"Qatar is a country of extremes..."

said one of the archaeologists here.  And boy was she spot on.

For Eid we were given two nights in a very swanky resort.  Very swanky.  My roommate, the girl who intoned the quote above in reverent tones as we pondered our existence on the balcony, was later rather ill from overeating lobster for lunch.  This after we'd stuffed ourselves on fois gras (spelling anyone?) the lunch before.  We seriously over ate.  And did not drink a single drop of alcohol, even though there was a happy hour every night.  Too busy trying to digest while lying on feather beds trying to gear up to take ANOTHER BATH.

I managed to bathe three times in one day, one of those I did in milk and honey.  In the biggest bath tub EVER!  I was able to float on my back in it.  FLOAT.  On my BACK.  In MILK and HONEY and BUBBLES and ROSE PETALS.

It's a lot easier to float, by the way, if you've eaten ridiculous amounts of fattening goose liver.

The week after this luxurious weekend found us frantically digging a trench in the pouring rain trying to divert water from the parking lot, which was channelling directly into the tents, back out into the desert.  We were wet for days.  I had a leak in the corner of my tent and had to rearrange the room so that nothing was getting dripped on.  I've now added the extra blankets to my bed, the nights are rather cold.

This does not mean we haven't had a camel spider sighting in a while.  Oh no, one of the guys had one crawling up his leg while he was in BED.  But, as the guys in the tent point out, they've had Qataris, Japanese, scorpions and cats wander into their tent, why not camel spiders?

Fridays are great for tourists to come out and photograph themselves by our tents.  "And this is me standing by the Pakistani army tent in the desert in Qatar, because I've stupidly come to the conclusion that tents = bedouin and I'm not going to ask permission of the white people sitting over there staring at me because they are obviously only tourists too even if they come over and yell at me for going in and having a look around."

I don't know how many times I'm going to have to march up to someone and say "excuse me but this is my HOME and you can't go into it!"

I WAS going to upload some images, but the internet is too slow.  Our hotel you'll have to look up online: Sharq Hotel Doha and I'll have to find some other solution for the images I've taken of the camp.

Till then!