Touristy stuff and some night golf

After a busy first couple of days in Doha it was time for some touristy things to complete the the short break away form site. I booked in with a local tour company and headed out into the desert with a few others for some desert style tourism. First stop was pretty much right next to a massive oil refinery where we were able to hire dune buggies or quad bikes for a bit of a hoon around the dunes, or so I thought. Turns out if you hire a quad bike you cant actually go into the dunes, which they very conveniently didn't tell me until I had paid. Rookie mistake - never mind. So I spent the next 30 minutes hooning around some flat race track type things, which was OK but next time its dune buggy all the way. From here we stopped a bit further down the road and anyone who wanted to could go on a camel ride, but after doing this in India and it being just about the most uncomfortable thing I've ever done I decided to pass on that. I did get to hold a falcon though which was pretty cool. From here it was on to the main event - the dune bashing. We all strapped in and our awesome drive took us out into the dunes for an hour or so of exhilarating, high speed flying up and down huge sane dunes. It was bloody awesome - such an adrenaline rush. We stopped along the way and took photos at some great viewpoints over the inland sea and ended up at a spot where we got to sandboard down a very small hill, again the sandboarding aspect of the trip was oversold, but it was still great fun. After a quick paddle in the Arabian Gulf we loaded back into the Landcruiser and headed back to the where we had started but this time we went along the the sand flats where we were doing well over 140 kph on hard packed sand, which was another rush. Getting back onto the road again seemed so boring after an awesome first experience of dune bashing.

After getting back to the hotel, having a much needed swim and chilling for a bit I headed back to Education City Golf Club for my first experience of night golf, where I played the floodlit Par 3 course. There was literally no one else on the course so could take my team and play a couple of balls and take a few photos and videos to see how my game was shaping up 6 weeks out from the Taupo lads trip. Great fun playing golf at night watching the ball flight in the floodlights etc - definitely something I'm keen to do more of somewhere down the line.

An excellent last day to finish my time in Qatar - man I loved this city, and will definitely be back. Back to Saudi and to work tomorrow.Read more