Events of Thursday 8th May 2014
Leaving Yangon
I was leaving the Strand Hotel too early to take breakfast in the cafe, but an excellent light breakfast was served in my room. My 'regular' driver was waiting for me in reception, so we were on the road to the airport in good time. Check-in was painless, so I was soon making my way upstairs and passing through immigration. Check-in staff had told me that Qatar Airways now have their own lounge so all I had to do was find it. With that task successfully completed, I was welcomed into the lounge, which was nicely appointed and gave views over both the Departure Hall and the Stand which our aircraft would use.
The Qatar Airways Lounge at Yangon Airport.
The inbound A319 aircraft from Doha was a little late arriving.
The inbound aircraft taxis to the Stand.
Arrival would trigger a flurry of activity - passengers off, luggage and cargo unloaded, crew off. Cleaners would rapidly prepare the aircraft for the flight back to Doha. A new crew would take over the aircraft, luggage and cargo be loaded and eventually the waiting passengers (including me) would board. Depending upon the flight details, the aircraft might need to upload more fuel, water, catering supplies or empty the lavatory tanks. I only saw some of these activities.
The new Crew gather at the Gate waiting to board the aircraft.
I saw the new crew go on board and before long, a Boarding Call was made and the waiting passengers began to empty the Departure Hall and make their way to the aircraft. Before long, I'd moved to my comfortable seat in the front cabin of the A319.
Passengers waiting in the Departure Lounge for the Boarding Call.
We left Yangon a little late and we still a little late when, hours later, we touched down at Doha Airport in Qatar.
Arriving in Doha
On the eastbound leg, I'd been able to transit at Doha, leaving one aircraft and joining another with passing through Immigration. But, travelling westbound, the times of the flights didn't allow that so I'd arranged a hotel for one night. This meant purchasing a visa on arrival. The lady Immigration officer asked if I wanted to purchase a visa, I said yes and handed over a credit card and in moments it was done.
I'd booked (and paid for) a transfer by car to my hotel. My itinerary said I was to find my driver at a particular Car Hire Desk in the Arrivals Hall. Here's where the plan unravelled. I found the correct desk but no driver. The Desk was manned by one man who seemed to be completing a car hire for a waiting businessman. It appeared to be an unusually complicated hire because it was twenty minutes before I succeeded in getting the car hire guy to acknowledge my presence. I showed him my booking receipt and the made a quick call on a mobile, with some reluctance it seemed to me. "Wait over there - the car is coming from the parking garage" he announced, quickly disappearing with his customer and a form to log pre-existing body defects on the car he'd hired.
After another 30 minutes waiting (neither the booked car nor the car hire guy had appeared), a rather grumpy Jan accepted a quote from one of the drivers looking for trade and we walked out of the air-conditioned terminal into the dry heat of Qatar and across to the parking garage. The car was an up-market, modern saloon (with air conditioning, of course) and once we were under way, my mood quickly improved.
By Road to the Hotel
The city appears to have developed initially around a semicircular bay, open to the Gulf in the east. The bay has a pedestrian promenade, Al Corniche, somewhat reminiscent of a Victorian seaside town. On the landward side of the promenade, there's a multi-lane highway called Al Corniche Street, always teeming with traffic. Further inland there are more roads, concentric with the promenade.
At the southern end of the bay, Doha Port and Qatar Flour Mills have been built incorporating a series of jetties and reclaimed land, jutting out into the Gulf. The airport is on more reclaimed land south of the city and the road we took from the airport led onto Al Corniche Street. Near a monument called The Pearl, the Museum of Islamic Art is actually built in the bay and a little further west, there is the smaller Dhow Harbour which also appears to be formed from modern jetties and reclaimed land. There's a satisfying tangle of wooden boats here.
View of the amazing skyline from across the Bay.
Continuing around the bay, the buildings on the landward side become taller, each vying with the next to be more preposterous than its neighbour. Near the northern end of the bay, Al Corniche Street moves inland a little and the space between the road and the promenade is Sheraton Park, with the Msheireb Enrichment Centre set in the bay, like a small version of the Museum of Islamic Art. Nearby is the oddly-shaped Sheraton Doha Resort and Convention Hotel. Al Corniche Street continues slightly inland (there's a large building site on the seaward side) and enters the Diplomatic Area, which is now also home to a number of hotels including the Movenpick Tower and Suites, where I was booked.
Movenpick Tower and Suites, Doha
Of course, this hotel is unashamedly modern (there's also a somewhat older Movenpick in Doha which I'd spotted on my journey from the airport).
Movenpick Tower and Suites, Doha.
Any reservations I might have had were quickly dispersed by the friendliness of the check-in staff. They upgraded me to a suite for the night (which didn't hurt, either). A porter took me up in the lift and showed me the accommodation. The large lounge area had a curved picture window along the seaward side giving good, but not uninterrupted, views of the Bay because a number of multi-storey buildings lay between the Movenpick and the sea. I was quite content, even though the decor was a little 'jazzy' for my taste.
View of the lounge, with the bedroom beyond.
A Walk in the Sun
Although tired, I thought I ought to explore a little outside the hotel and decided on a walk around the district. It was already clear that Doha is not a place intended for walking - cars, preferably large and expensive, are the normal means of transport. It was also quite hot, of course but, having applied a dose of sun screen, I left the hotel and started to walk south.
The wide roads are normally provided with broad pavements but I quickly discovered that all the building and road projects under way meant that many of the pavements were impassable. Displaying my trademark stubborn streak, I pressed on, meeting only construction workers toiling in the hot sun, all swathed in high visibility clothing and hard hats which I would have found intolerable. Of course, Qatar, in common with other Gulf States, tends not to use its citizens for hard manual labour. Rather, it admits 'Guest Workers'. As Qatar prepares for the contentious Football World Cup it has been awarded, there has been frequent criticism of the number of construction-related accidents affecting guest workers.
I discovered that the large building site near the Sheraton Doha Resort and Convention Hotel being developed by Qatari Diar will become a car park with three subterranean levels topped by a park. I walked across Sheraton Park towards the Bay. I was amused that the adventure playground was fitted with some form of canvas roof as a sun screen. However, there were no happy families, just the ubiquitous construction workers.
Looking across the Bay, I could see Doha Port. The deck cargo on an unidentifiable ship with stern ramps comprised new lorries and buses, presumably about to be unloaded. Nearby, an area held stacks of shipping containers. Another ship I was able to identify afterwards was 'Rising Eagle', home port Kingston. This is a bulk carrier built in Japan in 1995 and earlier called 'Full City'. Her four large deck cranes were all deployed. She was tied-up next to a tall, white building which I presumed was Qatar Flour Mills. Since I spotted this ship, she has travelled to Kandla (India) and back to Abu Dhabi. Later, I watched another ship arrive. This had distinctive lines of a Car Carrier, presumably bringing another consignment of top-of-the-range cars to Qatar. I identified the ship later as 'Aphrodite Leader' operated by NHK Lines, Panamanian-flagged and built in 2007. Since my sighting, this ship has been to Laem Chabang (Thailand), Singapore, Jeddah (Saudi Arasbia) and, at the time of writing, is in the Red Sea heading south. Modern ships work hard!
'Aphrodite Leader' arriving at Doha Port.
On the landward side of the park, massive buildings reared up. Looking at the one with the spire, I kept thinking of Emperor Mong's spaceship in 'Buck Rogers'.
Massive buildings on the landward side of Sheraton Park.
A broad piazza led to the Msheireb Enrichment Centre which appears to be built on a large barge connected to land by two broad gangways and a short stone causeway. You can find out more here but I'm afraid I was a little put off by its claim to be "a landmark destination created by Msheireb Properties to serve as an educational portal to showcase Qatar's glorious past and soaring ambitions for the future". Nearby, on the piazza I found a 'Costa' coffee shop (no comment).
Msheireb Enrichment Centre
The Bay itself remains attractive. I sat for a while near the warm waters (had there been any beach I would certainly have paddled, like the bird in the picture below).
Al Corniche Promenade, looking south from Sheraton Park.
I decided that, although I'd seen little of Doha, I'd perhaps better return to my hotel - it was still very hot and I had another early start the following day to catch my flight to Manchester. One small incident I observed on the way back amused me. Because of all the road works, the area was well-plastered with alternating red and white plastic barriers (all stencilled 'BOOM'). I watched an Ashok Leyland bus approach a junction on a lane narrowed by barriers. He just couldn't make the turn and gently pushed at the plastic barriers but still hadn't enough room. A passenger left the bus to shove a number of barriers out of the way until the bus could complete the turn. All the passengers were dark skinned, dark haired and all wore white shirts. I decided they were probably 'guest workers' being returned to some sort of barracks at the end of their work day.
The bus that couldn't quite make the turn. Click on image above for an uncropped view showing the plastic barriers being moved clear.
Back at the hotel, I treated myself to a meal in my room and went to bed, in preparation for an early start the next day.
Events of Friday 9th May 2014.
After the fiasco of the missing car on my arrival in Doha, I wasn't too confident about being transferred back to the airport, although reception had assured me they could soon rustle up a hotel car if needed. However, when I went down to reception early Friday morning, a driver was already waiting for me and we had an uneventful journey around the bay to the airport. The varied architecture was as surprising as it had been on my arrival. Still under construction, the National Museum of Qatar designed by Jean Nouvel looked as if it had suffered a terrible accident but perhaps it will be alright once finished when "a collection of disks, some vertical, some near horizontal, interlock and create a volume".
The National Museum of Qatar under construction.
We passed a cheerful cautionary road sign with a cartoon traffic policeman and the slogan (in English) 'Speed Leads to Ruin'. But the picture of a car speedometer indicated 250 km/h! Not that many cars over here would manage to get up to 150 miles per hour.
The speed warning sign.
At the airport, check-in was quick and friendly. It took me two attempts to find the right lounge but, again, everybody was very friendly and I relaxed watching the various passengers come and go. At the appointed time, I made my way to the Gate and was directed downstairs to a Departure Lounge overlooking the main internal airport road. I had a few minutes to wait for the next transfer bus which would take me from the Departure Lounge to the aircraft, whilst a steady stream of airport vehicles passed on the road outside and, every couple of minutes, an aircraft roared past on the runway at the far side of the road.
They'd been building a new airport terminal and, a few days after my departure, the new Hamad International Airport terminal opened for use, modestly claiming to "exceed expectations and redefine passenger transit experience". I presume most transfer buses have been replaced by Air Bridges, connecting the terminal directly to the aircraft.
The view from the Departure Lounge.
The flight from Doha to Manchester was in an A330 with a particularly pleasant crew who looked after me very well. The four Qatar Airways flights I had on this trip left me with a very favourable impression of the airline. I watched some films and finally went for 'The Lego Movie', expecting to find a CGI film with Lego characters dire. Er, I loved it.
John met me at Manchester and brought me home after one of the most tiring and fascinating trips I've made.
My Pictures
Strand Hotel, Yangon.
Yangon Airport.
Doha Airport.
Movenpick, Doha, Qatar.
Qatar.
More
This is the last in a series of posts describing my trip to Burma in 2014. You can find them all here or go back to the first post in the series Back to Burma (with links to go to each subsequent post in turn).
[Revised 11-Jun-2014, 12-Jun-2014]
