The northern Gulf

I'm back in Dubai after my week of flying around the Gulf - 4 days, 4 flights and 8 more stamps in my passport.  It was the first time I'd been to Bahrain so great to have a look around.  Despite spending most of the time in the office, I did get out for a short tour of Manama with a colleague in the evening.  It seems like a very pleasant city with some interesting architecture, although had the same hallmarks that all these Middle Eastern cities do - a bit sandy and dusty with a scattering of tall buildings.  There is a lot of reclaimed land in Bahrain, with plans to create more, which seems odd when south of Manama there doesn't seem to be a lot else built on the island itself.  Our office is in the World Trade Centre which is a pretty smart building and a good ad for Atkins itself.

Bahrain World Trade Centre

We drove over the flyover that overlooks Pearl Roundabout, which was the focus point of the Bahraini protests earlier this year, where a number of anti-government protestors were shot dead by police.  The roundabout is closed now, to be eventually replaced by a system of traffic lights, but there were still a lot of police patrolling along the flyover to deter any trouble.  The pearl monument that used to sit in the centre of the roundabout was torn down by the government in March.  There are apparently still outbreaks of violence and protests, although these are now mainly confined to village areas rather than the capital.

Kuwait City

I'd spent a couple of days in Kuwait back in May, and this trip was pretty similar - split between the office and hotel.  The truth is that there is little to see or do in Kuwait City - while you might visit Bahrain or the UAE on holiday, there isn't much to attract tourists to the small state that borders Saudi Arabia and Iraq.  That said, it is still an interesting place, although is considerably more run-down and tired looking than Bahrain or Dubai, although they are investing in their infrastructure - they have plenty of money with which to do this given that they hold around 10% of the world's oil reserves.  The Liberation Tower is an impressive piece of work, named to symbolise the country's liberation from Iraq in 1991, and isn't far from where our office and that of our client is based.

Kuwait's Liberation Tower

The place seems to run on relatively disorganised chaos - the process to gain a visa on entry at the airport being a good example, the state of the traffic and adherence to rules of the road another - possibly the worst I've seen in the Middle East yet!

Despite thinking I was going to get stuck in Kuwait for the weekend (the airport printed the wrong departure gate on my boarding card, and then the flight departed about an hour late due to some mix up with the planes food trolleys or something), it's good to be back home and not be flying off somewhere else for a bit.  That said I'll be heading to Abu Dhabi tonight by coach to see Beady Eye play at Yas Island - mad for it as Liam might say...