"DOHA - QATAR. ONCE THE LAND OF PEARL... " a Doha Travel Page by northsea

Qatar is a gas- oil-rich peninsula, jutting out into the Gulf between Bahrein and the United Arab Emirates. The majority of the country consists of sand dunes and salt flats. The city of Doha combines a rich mixture of traditional Arabic and modern architecture. Particularly interesting are the Grand Mosque with its many domes and the Abu Bakir al-Siddiq Mosque. The north contains most of the historic sites, including Umm Salal Mohammed, a relatively large village dominated by the ruins of a 19th-century fort. Al Khor is the second-largest city, situated around a natural shallow harbour. On the west coast there are fine beaches at Umm Bab (‘The Palm Tree Beach’) Dukhan and Salwah near the Saudi border. The south is a region of sand dunes and beaches, offering opportunities to go pearl hunting,but nowedays you must be lucky to find one, or to practise any of a number of watersports. Public entertainment can be rather limited. Live entertainment is infrequent.
Qatar has the reputation to be the most boring country in the world. I'll leave that aside.
I had some nasty experiences, but the country or the Qatari people had nothing to do with that.

If you are a horse lover, you can spend a wonderfull day in one of the several horse studs.
Normaly it's not that easy to get in there, but a Belgian friend of mine who was the head- trainer of the horses could arrange my visit to the Al Naif stud. (recently some travelagents in Doha, can arrange a visit)
Only relatives of the Al Thani family can afford this extremely expensive hobby (or business).

Smoking the Shisa is very popular in the Near and Middle East. The Arabs are used to smoke it when they are relaxing or just having a chat whith friends. You can choose different flavours as from apples to strawberries. I tried once but prefer a good cigar.

After taking some informations about the Shisha, I read that severe laws made it rather difficult to commercialise import of Shisha's in the U.S. and in a country like France, tobacco is still a kind of State monopoly.