Making the Most of a Flight Cancellation

En route to Bangkok, Thailand for my study abroad I had a flight cancellation in Manama, Bahrain with two other students, Kara and Ethan. Admittedly, I had never heard of Bahrain before booking my flight, but as it turns out, it is a small Muslim Nation island in the gulf near the Middle East. Obviously doesn't sound necessarily like the most tourist friendly nation, but Kara and I decided we would certainly make the best of it.

Gulf Air set us all up with a free hotel room and free meals at the hotel which was all very fantastic.

Kara in our hotel room

Ethan at dinner... with his fifth plate, and my dessert plate

While at the airport, we briefly met an older couple who was also from North Carolina. We assumed they were on our same flight path as us, but as it turned out, their ending point was in Bahrain and they sold furniture internationally. I imagine it must be a good business if they travel to Bahrain.

We ended up meeting three other people who were on our same flight path. One guy, Ben, was from Tufts University and was en route to Burma to do political based photography. There was also a couple, Meemo and Gerard, who were on their way to Bangkok to get married. Meemo was from Bangkok and Gerard was from Haiti, and they were both living in Miami.

Bahrain is a very interesting country in that it is the most socially liberal Muslim country. They even allow alcohol and have bars and clubs. For entertainment that night, we decided to seek out a bar of some kind and ended up at a place called Twister which had an amazing Vietnamese cover band. They sang Rush, Linkin Park, Lady Gaga, Adele and more incredibly well. One of the singers was a gay (acting?) man who humorously hit on Ben for the entire night, even pulling up Ben to sing Bohemian Rhapsody. Surprisingly, Ben turned out to be a rather awesome singer and I will put up a video eventually (unfortunately my computer has stopped rendering videos momentarily).

Kara, Ben, Gerard, Meemo, Ethan, and me

We made a lot of friends!

Ben, Me, funny Vietnamese Gay Guy, Kara, and Meemo at the bottom.

Unfortunately, I tend to close my eyes when I smile, which makes for really funny pictures of me most of the time.

USD really did not go far in Bahrain, a pitcher of beer cost upwards of $20, although everything else was close to average American cost. I had to assume that drinking is really something of a luxury there.

The next day we explored Bahrain for a little while rather ineffectively. It was very obvious that people thought we were crazy for walking in the heat, but it overall wasn't too bad. Plus, we probably garnered a lot of stares for being an odd lot of Americans to begin with. We walked past the Grand Palace ("no pictures!") and the Al Fatih Mosque. We stopped in a little local shop to get the most delicious fruit drinks I have ever had, basically just the fruit and water blended. We had been intending on going to the National Museum later but we were all exhausted by the end of the day and ended up relaxing for the rest of the afternoon at the hotel.

Me, Kara, and Ethan in front of the Grand Mosque

Kara and I went to a mall that was across from the hotel that turned out the be the nicest, most expensive mall I have ever stepped in. As soon as we walked in, Valentino and similar stores filled our vision. We only window shopped, scared to even step in to them. It was a weekday and the mall was almost completely empty, especially clothing stores.

The clothing stores in the mall I found to be fascinating because Bahrain, even though socially liberal, is very much a Muslim country still where women wear traditional Muslim clothing. The stores showed off very Western culture based clothing, even traditional Westernized wedding dresses. I could only guess that there is a decent amount of business and diplomat travel that takes place to Bahrain and the mall was meant to primarily appeal to them.

At the mall, there was also a shoe exhibit, and Kara and I ended up getting into the Bahrain Daily News while looking at them.

We said emotional goodbyes at the airport, as Meemo's parents met Gerard for the first time and another older man we had met saw his wife for the first time in years. Overall it was a fantastic mini vacation and we had a fantastic time.

I have been in Bangkok for about two days now, but as most of it has been sleeping, I think I can get everything into a post tomorrow!