieutenant colonel, but I don't see much of them. There are a lot of tours that are available for the asking, but mostly I've just been glad that I don't have to wake up early in the morning and go sit in an office for hours on end. It's better doing nothing here than it is doing nothing in a combat zone.

Since I'm not allowed to take pictures while I'm out and about on the base, I've had to settle for pictures indoors as well as out in town. Here's the view inside the "Top Off" club. Essentially it's the back half of a warehouse with bars built inside. There's also a small bowling alley, concert stage, hi-speed wireless internet, and so on.



In the same building they have the USO. It's loaded with high-end home theater setups, a whole host of video game consoles, a Green Bean coffee shop, and dozens of desktop computers and telephones so folks can browse the web or call home. It really is a pretty good deal.

One of the really impressive parts is the DFAC (Dining FACility for those of you who haven't been exposed to Army stupid) which is huge. By huge I mean a building that should be measured in acreage. There's every kind of everything you could choose to eat and lots of it. There's even a Breyer's ice cream bar inside.

I ended up sleeping through most of day zero of my R&R, but I was awake in time to grab my three drinks (they only serve alcohol from 1800 to midnight) and poke around online for a bit.

On day one I took the tour of the local "souqs" or markets. The first stop was at the gold souq, where they sell all manner of jewelry and gemstones. I ended up not buying anything there because I really didn't know what I was looking at and couldn't guess what any of it was worth.

The next stop was at the "old souq" which turned out to be pretty interesting. On the outside it was every bit the exotic, middle-eastern locale:


And on the inside it did not disappoint:

The whole place was an amazingly complex labyrinth, chock full of random knick-knackery, antiquities, and handicrafts. While it was all interesting to look at, none of it turned out to be anything I needed. While we were there, a couple of the guys and I decided to stop at a hookah bar and try some grape-flavored tobacco.

I may be limited to three drinks a day, but nobody said how much hookah smoke I could have:

There was also no limit to how much paint I could huff, but I didn't get around to that.

On day two I woke up in time for breakfast. Then I ended up camping out on base, wandering through the little base exchange and getting caught up on some reading. It was a pretty laid-back day and I had a good time. I also spent some time on one of the USO's XBOX360s and very nearly beat HALO 3 in the morning. While I've been gone the wife bought a Wii, so I may need to get myself a 360. We'll see.


On day 3 I went to the Villagio Mall, easily one of the most ridiculously ostentatious monuments to capitalism I've ever seen. Supposedly it's based on the Venetian in Las Vegas. I've never been there, so I'll have to take their word for it. All I know is that it's been a long time since I've seen such an overwhelmingly flamboyant display of affluence:

I need one.

For the most part, the stores inside are your standard collection of readily recognizable Western stores. Like Louis Vuitton:

The whole place is designed to give you the feeling you're actually walking around Venice. I've never been there either, but I do like the idea of building the outdoors indoors. I'm not sure how, but I plan on using this concept somewhere else sooner or later:

This miniature version of Venice even included canals:

Complete with gondolas:


If that wasn't goofy enough, there's also a full-sized ice-skating rink in one end of the mall. I sat and watched a few minutes of a hockey game there while I had some Coldstone ice cream. It wasn't exactly what I'd've anticipated doing during my vacation in the middle of the desert, but it was a good time all the same.

Just like any mall in the US, they had cars for sale by local dealers on display in the concourses:

Of course, theirs are a little more exotic than ours:

This is a Swedish-made Koenigsegg. I want one of them too.


It's not the 4,172cc, 806hp V8 engine that makes me want it though. Nor is it the 4,450,000 Qatari riyal (about $1.22million) price tag, or the 3.2 second 0-100 km/h accelleration. It's the all carbon fiber body with the visible laminate that really caught my eye. It looks like a really shiny grey color in the above pictures, but the real beauty of the body is only apparent when you look closer:

The down side: carbon fiber composites like this usually turn yellow and look pretty nasty after prolonged exposure to UV radiation. So the car will be gorgeous until it sits in the sun for too long. At that point, the only way to make it pretty again is to replace the entire body. I suppose that's really not a problem though unless you plan on leaving it parked outside for a few years.

There was a lot of other expensive stuff to be had there though. Like this $4,000 mirror:


It didn't take long to decide I didn't need the mirror, but I almost decided to buy this $400 checkers set (probably just because it was shiny):


In the end I settled for a cup of Starbucks coffee (21 Qatari riyals, or about $6 US) and called it good enough:


To be honest, as interesting as the place was, I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I stopped in the Carrefour store (essentially Europe's answer to Wal Mart) and was overwhelmed by the crowds. The locals are more of a cologne people than a bath people and they don't seem to have the same regard for personal space that we do in the US. So after squeezing my way through the throng to pick out a few things I decided I needed and waiting in line with a bunch of stinky folks who weren't shy about pushing or leaning against me, it was time to go back to the base. At this point I've got about a hundred dollars worth of Qatari riyals in my pocket and absolutely no desire to go out and spend them.

Day four (today) started whenever I woke up (around 1400). It's been pretty low-key so far. I'm halfway through my third glass of wine and I've just found out that I will be flying out tomorrow evening. This gives me most of the day to putter around, get packed, and so on. It also means that I can stay up late tonight with no concern for when I need to wake up.

Since I flew here on a jam-packed C-130 and the whole crowd of us are flying back at the same time, tomorrow will be another opportunity for a really jacked-up air travel story. Fun.

Stay tuned.

On My Way to Qatar

This particular little adventure started with me waking up in my cage at HQ ISAF in Kabul. The time was 0600ish. I grabbed my crap and headed over to the office where I met up with Greg (our driver), DJ (another Navy LT), and a new USArmy major who is going to be working in my office for a while. It was a nice day by Kabul standards, with only the slightest hint of murk in the air:


The plan was to take off at 0700 for the Kabul airport so I could hitch a ride on a flight to Bagram Airfield where I'd find my way off and away and out of Afghanistan for a bit. The new major would be joining me so I could run him around Bagram and introduce him to all of the personalities that he'd have to work with in the course of his time at the HQ. DJ was along for the ride so that Greg wouldn't have to drive back from the airport alone. In Afghanistan, driving alone is a dangerous proposition.

We got to the Kabul International Airport at about 0740, just in time to learn that a flight had left for Bagram at 0736. Then we got put on the standby list for a flight that was leaving at 1400. The flight only had seven manifested passengers, but it also only had eight seats. We were in place seven and eight on the standby list.

As luck would have it, almost none of the manifested passengers showed up for the flight. We handed off our baggage, armor, and helmets to an Air Force NCO so he could load them onto the plane and then followed a civilian out to our aircraft. The plane looked like it was probably state-of-the-art in 1969 and the pilot looked like he might have been a veteran of the CIAs "Air America" network in Southeast Asia in about the same timeframe. In his words, "you'll want to wear your earplugs, because the aircraft's pretty loud. But fortunately, it makes up for it by being slow."

The flight time from Kabul to Bagram was about ten minutes. Along the way I snapped a few pictures of the Afghan countryside from the air, complete with smog:


Although I didn't have any reason to doubt the pilot's abilities, the view through the cockpit windows was a tiny bit unsettling:


Once we landed in Bagram I checked in with the reception desk and found out that folks like me going to Qatar had to attend a brief the following morning at 0830 and then it'd be an unknown number of hours or days until I'd catch a flight out from there.

Having checked in, it was time to grab our luggage. This is when we found out that the new major's body armor didn't get loaded onto the plane. Hopefully it will turn up somewhere. I was told that if I lost mine I'm liable to pay for it (somewhere around $4,000), so it could really suck for him.

Once we found a place to stay (a cot in a tent with 120 other random dudes) we spent the rest of the afternoon with me showing him around the regional command headquarters. After dinner, I ended up poking around online for a few minutes and then it was time to turn in early.

The 0830 brief the next day turned out to be quick and painless. We were warned about all the things that wouldn't make it through customs in Qatar. This included guns, knives, human body parts, drugs, alcohol, and porn. Porn apparently includes things like swimsuit magazines. Who knew?

Anyway, we were able to catch a flight to Qatar the same day. Muster time at 1600 for a departure around sunset on a C-130. So after dicking around for the bulk of the day, I returned to the passenger terminal with all of my crap, set my luggage on top of a pallet of luggage to be loaded onto the plane, and squished myself into the plane along with about fifty other folks bound for leave or R&R, complete with our body armor:


The flight was six hours long, the seat made my butt numb in the first ten minutes, and there was no bathroom (hence the water bottle stuck to my laptop case, just in case). I couldn't find a way to fall asleep, so I had to feel every minute of that six hours. I felt like this guy:


Needless to say, I was pretty damned glad to get back off of that aircraft once we landed in Qatar.

After landing we had to go through customs and about a dozen more warnings about the consequences of bringing weapons, ammo, alcohol, porn, or whatever else into the country. Then it was time to wait for the busses that would cart us over to the R&R compound. While we were waiting, we got to go over to the "grab-n-go" flightline kitchen and get something to eat. I snagged the first salad I've seen in three months that actually included green lettuce. It was awesome.

Then it was a quick two-hour bus trip before we got to sit through a couple more briefs on what was available in Qatar as well as what to do and what not to do. I'm not allowed to take pictures inside the base, but hopefully I'll see a few worthwhile sights when I get out on the organized tours of the nearby areas. We'll see.

Stay tuned...

Gearing Up for R&R

Since I'm at the halfway point, I'm apparently entitled to a four-day vacation (a 96-hour pass in Armyspeak) to the charming, exotic, far-away place called Qatar. For those of you who don't know, Qatar is pronounced "gutter," so my expectations aren't especially high.

In order to get to Qatar, I first have to find my way to Bagram Air Field. In order to make it as easy as possible, I was going to hitch a ride with the base chaplain tomorrow. We used to be roommates back when we were still in transient billeting before we were moved to our permanent rooms. Now we're neighbors. Since is also going on R&R at the same time as me and he has a hookup with the folks that run back and forth to Bagram to re-stock our little post exchange with junkfood and deodorant, he was able to get us a couple of seats in the empty truck on it's way out.

Bummer of it is, the truck was rescheduled and he ended up leaving today. I found out when I called him to find out what time we were heading out tomorrow and he said there was a change of plans and he'd actually arrived in Bagram just an hour before I called. Apparently he'd forgotten all about me. Now instead I'll be hitchhiking to the airport where I'll hopefully be able to find myself a seat on any one of the several flights from Kabul to Bagram scheduled every day.

I'm not exactly thrilled about the idea of going to Gutter. From what I'm told, the first and last days of my four day vacation will be spent on briefs and paperwork while they teach us all about what's off-limits (everything) and what's permitted (not much) while we're there. From what I'm told I'll be allowed to leave the base if I'm lucky enough to get on any of the few guided tours (which I'll get to pay for) and I'll even be allowed to have as many as two alcoholic beverages per day.

The getting there and back will be pretty interesting too. Once I get to Bagram I'll be briefed on how to get a flight and so on. Then I'll be placed in the lowest bracket of standby for travel. Then I'll get to wait for one to as many as eight days for space on a flight to Gutter. The same sort of thing will happen on the way back. So my four-day vacation could be bracketed by as much as a week of waiting in passenger terminals before and afterwards.

Yay.

The whole thing sounds like such a pain in the ass that I'm not even sure why I'm bothering. I figure doing nothing in Qatar has to be at least as much fun as doing nothing in Kabul. At least I'll be able to see a bit of ocean if I'm lucky.

I guess we'll see how it goes. For now I'm trying to decide what I'll need to pack for the trip. So far I've set aside a couple of books, a couple of weeks worth of underwear, my laptop, and a few vomit bags.

More to come. Stay tuned.