Happy Honeymoon Days 12 & 13: Doha? I Hardly Know Ha! (And then a whole bunch of air travel)

 Sunday, April 6th, 2025

3:22 PM

San Diego, CA

The safety video for Qatar Airways was a Kevin Hart joint, which meant I got to watch Kenny glare at the screen in front of him for about 2 minutes. (Actually, Kenny does a pretty solid Kevin Hart impression, but I don't know how hard that is.)

Wow! What a safety video! Some highlights:

1. Kevin Hart wants to put his carryon luggage above his seat, but he can't do it and needs a beautiful tall model to help him out. The joke is that Kevin Hart is short! LMAO.
2. When they mention how seatbelts must be seen at all times, even when sleeping, they are for some reason visiting Nairobi. At one point, a wife in a hijab hits her sleeping husband with a shoe! The joke is that the woman hit a man with her shoe.
3. Then we move on to Paris, where we are at a cafe and they are smoking? Turns out we can't smoke on airplanes. The joke is that French people smoke a lot of cigarettes.
4. Next up, we're in New York City, where a guy is trying to video call a buddy! But you can't use your phones during takeoff and landing, you goose! The joke is that everyone in NYC (maybe America?) is on their phones.
5. Finally, in Sydney, we learn how to use oxygen masks while a bunch of people are about to go ziplining. Those Aussies are such adrenaline junkies! 
6. Kevin Hart was guaranteed paid millions of dollars for this back when Qatar Airways was making a big push for people to visit Doha in 2022 for the World Cup. and we got to watch it for a second time when we flew from Doha to JFK! Yay!

We landed a little after 5 AM, and I decided I want to check in at the gate now (online check-in wasn't working) so that it's as easy as possible for us when we get back here at the end of the day for our flight to JFK. We then went downstairs with our passports, ready to meet our car to take us to our hotel so we can sleep for a few hours.

However, the guy at customs told us we needed a voucher from Qatar Airways in order to venture outside. Cool. So we go back upstairs and wait in the world's slowest line because a flight to Philadelphia got canceled, and Qatar Airways is not equipped to handle this kind of issue, only to be told they can't help us and that we need to go to a different help desk, which is on a different floor that we can't reach unless we go through customs, which we can't go through, because...

After literally an hour of this, Kenny found someone who walks us to a customs agent and explained in plain English what we needed (passports and a willingness to pay $20 each for visas). The new customs agent we are with still pulled the "you need a voucher" thing, but we told them no, we don't, and she finally responded with "okay but you need to pay $20 for the visa" which we did. We barely made our car appointment -- they were only going to wait 90 minutes from when the plane landed -- and drove off.

At any rate, we finally get to our rooms (on a smoking floor of all things) at about 7:30 AM. We set our alarms for 1 PM so we can eat lunch before going on our guided tour at 3:30 PM.

Lunch was a buffet that was much better than it had any right to be considering the price point (about $40 total), and then we went back to our room to get ready for our tour.

"Oh, wow. 98 degrees outside," I said, checking my weather app.

"Oof."

"Like a 90s boy band."

"What?"

"You know, that boy band from the 90s? 98 Degrees? Nick Lachey, Drew Lachey... just give me one more night, una noche..."

"I have never in my life listened to Nick Lachey."

Kenny claims to have been born in 1990, but sometimes I'm genuinely not sure.

We walked out to the front, where a private SUV was waiting for us. The driver introduced himself as Jared, which felt like an anglicized version of his name (I later learned this was right, and it's actually Javid). He has been in Doha for 8 years, was in Dubai for 12 before that, and originally comes from Pakistan. He prefers Doha to Dubai because the people are nicer and it feels more relaxed.

Javid took us to a stretch of beach that overlooks a sculpture that celebrates Qatar hosting the World Cup in 2022. There were a lot of references to the World Cup all around Doha, which made me pretty uncomfortable because it's fairly easy to look up that all of these stadiums were built by slave labor and the working conditions were, ah, not great. But the view was, admittedly, beautiful.

The balustrade where I left my phone and got in the car without a second thought.

In the distance, a sculpture representing the World Cup 2022.

The Financial District in Doha. It's windy, so the dust picks up.

We got back in the car and I realized immediately I had forgotten my phone on the balustrade (I wanted to look up how to say "thank you" in Arabic and there was no device to use). Javid kindly took us back, where my phone sat, not having been touched. 

"Shukram, Jared!" I effused.

"Qatar is the second safest country in the world. Nobody would take your phone, or if they did, it would be to bring it to the police station."

I'm not sure where he got the ranking, but yes, Qatar has an extremely low crime rate, and I just witnessed it firsthand.

Our next stop was the Katara Cultural Center, where we saw families on the beach enjoying Eid before Javid parked near the Katara Mosque. He told me to go through a small side entrance with a room for women only, that had hijabs and other clothing to help me cover up, and then he took Kenny around the corner to the main entrance.

I took my shoes off and walked in, where I accidentally put on some clothes that seemed to be for children before a woman working there showed me a closet that specifically caters to tourists. She helped me with the hijab because I don't know how to do it, and then I joined Kenny and Javid in the main worship area for the mosque. They even have a clock countdown for when you need to meet for your next prayer! 

Some men praying after having missed the specific time.

Javid showed us around the Katara Cultural Center, and the arena for shows was actually pretty cool. The acoustics were wild. Javid must have been a photographer in a past life because he helped us get some amazing shots while we were in the amphitheater.

The outside of the mosque.

Before air conditioning, desert cities like Doha used to collect the little rainwater they had into these kinds of gutters to cool down the streets around them.

The amphitheater at the Katara Cultural Center.

A cool shot courtesy of Javid.

The main entrance of the amphitheater.

Javid then grabbed the car and told us to walk through the shopping mall, where we saw the typical stores you see in the expensive part of town. Also, the street was fully air conditioned. Like, noticeably so, which was a very wild experience. No fans or anything, not anything we could really feel at any rate -- just suddenly much cooler while still being outside.

Kenny walking down an air-conditioned street.

You can buy Chanel here.

Javid picked us up and took us to the Crystal Walk, another nice mall area with another air conditioned outdoor strip (450 meters long, about about 1500 feet). It was pretty, but I admit I didn't take many photos because it's, well, a very pretty shopping area, and I don't tend to take photos of those. However, I did take some photos of the air ducts all over the place that helped cool down this area.'

"So, what do you think so far?" I asked Kenny. Javid had once again dropped us off so we could experience Crystal Walk while he drove the car to pick us up.

Kenny didn't respond right away.

"Or, ah, do you want to share your thoughts when we get back to the room?"

"Yes," he agreed. Qatar is a safe country, but we're not so sure it's a free country. All of this luxury, and beauty, and expensive outlet mall shopping, felt, well, less than genuine.

As I walked around, I noticed that while no midriffs were showing, clothing really ran the gamut from casual jeans and a blouse to full niqabs. Actually, nothing so casual as basketball shorts, or sweats, or even t-shirts were really seen around Doha. No hats either -- hijabs, niqabs, or nothing for women, and shumaghs (male headdresses) or nothing for men. Some shorts for men, but mostly, jeans was as casual as it got.

I also noticed the colors. While Zanzibar was also Muslim, the colors of the clothing were so bright and bold, while the colors in Doha were muted -- beige, white, black, etc. 

Javid showed us The Pearl next (well, technically, the Crystal Walk is in The Pearl, but he showed us the rest of it). It is a man-made island in the Persian Golf that was created specifically to look like Venice. It's beautiful, no question, and the people who designed it did an incredible job. But Javid told us that if you want to buy land on The Pearl, well, great -- they can just create more land and build on that!

We came from bleached coral and a rainy season with rain lasting no more than a few hours to a place that air conditions its streets and build islands using their oil money. Again, it's beautiful, and Javid is a kind man and a wonderful tour guide.

From here, we went on a dhow to watch the sunset. There was a little girl in a big dress with a big tutu skirt, and she was so excited about everything on the boat. Her mom was so happy to be with her. And then a trio -- two women (one in a hijab and dress pants, one wearing a full black dress with a black hijab) and a man. Javid showed off his photography skills yet again, with some killer videos and great photos with lighting.

After our dhow ride, we headed to the main event -- the Souq Waqif. This is the biggest tourist attraction in Doha, and frankly the best part of our tour. Javid parked in an underground parking lot and walked us over to the marketplace, where we passed a big enclosure of what must be 20 camels. I took a photo, but Javid took my phone from me, clicked a few buttons, and showed me how much better the photo could look.

The photo I took...

...and the photo Javid took.

The marketplace was a recreation of what it looked like in the first half of the 20th century, before a fire burned everything down. We saw an art museum, a falcon market (falcons are the state bird of Qatar and a big part of their culture), a falcon hospital, a pet bird market, and plenty of restaurants and boutiques.

Right outside the market.

Some birds for sale. Also Kenny.

Thumbs up, buds.

The art museum.

Some falcons just chilling.

This falcon is going to town eating these intestines.

Javid took us back to the hotel, where we had Indian food for dinner before going back to our room to relax.

"Okay, so, we have had Indian food on three different continents. Europe, Africa, and Asia. Which was the best?"

"Dishoom. Europe," Kenny replied.

"I agree. They were all good, but that was the best."

"It's not really fair, though. Dishoom was its own thing."

"Right. Very highly rated restaurant compared to just random hotels."

We returned to the Doha airport, where we had a relatively easy time of it -- until they started boarding two hours before the flight. When Kenny told me this, I thought he was confused, but nope -- boarding two hours before the flight! And boarding ended a full one hour before the flight took off. We then had to go through security a second time, which meant we had to empty our water bottles, and inside the room, they didn't have any water for us and there was no bathroom.

I don't know why we had to do it, but it was sketchy, and weird, and not a fun way to end our trip -- especially with how kind Javid was and how generous the Treffen House hotel staff were.

What followed was a 13 hour flight to JFK, where one of our checked bags had the luggage tag torn off somehow, and the JetBlue employees were very annoyed with us for not giving them the receipt of the luggage tag (if we ever had it -- the one they may or may not have given us over 48 hours and 2 continents ago) and gave us a whole bunch of grief before Kenny just asked point blank if we could get a new luggage tag for JFK-SAN, which she eventually did very quietly (because it was an obvious solution that for some reason she, the professional here, did not come up with on her own, and so she had nothing else to argue with us about). 

Our time in JFK was exhausting, and at one point, while charging my phone, a very chatty woman told me how tired I looked and asked if, after she told me she was 45 years old, we were about the same age. Thanks, Marie. 

But we landed in San Diego, and there were no issues there, and we got home, and watched an episode of The White Lotus, at the end of which I fell asleep.

We were home.