Doha

My flight to Europe was surprisingly cheap, especially given that I was flying on Qatar Airways, a company trying to pitch their brand as an equivalent of Singapore Airlines or Emirates. The staff were friendly and helpful, the food was good, the booze was plentiful and I managed to score an exit row, so I had more leg room than I could possibly need. All for less than $750 each way.


The downside to all of this was that I needed to have a nine and a half hour transfer in Doha.


There are some airports where spending nine and a half hours would be a breeze. Doha airport isn’t one of them. I had limited options for entertainment. I spent at least an hour doing each of the following:


Listening to music

Reading a book

Watching planes take off

Photographing the sunrise

Watching people sleeping on benches specifically designed to prevent people from sleeping on them.


I managed to kill nearly an hour having an extraordinarily mammoth coffee at one of the cafes. Admiral Ackbar regarded it with wonder and awe.





So I gave him some of it.





The only other thing to do was buy duty free alcohol. Duty free alcohol, especially in the Middle East, is a macho affair. Shelf upon shelf of more and more ludicrously ‘special reserve” whiskey, aged for ostentatious numbers of decades in ostentatiously obscure corners of Scotland. No bourbon – the friends of Arab sheiks, Japanese business men and Indian patriarchs don’t care about bourbon – just scotch whiskey.


For the younger poser, there was every possible limited edition flavour of vodka. Lemon, apple, melon, cranberry, whipped cream… they were all there. There were some that were apparently flavoured with nothing more than prestige, if the bottles of Absolut Elyx were anything to go by.


Nearby a new, shiny, bright yellow Porsche and a grey Aston Martin sat side by side, with no apparent purpose other than to look luxe. There was also a female attendant whose sole duty was to walk around with a soft cloth wiping everybody’s grubby fingerprints off the duco.


But from what I could tell, the only thing worse than spending nine and a half hours inside Doha airport would be spending nine and half hours outside Doha airport. Being an Australian, I am already au fait with sand and blistering heat and don’t need any more time to learn their mysteries.


I would have been tempted to kill myself, but I’d prepaid most of my Europe stuff and my aversion to wasting money is even greater than my aversion to Doha airport. So... eventually... it was onward and upward!