qatar...

yes, yes, i said a continent per day… but alas, i got busy and there is only so much time and so many continents… (i am not really visiting all the continents, i’d just like to think so :)) i am currently writing this from qatar. i was in uae earlier (both in sharjah (al-shariqa) and dubai). sharjah reminds me of egypt a lot except for the number of desis and the traffic laws/driving patterns. dubai on the other hand could very well be a city in the us. the cost of living there seems to be very expensive - the price that you pay in the us is the price you pay in dubai, despite the fact that 1 dollar is ~3.6 dirhams. some places are even more expensive - a cup of coffee at starbucks, for example, was 12 dirhams, or roughly $3.33.

qatar is similar to dubai - there’s a lot of building and construction happening there. the building architecture in both qatar and dubai is quite amazing actually. some amazing looking buildings! anyway, so yeah, qatar is pretty cool too… very much like dubai (like a city in the us as well). cost of living is roughly the same as that in dubai, as a matter of fact, most places take the dubai dirhams as well as the qatar riyals. the exchange rate is almost 1:1, maybe one being 0.98 or 0.99 to the other.

one last interesting fact - getting into dubai, with a us passport, cost me nothing. getting into qatar, on the other hand, cost me around $27 for the visa.