Spring Break-Jeffrey visits Qatar

My brother, Jeff, came to visit for a week at the very end of March.  Here are some highlights....

Islamic Museum of Art pictured below.  There was a big festival in the park to the right of the museum.  One of the "highlights" was the opportunity to eat dinner suspended from a huge crane, a couple hundred feet in the air...this country is strange....Sergey's highlight was jumping on the trampoline.  Not sure how to turn the video around.

Then we headed into the desert.  Every newbie to Qatar needs to go on a dune bashing ride.  At one point the driver drove backward down a HUGE sand dune.  We also went swimming in the Gulf at the little "camp" that the tourist company has set up.  It was unexpectedly quite cold, considering the temperature outside. 

Untouched Qatar....perhaps a bit more of the country should be left this way.

 Sergey got a front row seat...

No trip to the desert is complete without a bit of ATV riding.

On to the camel races...now this is something to see!   About 35 minutes west of where I live is a huge camel track.  For weeks, I tried to find out which day/time might be a race.  It's not easy to find out this sort of information.  I kept being told to just head west on Duhkan Rd in the morning and even if there aren't races, you'll see lots of camels.  So we went.  Wow!  I'm not sure how to describe it, but I definitely felt like I wasn't in the same country anymore. 

Men (from Oman? Yemen? who exercise the camels)

 Now that small children are no longer used to race the camels (thankfully), little robots do the job.  This is what they look like.  The whips move in a circular motion getting the camel to keep running.  Not sure how much it hurts the animal of course...





Video of the camels exercising.

Momma and baby camel with trainer

And now for the grand event!  We saw a race on a big screen and drove over to watch it, only to realize that we were about to be run over by the speeding vehicles cheering on the actual race...so we decided to join in.  The funny part is that I have a little Honda City, and everyone else had a Land Cruiser.  Camels can keep up a pace of 40 km over the course of the 1 mile (give or take) track.


Camel Races Qatar 2013

 Next, we fly to Dubai.  I thought it was a great idea to fly there and back in 1 day...not so smart.  One looonnngg day, but fun. 

 That would be Sergey about to ride down the snow hill in a huge ball....actually Jeff did it too!

 The contrasts in this photo are incredible.  Snow tubing inside a mall, with people watching from restaurant and store windows, and look who is about to ride down the hill!  An Arab man and woman, dressed in traditional clothing, with huge winter coats on top.

 There is even a chair lift. 

Can't forget the penguins!
I was most looking forward to the penguin encounter, but it was rather uneventful.  They have it set up as essentially a photo taking (with professional photographers only, of course) opportunity.  They are very cute though.

 Burj Khalifa-the tallest building in the world. (by a lot)  It's rather impressive and the views amazing....

 

My favorite part of Dubai?? A genuine Texas Roadhouse, complete with peanuts, country music, and baseball on TV!

I am not ashamed to admit that I really liked Dubai because it feels very western.






This was a real treat...I had done zero research on Dubai so I didn't even know they have a fountain show.  Disney has it's work cut out for them....


Dubai Mall fountain April 2, 2013

The last thing we did was go to a hotel pool/beach for some sun, beach kayaking and swimming.

It was GREAT to have a familiar face here in Qatar, even if only for a week.  11 more weeks until we are in the States for the summer.  Yay!

ATVing between Al Wakra and Sealine Beach

 Today was our first go at ATVing in the desert.  Well...we were sort of in the desert, just before the highway comes to a dead end and the true sand dunes emerge.  Since Sergy's not driven anything other than an "old-fashioned antique car" amusement park ride or a go-cart, I felt it was prudent to not head up into the sand dunes.  O.k., I'm also not the best driver around...Didn't want any causalities on our first try.  It was great fun though.

 One of many, many traditional Qatari desert homes.  Families live in the city, but usually have a tent or series of tents pitched somewhere in the desert and sleep there on weekends until the weather becomes too hot. 

If you look closely, you will see trash lying on the ground.  Unfortunately the idea of placing things in a proper trash can has not exactly taken hold over here. :(

Another one of many....a petroleum plant.  There are actually no photography signs all around the petrol plants, but I'm not exactly trying to copy their engineering or anything. :)

Patara Elephant Farm

 

 Aside from seeing my dear friend and her family, Patara Elephant Farm was the highlight of our trip.  I had done quite a bit of research many months ago because I wanted to find just the right place to visit with elephants in Chiang Mai.  In my opinion (as well as thousands of others on TripAdivsor, etc.) this is the best place.  The owners are Thai, and they started taking in abused/neglected elephants 14 years again, but only started having people come and visit, and thus generate income 8 years ago.  The vision of the owners, Pat and Dong, is for the 'elephant owner for a day' program to be education focused.  In fact, I had to send an email several months outlining why I was choosing their organization to visit.  They only want people to visit who truly want to learn about the animals.  Only 16-20 people visit per day, despite the fact that they have more than twice as many elephants.  In the past 14 years, they have successfully integrated 8 or 9 elephants back into the jungle, and 8 or 9 babies have been born.  The group of 16 was broken into two, so we were with only 6 other people which was really nice.  We each had an elephant trainer with us, just in case, and also to help with commands, etc.  Also, to make sure we were doing a proper job!

 The first step was to greet our elephant.  Because I knew that I did not want to ride the elephant through the jungle, Sergey and I shared.  Everyone else had their own. 

 Above is our elephant, pronounced Make-a-poe.  She is a 35 year old female.  She was great!  Before greeting her, Ben, the Thai head trainer/vet extraordinaire told us to make sure that her ears were waving and her tail wagging.  He said that this means happy, healthy elephant.  We went close to her face, so that she could see us.  (by the way, an elephants eyes are so much like a human's...it's obvious that they are looking into your eyes to sense if you are safe)  We fed her loads of bananas and a tamarind as a treat.  We had to touch her face and say "Didi Make-a-poe."  Good girl, Make-a-poe.

 After making friends with her, Ben taught us the 4 ways to check if an elephant is physically and mentally happy.  First, check to see if she is happy.  (ears and tail)  Next, check to see if her toenails were sweating.  This is the only place an elephant sweats.  Inspecting both sides of the elephant came next to see if both sides were dirty.  If yes, that is a good indicator that she is healthy, as it means she slept lying down on both sides in the night.  A sick elephant sleeps standing up, and if an elephant lies down and cannot get up, it will die within 24-48 hours.  I think because they have to eat so often.  Ben said "elephant like little machine.  Eat, eat, eat, 3 hours go by, then poop!"  On the left is the last of the 4 steps...poop inspection.  It should not smell bad--it doesn't, smells like fertilizer.  Then we had to count how many, "Only 2 or 3 overnight, sick elephant.  5 or 6, healthy elephant."  Next, we had to squeeze it to see if water came out.  "No water, elephant not drinking enough."  Finally, the fiber check, to see if the fibers flaked off easily.  One more thing to check is whether both sides of the elephants face have equal tear stains.  If not, the elephant is not well.
 
 

  After making sure that she was healthy, we had to wash her.  First, brushing off dirt and leaves, etc.  and then scrubbing her in the water.  It took about 45 minutes.  Domesticated elephants have to be cleaned, just like domesticated dogs.  It is hard work!  Wish I could get Sergey to work so hard on something I ask him to do!

 Above is Cha, our elephant trainer.  He was really great.  Young guy, maybe early 20s or late teens. 

 

 

All clean!  Ready for some exercise...elephants need a lot of exercise in order to properly digest their food every 3-4 hours.  If you see an elephant in the zoo swaying back and forth, it has digestive problems and is trying to simulate movement, since it doesn't have much space to walk.  After living like this for a while, Ben said they become mentally unhealthy and often unfriendly. 

Sergey climbed up on Make-a-poe like a pro...made it look so easy.  Most of the adults had difficulty. 

 

 

 Success!!  Sergey and the others then went on an hour long trek through the jungle.  I went with Ben to where the babies and mommas are.  I played with a 4 month old girl named Harah (rhymes with Sarah).  She was too funny!  I didn't have my camera with me, but she was so playful.  A man was bathing her mother, and Harah kept walking underneath her mom, rolling on the ground, scratching herself against trees, and plowing into me to test her strength, knocking me on the ground several times!  She kept curling her trunk around my arms and legs too. 

 

 

 

 

 

 Two water buffaloes, completely covered in mud.  I'm glad we didn't have to clean them!  When was finished, we fed Make-a-poe some more bananas and bamboo leaves, and bid her farewell.  I forgot to mention that before the jungle trek, we were served a traditional Thai meal, Thai style, on the floor. 

 
This is definitely a day we won't soon be forgetting!