Ten Christmas Present Ideas for Qatar

I've had to work hard to get this list down to ten - I originally came up with 21 and then decided that would be better for a website article than for a quick blog post!

1. Books:

Choose one of the Qatar books from our book section. Have a friend interested in nature/history? Buy a copy of discovering Qatar. If you live abroad you can buy it through us - helping us to improve the site and buy more articles! (Often by the writers and editors of the books we sell!) If you want a more global view of Qatar you could also buy the coffee table book Qatar, edited by David Chaddock.

2. Lamp

Personally I like the old heavy brass lamps avaible from the junk and antique shops - one sits pride of place on my mother's hearth back home. Traditional coffee sets also make a good present, as does Arabic coffee with its faint cinemon taste.

3. Jewellery.

Qatar's gold souq has a fantastic range of very pure gold jewellery. We especially like Cartouche - a gold oblong which has your name inscribed on it. In Qatar the gold shops will inscribe your name in Arabic on one side and in English on the other.

4. Traditional clothes.

Glide across the desert sand with a black veil mysteriously covering your face, or stand proud in a thobe of pure white - at Souq Waqif and elsewhere you can buy all the traditional Arabic clothing, making for great photo opportunities.

5. Wood art.

Qatar wood art is simply suberb. By combining wood shavings of different shades and textures, the artist manages to come up with a picture that is full of colour - but uses no ink. At around QAR10,000 in the Gharaffa shop, though, it doesn't come cheap.

6. Calligraphy.

You don't have to be a Muslim to appreciate the beauty of some of the best pieces of calligraphy. In fact, as you can see in the Islamic Museum, calligraphy was even used by some early Christian painters.

7. Dates.

Dates are a traditional Arab gift - and are also full of goodness (and sugar!) You don't have to stick with plain dates either, as there are all sorts of varieties and spin offs available - our favourite are dates with almond and chocolate. You can find whole shops dedicated to dates in Qatar, so you won't go short of choice.

8. Arabic Perfume

You'll also find no shortage of perfume here. The Arabic perfume, which can finding lining the walls top to bottom in souq shops, is rather stronger than Western perfume.

9. Traditional Cloth

Traditional bedouin weaving still takes place in Qatar today, and the weaving can both be seen or be bought in Souq Waqif.



10. Water Pipe

Shisha smoking is popular in Qatar, and small or large sets of the pipes can be bought to take home. Just be aware of the health risks first!


Related posts:

Christmas in Qatar
Christmas Dinner
Presents from Japan

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Gondolas - in the desert!

Qatar may have only 80 millimetres of rainfall a year, but that doesn't stop this ambitious country from planting parks, creating golf courses - and even putting canals in their shopping malls. In this dry country, where the scorching sun can reach 50 degrees centigrade in the summer, you can swimming in chilled pools, ice-skating - and now trips on a gondola.

While you glide along the canal, enjoy the cool air blowing in your face, and the white clouds in the blue sky - even if the air is from an air-conditioner and the sky is fake! A trip up and down this canal will set you back a mere 15 riyals (4 US dollars). Enjoy!

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Hyatt Plaza: Layali Al Kheir

The Hyatt Plaza has launched an Arabic Cultural Programme called Layali Al Kheir which will run until the end of Ramadan. The programme will start at 8.30 every evening and will finish at 11.30. Events will include traditional oud concerts, plays including Ali Baba and the 40 thieves and a magic lamp quiz. Traditional Arabic perfumes, sweets and other goods will be available throughout the festival.






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Qatar Shopping Festival

The third International Trade Fair will be held at the Qatar International Exhibition Centre from the 18th to the 23rd of this month, and will be open from ten to ten every day except Friday (four to ten.) Exhibits are expected from around 600 traders and companies originating from 29 countries ranging from Indonesia to Russia. The exhibition will include a children's area with magic shows, entertainment and an educational area.

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Al Ghalafa

Al Ghalafa shop in Souk Waqif, which has links to the dhow workshop, exists not just to sell goods but also to promote knowledge of Qatar's heritage. Old pictures of Doha and information about its history can be found in its shop.


The picture of a pearl diver below was one of several where no paint or artificial colours had been used. Instead different shades of wood are combined to create vibrant pictures.

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Spices

A huge range of spices are available in Doha's Souq Waqif.

Also see: Qatar Image Library

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The Mall

This was Qatar’s first shopping centre, which is perhaps why its owners felt so little need to invest any imagination into its name. The Mall is located on D ring road, next to Lulu hypermarket. Q-mart is the food store here, a small supermarket which sells nothing you can’t get elsewhere.

There are a few interesting stores in The Mall. Makki gallery has some nice-looking jewellery, not that there’s any shortage of jewellery stores in Qatar, and Badran Carpets has some beautifully designed Iranian rugs. There are many of the usual suspects here such as the Body Shop, although mercifully no Starbucks. There’s also a Boss clothes shop, a Highland store and a Tony and Guy clothing store. Stalls are crammed along the middle of the walkways: perhaps the most interesting was a Lebanese art store selling, amongst other items, handmade Lebanese jewelry and miniature water pipes. There’s also an interesting display in the middle of the mall selling wooden carved and painted furniture. Climb up the stairs and you’ll find a rather grim food court to your right containing a Mc Donalds and an Orient Express. Luckily there’s better eating downstairs – Cioconat Lounge has futuristic decor and, as its name suggests, an emphasis on chocolate. Opera cafe has an upstairs and downstairs seating area and a large, varied and reasonably priced menu. We were particularly impressed at its American breakfast: eggs, sausages, grilled tomatoes, bacon and home made hash browns for 15 riyals.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with the Mall. However, compared to the large and modern malls now available elsewhere such as Hyatt Plaza, City Centre and especially Villagio, it feels small, old-fashioned and out of date. We might go back – but only for that American breakfast!

Also see: Qatar Shopping

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Apples available in Virgin Megastore

Apple computers and ipods are now easily available in Qatar. Virgin Megastore, which has recently opened in Villagio, is selling a whole range of Apple products, including mini-macs. In addition to computer equipment and, of course, music, there is a range of books which puts every other book store in Qatar to shame and finally provides relief to the frustrated book lovers in Qatar.

Virgin Megastore's contact details:
Tel: +974 4135823/4135824
Address: PO BOX 55417, Doha, Qatar
Email: vgn.vil.qa@azadea.com

Update: presumably as a result of this, Carrefour are now also selling Apples.

Also see: Qatar Shopping

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Falcons

Go to the bird souq in the live animal market and you'll see some small birds for sale for as little as 300 riyals . However, visit the falcon shops in Souk Waqif, and you will specimens of a completely different ilk. While not the most expensive (you will see these on Qatar Air, often with their own first class seat) the best birds birds will retail for thousands rather than hundreds of US dollars.


This shop, while not the biggest, was the friendliest of the ones we visited, even letting tourists hold birds. They were also willing to chat about the falcons, and tell us about where they came from and what they hunted.


While most visitors and expats won't want to buy a falcon, other souvenirs may interest you. At the falcon shops, you can buy small and ornate falcon hoods, pictures, the colourful leashes used to tether the falcons and the catapults used to train the birds.

Also see: Qatar Shopping

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Centrepoint

Centre point, also called Al Smakh mall, is another relatively recent though small addition to Doha’s ever growing shopping scene. As a family with young children, we appreciate the Baby Shop here, which has children toys for all ages, playhouses, cots, children’s beds and so on. Close by you'll find Splash, with very reasonably priced clothes, and Shoe Mart.

There’s some fast food places, but nothing like the range the big malls have. There’s also a few shops selling things for the house: clocks, fake flowers, miniature waterfalls, candles and so on. The best of these is Home Centre, which has a large range of furniture and takes up a large portion of the top floor.

Opposite Home Centre is a small children's play area, which actually looks quite good. You can also buy sunglasses, and there’s a small electronics shops selling big brand names. Frankly, though, with no supermarket and a small range of shops, there’s better places to spend your money.

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Shopping developments: Vista, Apple and books

Vista has arrived in Qatar! Carrefour in Villagio was stocking Vista laptops this morning, with the most reasonable being a widescreen Compaq with vista basic, a gigabyte of ram, a centrina core duo chip and an 80 gigabyte hard drive for a very reasonable 3,100 riyals (US$850). There was also a display in City Centre by an Al Muntazah store called family.lan (contact number 4418938). Their cheapest offer was a desktop with windows vista at 2499 (US$700), although as with almost all desktops here it was Pentium 4 rather than windows duo.

Meanwhile Al Mana, Apple's official agent in Qatar, plans to open an Apple Centre. This will be located on the third floor, next to the Nokia shop overlooking the ice rink. It looks like some time before it will be completed, but when it is buying an apple computer may not be such a pipe dream for Qatar residents.

And it gets even better! At long last, City Centre has a bookshop. Nestling just round the corner from the forthcoming Apple Centre is a new book shop, called I-spy. It’s very well laid out, with armchairs to relax while you browse, and a children’s section with comfy cushions on the floor. Interestingly, we could not spot one single Arabic book.


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Gondolas in Villagio

It's only a month since we did a review of Villagio, but when we heard they had gondolas we had to get along there. More of the complex has been opened now, and though workers are still welding and banging around you, it looks fantastic. A canal runs through the new section, and gondolas are tied up along the canal, ready to transport customers through the huge shopping complex. The ceiling, as we mentioned before, imitates the sky very successfully. There's still only a few shops in the new section, but we weren't the only ones just walking round and admiring what had been done. It's well worth a visit while it's still very easy to park.

Also see: Villagio Italia in Nagoya

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The Hyatt plaza

This shopping centre will probably soon be eclipsed by the larger Villagio being built next door, although there seem to be enough shoppers in Doha to go around all the malls. Never-the-less, Hyatt Plaza is a pleasant enough place to shop, with some classy shops and a light airy feel to it when you stroll in. With Villagio coming up next door, they try hard too - I noticed new shops and attractions on my last trip and they even have a magazine: Hyatt Plaza Style.

Location

This is one place you really can’t miss. Just go past the huge Khalifa stadium, and the Villagio development, and you’ll see a giant shopping trolley outside the complex, just to make sure you don’t get the wrong idea.

Parking

There’s parking for a 1000 cars. We also saw a few taxis drive in and out.

Shops

There’s the shops that appear everywhere in Doha such as the Body shop, but there’s also some less common ones. The Japanese Daiso is the nearest thing Qatar has to a pound shop, and what most of my friends seem to find most interesting. This is a shop with tonnes and tonnes of cheap stuff, and everything unmarked (and most of it is unmarked) costs 6 riyals. Some of it is junk, of course, but there’s also some very interesting things such as traditional Japanese toys. This shop is located opposite Mr Price and above a Homes R Us. Hyatt Plaza also a big focus on clothes, make-up and jewellery: there are many small stalls in the middle of the complex selling jewellery and there’s a large Paris Gallery selling perfume and make-up.

Supermarket

The supermarket here is Giant Stores. I’ve seen one or two scrubby looking Giant stores in town but this place is really quite good. It has a wide range of goods including computers and other electronics, the food counters are good and there’s a café to relax in the middle.

Food

There’s the normal food court where you can have your fill of American and Arabic junk food. There’s also an Italian restaurant, Il Foro Romana, which is set in the middle of the hall surrounded by mock broken columns, several cafes including, of course, the inescapable Starbucks’. (Are they on the moon yet?).

Kids

This is quite a good place for kids. In addition to Mothercare, there is a toy store, an Early Learning centre, a Cute Cuts hairdresser and a "Jungle Zone", which resembles a miniature theme park with rides such as "jungle train" and “mountain coaster". You can also rent out rooms for children's parties, with Hyatt Plaza providing all the food and entertainment. In addition, on our most recent visit Hyatt Plaza had added inflatable slides, a bouncy castle and other amusements to an area of the parking lot outside.

Website: www.hyattplaza.com

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Gondolas in Villagio

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Villagio

Also see Gondolas in Villagio



Location: Between Sport City and Hyatt Plaza on Al Waab Street.

Villagio has a mock Italian design, which doesn’t really work on the outside but does on the inside. Its best feature is its ceiling, with the cloud effect successfully giving you a floating feeling of space. Though this place is far from finished, it will be successful as it has Carrefour as its anchor shop, meaning all and sundry will flock to it.

What’s there?

Not as much as there’s going to be – there’s a few shops already open, but there will be a total of 220 stores spread over 130,000 sq m of retail space (or 150,000, depending on where you get your information from), which just beats the 129,000 metres of retail space at City Centre Mall, currently the country’s largest. Apparently its going to have everything City Centre has got – ice rink, cinema, bowling alleys e,t,c – plus a rollercoaster just to top it off. It already has some of the old stalwarts you see everywhere such as Body shop and Next, but also some shops I haven’t seen elsewhere in Qatar, including Cool Cat and Top Shop. A Starbucks dominates the entrance, although you hardly have to go far to find one of these in Doha, or the overpriced coffee they sell.

Verdict: most of the shops are heavily focussed on clothes at the moment, although as you can get virtually anything you want in Carrefour, it hardly matters. It also comes close to succeeding in giving you that feeling of walking through a village, largely due to the sky ceiling. Should be truly impressive when it is finished.

Telephone: +974 4135444

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The Centre

By Chantelle

Location On Salwa Road next to the Ramada Hotel.

Review Megamart, the supermarket in the centre, is essentially geared towards Westerners. It’s also a place where you can get things which you can’t get elsewhere: I’ve bought Easter eggs (three months after Easter), rhubarb, risotto rice, mint jelly, fresh rosemary and both fresh and tinned lemon grass here. Having said that, you can’t always guarantee you’ll get exactly what you want, and the prices of some products are substantially above other supermarkets. Mega-mart has a board for classifieds which always seems to have a good selection of second hand cars available. You’ll also find Megamart in Landmark shopping mall.

Beyond the supermarket, the shopping’s not that great. There’s a range of perfumes -including a number of major names including Lancome, Gucci and Christine D’or – and jewellery. There’s a lot of clothes, but frankly the quality and selection was not better than can be had in the souks and the prices are more expensive, even with a 20% sale on. I was also shocked that I was unable to buy the pair of stockings that I desperately needed. The most interesting shop was Khazana of Kashmir. Here you can purchase hand woven silk carpets and rugs from Kashmir, teak benches and hand carved antique furniture from India.

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Landmark Mall

by Chantelle

Getting there Insofar as anywhere is a long way from anywhere in Doha, Landmark is a long way from anywhere. It is also a nightmare to get to with unfinished roads blocking your every turn. When the road is finally finished, the best way to get here will be along AL Shamal Road. There's a terrible shortage of taxis at this mall - I wouldn't even dream of going there without a car.

Review: Landmark seems to be trying to for a more upmarket approach than City Centre Mall. Mega-mart, the food provider in Landmark, is both more expensive and classier than City Centre’s Carrefour, and Landmark’s main shopping area is fairly smart. It has a good range of shops, and I particularly liked Lush, the first branch I have seen, both for its emphasis on hand made beauty products and the delicious smells that greet you on entry. However, in its food hall (full of the usual low class fast food stalls) and its terribly named ‘circus land’ and ‘cinema land’ Landmark descends to tack. The mall itself is more focussed on clothes than City Centre, and apart from an exhibition of photographs which my husband mooched round briefly there was little to entertain the worse half – which is a shame, because overall I enjoyed my shopping experience there.

Features:

- Circus land: amusement area for children, good for keeping the little ones entertained if not quite as large as the one in City Centre.
- Brand name shops including BHS, the Early Learning Centre, Debenhams and many others.
- Haagen-daaz ice-cream parlour – mmm!
- Cinema (three screens).

Telephone: +974 4881674

The City Centre Mall

The New Old Souk

The Gold Souk

Pearl diving

Books, bookstores and libraries in Qatar

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The new old souk

Doha used to have an old souk . However, times move on, and it was decided that progress required knocking it down and replacing it with a new souk that looks like an old souk.

I went to the new old souk (also known by more cultured people as Souk Waqif) prepared to sneer and came away impressed. In previous, brief, visits I had seen a lot of tourist tat, but a deeper look revealed that this was only a small part of the souk.

What it’s famous for (in Qatar, anyway) is its dried herbs and spices, and in some areas the air wafts with the scent of them. Incense that looks like rocks is arranged alongside the herbs, lending themselves to the array of colours that make these shops so attractive.

However, there’s a lot more to Souk Waqif than just herbs. This is a huge and maze-like complex. It’s not finished, either, and men in white turbans wheel barrows of concrete and rubble past you as you make your way through windy streets.

Colourful Indian dresses hang the walls outside the shops, or you can choose material for a tailor to turn into a dress. The traditional Qatari clothing is also available: white for men, black for women. You’ll see Qataris shopping here – a couple of middle aged ladies, covered head to toe in black, were briefly alarmed by my camera, before I assured them I was photographing the souk and not them.

Both antiques and replicas are available here, along with old photos of Qatar and its culture. These included traders haggling over piles of pearls, pearl divers being hauled up by their handlers and Bedouin nomads in their traditional camps or alongside their camels.

Feel tired, and you can relax in a traditional coffee shop, lounging on the cushions with a Turkish coffee and a Shisha and watching the passer-bys or admiring the old pictures. I was expecting this to be expensive, but the coffee, served in the traditional manner, only set me back three riyals (less than a dollar) – a quarter of the price of Starbucks.

The highlight of this trip came as I was walking back to my car along the edges of the souk. I suddenly came across rows of falcons, eyes blinkered with ornate hoods, perched on wood above spotless sands. These were not the small timid birds you can buy for three hundred riyals in the bird market, but big proud fierce creatures used to being treated with respect. The shop owner graciously allowed me to photo and film his birds.

Being British, I prefer something old to something new pretending to be old, and dislike the Qatari method of ‘preservation’ i.e. knocking things down and rebuilding them from scratch. But, unlike some of the forts in Qatar, Souk Waqif has been revamped with taste and style, and it is well worth a visit. In fact, I’ll probably go back next week for another one of those Turkish coffees...

Also see:

The Gold Souk

Pearl diving

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Pearl Fishing

Visit the Gold Souk and ask to look at pearls and a shop owner will show you a huge range of perfect, identical shiny Japanese cultured pearls. However, if you nag him, he will eventually bring out some original Qatari ones. These are not the same size, nor do they have the same perfect identical shape – but these are the remains of a once huge industry that provided the backbone of the Gulf economy.

It was not an easy industry. Men would leave their homes for months, although financial reward was far from certain. The process was dangerous, for the waters were shared with jellyfish, barracuda, sword fish and sharks.

Men would close their noses with clips made out of bone and wood, and grasp a stone to take them to the bottom of the sea. Once there, they would grasp the oysters, cutting them from rocks if necessary, and put them into bags attached to the line. When their bags were full, or they were exhausted, they would jerk the line sharply and their handler would pull them to the surface.

Each dive could last up to two minutes, and a diver would make 60 to 100 of these dives in a day. With depths of up to 200 feet, divers could suffer from hallucinations, earaches and the bends. These afflictions were attributed to evil djinns, and the sailors would treat the suffering diver by covering him with a sail, sitting upon him, reading him verses from the Koran and burning incense under his nose.

The retrieved pearls were sometimes skinned to improve their quality and appearance. A delicate balance had to be struck between improving the shape and removing too much of the skin. Ronald Codrai, in his book The Seven Sheikhdoms, recalls this being done during an auction. As more skins were removed and the appearance improved the bids went up.

Pearl trips were financed by merchants, who subsequently took half of the proceeds, subtracted costs and any cash advances and distributed the remaining profit among the crew. In a bad season the result could be debt. It’s not surprising, then, that with the combination of cultivated pearls from Japan and easy oil money coming in the industry died.

Nowadays memories of the pearl industry shape Qatar’s image and are exploited for tourist and business reasons. Statues of oysters and pearls are common and close to Doha is the massive Pearl Lagoon development. Or you could go and nag that shop owner to pull out some old Qatari pearls...


More on pearl diving

Pearl diving: A personal perspective

Buy pearls


The rise of the Qatari ruling family



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