Early this year, I was in Kuwait for 27 hours connecting flight on my way to Sri Lanka. It’s my first time to fly Kuwait Airlines and I was not impressed. My flight was delayed for an hour and a half – and apparently, it’s normal for this airline. That’s according to the Kuwaiti guy who is a frequent flyer sitting next to me. Boo…
What to do in Kuwait? I really have no idea. The country is not known as a tourist destination. There’s only very little information about what to do in the city / country. Even my friend who has been living in the Kuwait City for years can’t really recommend a place to visit. He did tell me to walk along the corniche leading to Kuwait Towers. And that’s exactly what I did in the morning – before the heat could burn me to hell.:D What we all know is that they’re rich in gas and oil.
But, of course, there are things to do in Kuwait. I was just not into exploring the city due to the heat, expensive taxis and in such a short time.
By Alain – Full Story at Keep Calm and Wander
Last weekend, a colleague and I went to Manama in Bahrain to renew our Saudi visa. I’ve been to Bahrain 4 times already and I stayed 3-4 nights in each visit. There’s nothing much to do in Bahrain, really. You can even explore the whole country in half a day!
Manama is called “Saudi Bar” by the local Saudis I know here. When they want to have “fun”, they go to Bahrain. Sure, shopping in Bahrain is great, too! They have shopping malls everywhere!. And oh, even if the shops claim to be on sale, the prices are still bad for your wallet.
On our second day in the city, my colleague rented a car and we drove around the city. Traffic was freakin’ terrible and it’s so hard to find a gas station in country whose economy depends on gas! And even the locals don’t know where the nearest gas station is!
I spent the bigger part of the past week in Israel before returning to Berlin, where I was greeted with snow. It couldn’t have been a greater contrast: On Thursday, I went running in a tank top on the beach, and on Friday I went running across icy & snowy Tempelhof airfield.
After a couple of days in Jerusalem we took the bus to Tel Aviv and spent my final days in Israel in what is one of my favorite cities in the world. It was the perfect way to end my trip – after a few chilly days, the weather was sunny and warm, and we splurged on fancy hotel right by the beach, using a discount code for Hotels.com.
We did all the things I love doing in Tel Aviv: morning runs along the beach promenade, strolls through Carmel market and Jaffa flea market, eating lots of sabich sandwiches (I fit in two visits to the legendary sabich sandwich place on the corner of Frishman and Dizengoff Str). Luckily we took advantage of Tel Aviv’s bike sharing system, which I discovered during my last visit, and cycled off some of the calories.
This past week has been an absolute roller coaster of emotions: 
SPEAKERS boom in the darkly lit, smoky room. It’s 2 am and the club is packed with a sea of sweaty, gay men getting their groove on to a Madonna classic — and I’m one of them.
After an all-day drinking session, followed by a spot of impromptu karaoke, during which I made friends with a lovely lesbian couple (we bonded over our love of ‘80s power ballads) I’ve ended up at this underground hotspot. Nothing strange here you might think, I mean, there are gay clubs the world over, right? But what makes this unusual is that I’m not in the relatively liberal West; I’m in Dubai.
A province of the United Arab Emirates governed by a dictatorial royal family and a tourism hotspot attracting the gaze of the world thanks to its constant sunshine and headline-grabbing world’s “biggest” and “tallest” buildings, shopping malls and man-made islands. Like Las Vegas, Dubai was built in a desert from nothing and like Vegas, Dubai (in the Arab world anyway) is known as sin city.