Beaches and booze

In an effort to be more snappy and less self-involved, this will be relatively brief….

It’s been unbelievably windy for the last week or so, which means you get lots of sandstorms, low visibility, bad hair and an exfoliation every time you walk out the door. We were therefore slightly fearful of our planned outing to the beach last weekend. We had been invited by some friends to Gin and Tonic Rock. Before you check, this landmark will not be shown on any maps but is rather a place of folklore, the location of which is only divulged to those who deserve the privilege, or those who happen to be invited along one Friday afternoon. We drove to the West of Qatar (which takes under an hour – this place is really very small), hit the coast, then drove North. Lots of driving along sand beaches, rocky terrain and seawater inlets. Mr A enjoyed that bit a lot. We finally reached a beach where everyone parked up, undressed, headed in to the sea, and cut their feet on the lethal rocks. The landscape is weirdly beautiful there – perhaps similar to the moon. Nothing grows, but the ‘cliffs’ (think Dover on a miniature scale) have been worn away to make mushroom shapes.




As the sun began to set, we headed up on the Rock, cracked open the Bombay Sapphire, opened up the tupperware of sliced lemon and the box of ice cubes, and watched one of those sunsets where it disappears behind some cloud on the way down so you don’t really see anything. We then decamped back to the beach, made some fires and ate lots of barbecued meat. We were very proud of our newly acquired cool box, which we thought meant we were definitely grown ups and VERY organised. We were rather eclipsed by not bringing a single plastic chair with us, or a fold-down table, or a rack thing to put over the fire. And it turns out our cool box is the baby of the family, as others are large enough to fit your entire kitchen in. Also, I hadn’t baked anything, but we enjoyed talking about dentistry provision in Qatar with some friendly people while eating home-cooked muffins and stroking someone’s dog, which reminded us how much we like dogs. After a quick dip in order to admire the phosphorescence (and a few more cuts on our feet) we followed another car to find our way back to the bright lights of Doha. Since we live on the East coast, it was our first sunset in Qatar and whet our appetite for the great desert outdoors. Though apparently you must be careful if you camp – there’s always the danger of getting run over by a dune-bashing-Land-Crusing Qatari at 3am.


Our other recent beach experience was somewhat different. As part of Mr A’s birthday celebrations, I booked us in to Sealine Beach Resort for the night – pretty much the only place to stay outside Doha. All I’d heard was that it was a 70s throwback, so I was expecting an amusing, if bizarre, mini-break which if not that enjoyable would at least be good material for stories. We arrived on Friday afternoon to a place heaving with people of every nationality you can imagine – Gulfi women in abayas, Lebanese women in string bikinis, Phillipino ladies with their boyfriends, African men showing off their six-packs. One pool appeared to be solely for young male wankers while the other pool looked a little like a Magaluf in peak season, so we opted for the beach. A good choice, as long as you were alert when swimming to the clear and present danger of being killed by a 10 year old driving a jet ski. As the sun began to set, Mr A spied a small building that looked suspiciously like a bar and within seconds we were looking out to sea, Corona in hand. Whilst we spend a lot of evenings out here not drinking (because so many of the good restaurants are unlicensed), there is something uniquely satisfying about sitting on a beach with an alcoholic beverage in hand.



That evening, we had supper in the hotel – insisting on sitting outside in the humidity rather than inside the fun-vacuum that was the buffet. It dawned on us that apart from the German woman on the neighbouring table feeding her food scraps to a cat, all non-Qataris seemed to have left and it was just us and the Qatari teenage boys. They all rent rooms there, pile in with their stereos, instruments and barbecues, and while the night away. This makes for delightful Arab music to listen to whilst eating one’s supper and having a post-prandial snifter. Unfortunately, it also makes for being woken up at 2, 4 and 6 am by the dancing and singing in the room above where you are ‘sleeping’. We consoled ourselves with the thought that should 10 British teenagers stay in a hotel room for the night unsupervised, we probably would have died in our sleep from the Marijuana fumes, and if we’d survived would wake to the sounds of a drunken scoundrel falling off the balcony. Expecting to have to fight for the sunloungers the following day, we emerged quick smart to find that no-one in Qatar goes to Sealine on Saturday, silly.


Sometimes we go to the beach and only drink water. I promise……
xx