"Desert City" Kuwait by Ramonq

This is one hot city, literally! Temperatures could easily go up to 52 degrees centigrade during the daytime, thus making it very tough for tourists who like to explore the place on foot. Best time to enjoy Kuwait is in the late afternoon, when it starts to cool down. There are hardly any tourists in Kuwait, so you could be the only ones wandering in the streets taking pictures. It does have a feel of a ghost town. Almost all the inhabitants of Kuwait City drive and the footpaths are empty, and they drive fast and furious.

The city looks modern with many spanking new glass towers of quirky shapes rising very high in the desert horizon, but not quite in the league of Dubai yet. In Kuwait City, there are still quite a few vacant spaces, so expect this city to look very different in a few years as more skyscrapers are in the pipeline. Oil pipeline, that is. Oil has been Kuwait's main reason why this city has been transformed from a dusty little village into a dusty but thriving modern city. Well paved streets and highways crisscross the city and many flashy new cars whizz by with alarming speed. When you read the newspapers here, there's a lot of news about vehicle accidents or some poor labourer pedestrian ending up being a roadkill.

Kuwait is an affluent city, yet there are many poor immigrant labourers who work in the construction sites and do the menial work that Kuwaitis refuse to do. These labourers mainly come from the subcontinent and live in substandard apartments even in the city centre. From afar, Kuwait looks like Perth, Australia or Singapore with gleaming skyscrapers or even Auckland, New Zealand with a similar communication tower dominating the skyline. But from the ground level, Kuwait can be disappointing as there is hardly any human life on the sidewalks or parks yet there are thousands of poor stray cats scrounging for food. The footpaths are crumbling littered with rubbish and construction debris that are left unattended. It's not as spotlessly clean as Muscat in Oman but some areas are like Kinshasa or Lusaka .

Sief Palace

So where are the Kuwaitis? Not surprisingly, in the modern comforts of the fully airconditioned shopping malls. Men is crisp white disdashas and head-scarves and women completely covered from head to toe with black burqas are to be seen everywhere. This is when you realise that you are definitely in the Arabian Peninsula. They go from one airconditioned place to another via a large airconditioned SUVs. Kuwaitis love their tea or coffee breaks so its no surprise there are lots of Starbucks or Costa coffeshops in the affluent sections of the city. Kuwait is a very conservative Muslim society, so there are no places in town to self-indulge in alcohol, not even beer inside international hotels. The regular call to prayer from the towering minarets remind the citizens of their Islamic duties. But Kuwaitis like a bit of Americana, mainly because of America's role in saving the country from Sadam Hussein's invasion through the Desert Storm operations. So it is this dichotomy of strict Islamic code and American pop culture that makes Kuwait an interesting case for social scientists. However, out of the three or so million residents in Kuwait, only one third are actually Kuwaiti citizens. Most are labourers from the subcontinent, merchants from other Arab countries, contract workers from the Philippines and expats from Western countries. Majority live in the urban conglomeration of Kuwait City.

Liberation Tower

Kuwait City, because of its location at the tip of the Persian Gulf, has had a long maritime history. Alexander the Greats' Greek empire once took hold of the place. The Mesopotamian empire and Roman empire also used the area as the launch pad for Arab traders to India. An Arab tribe founded present day Kuwait at around 1700's, but there has been some tension with the Ottoman empire of which present day Iraq was part of. Kuwait was being governed from Basra, but the Kuwaitis had more cultural affiliation with the Gulf States of Qatar and Bahrain. The British were invited to interfere by the Kuwaiti clan and as the Ottoman Empire was weakening, the Ottomans recognised the autonomy of Kuwait sheikhdom. Under the British rule, the border of Kuwait was forged with Saudi Arabia and Iraq. But Iraq had always insisted that Kuwait was one of its provinces during the Ottoman era. Kuwait gained independence in 1961, and with the discovery of oil, the prosperity of Kuwait is assured making it per capita, one of the wealthiest nation on earth. Eyeing this wealth, Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 under Sadam Hussein but were expelled by the West.

Today, Kuwaiti sovereignty is assured with Kuwait City as its capital. The city is now trying to catch up with the boom cities of the other Gulf States by trying to attract investments from the West and Asia. High-rise skyscrapers are slowly replacing the old dilapidated apartment buildings in the city centre. But with very few native inhabitants, Kuwait has to import thousands of workers from other lands to make the country more viable. The country is now multi-cultural, but its Islamic Arab traditions still dominate everyday life.

• Pros:Shopping and Seaside esplanade
• Cons:Scorching Climate and Unexciting Nightlife