Life in Bahrain is interesting. I have been here a week and it has slightly changed my perceptions of the Middle East and of Muslims. Bahrain is basically a rock with buildings on. The landscape is flat, arid and barren with the north part, Manama, being the only city. Manama is Bahrain and as you go south the buildings fizzle out with just sea and sand at the south. Bahrain is more developed than China and far more civilised which does place it on the sterile side slightly but then sterile is good when you have a young child. It is also very small and the population is 700,000 so its like a village more than a country. In fact, I think of it more like Liberty City with each area having its own character and lots and lots of cars driving aimlessly around. Oh yes, cars, you need a car. I have tried to walk around but its not practical as everything here has been designed with the car in mind so its either sand or road. The landscape is very flat and there are only two ‘sky scrapers’ with most building here being either 10 stories or less and placed arbitrarily around town and its not uncommon for buildings to be next to empty, sandy, voids and these areas allow Liberty City style antics as you can go off road and cut through these places to your destination. Of the 700,000 people that live here one third are expats and most of these are Indian. Then Pakistanis then Filipinos and Thais and then, much further down the list, are the Brits and Aussies with a few American service people dotted around but it works well with the Indians doing the cleaning and the Filipinos ad Thais working in all the shops and the highly paid westerners working in the top jobs. That’s how it was and that’s how it is.
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