I just spent a couple of days in Qatar for the first time. The other time I was there was for 24 hours tops. Just an airport-hotel-office-airport trip. And with the office is right across the street from the airport – needless to say I didn’t see much. This time, I gave myself some space and a guy from work drove me around to see the city of Doha. And you know what’s interesting about this city?

Nothing.

When you see all the beautiful ads for Qatar Airways, you get a different impression. Actually Qatar Airways is a great airline. Very comfortable and accommodating (especially in Business) and the terminal is gorgeous (for Business and First Class). But I was sitting on the plane and they showed a Qatar Airways promo – with this plane landing a taking off from a beautiful runway, lined with trees and greenery and flying over verdant pastures.

Yeah – right. Qatar is a dust bowl. There is less green here then even Kuwait! And there is construction everywhere that is less coordinated than Dubai. In fact what I saw – apart from the water’s edge – was construction, tall buildings and dirt. Next to nothing they advertise is finished. Oh, well I M Pei’s Museum of Islamic Art is complete and it is very beautiful – inside and out. Nicely done. And it houses the largest collection of Islamic artifacts in the world (many from Spain and other Mediterranean countries).

And Robert DeNiro and Yo-Yo Ma showed up at the recent opening. Know why? Because they were paid. And Federer and Nadal were playing tennis in a tournament nearby. Know why? They were paid. And Tiger Woods and his friends enter Doha golf matches. Know why? They were paid. The only cool thing I learned about this is all these events are free… because otherwise no one would show up. The locals really don’t care so much about tennis (and who can blame them).

So when hear or read things about these countries – take it with a grain of salt. Money buys a lot of PR.

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