Kuwait
It has been interesting seeing the different “dress codes” in the countries so far. In Turkey the vast majority of people are in western dress – suits or casual clothes. A lot of women didn’t wear hijabs at all, or combined them with western clothes – think leather boots, tight jeans an a hijab! Of course Turkey is a secular country. Almost no one in a burqa.
In Egypt, almost all women wore a hijab, and you started to notice the occassional full burqa.
Kuwait shows off its arabic heritage. Well over 20% of local men wear robes with a keffiyeh. There were very few dressed like that in Egypt.
This is where we had lunch. While Kuwait in places is very dirty and dusty, it does also have some beautiful areas.
These are the Kuwait Towers. Certain expats have given them an unofficial nickname of the Kuwait a**l beads 
The towers are primarily water towers, but the large one (187 metres tall) has a viewing platform also.
They have photos up of the damage done to the towers by the Iraqi invaders in 1990. Yep, they even smashed the toilets up.
And they are labelled barbarians for attacking the air conditioning! I would have thought they were barbarians for beatings, electric shocks, burns, mock executions and sexual torture including rape that some locals were put through by the Iraqis.
Most of the photos from the tower are crap, due to the dirty windows. But this one of the water theme park below is ok. I so would have gone, if I had more time.
I had earlier on noted how funny it was that Police cars had the URL of the Police on their sides. And then noticed this car with an e-mail address on the boot. I asked ehy would you do that, and Emily explained quite a few guys do it as a way of picking girls up! The idea is the impressed girls will e-mail them!
On Wednesday night, had dinner and drinks with the netball team.Now alcohol is banned in Kuwait – no sales and no importing, but as this photos shows you can smuggle it in in small packets.
That got me thinking that selling those outside the Wellington Sevens could be a great money making opportunity!
Incidentally pork is also illegal in Kuwait. If you have it with you, it gets confiscated on arrival.
November 20th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Ever seen lowered Skylines and the like with “OFFERS: 021 ___ ____” written in the back window, doing laps around Courtenay place on Friday night? They’re not trying to sell the car.
As ever, thanks for posting these holiday pics – looks like an amazing part of the world to be travelling.
November 20th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Are you going across the border to Iraq DPF? I’m told there are some great tourist attractions, and it’s a liberated and democratic country now thanks to Dubya.
November 20th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
In response to Toad’s snide remark I’ll repost this from yesterday
You gonna go into Iraq?
Pretty safe by world standards
The murder rate is currently running about 4 per 100,000
(About 100 per month*12)/(31 Million/100000)
http://www.icasualties.org/Iraq/index.aspx
That only twice as bad as here and less than America
Actually I am only half serious because any westerner would stand out like a sore thumb.