The only way to really describe my travels to the Middle East is to post the pictures, I cannot say any words that could describe these trips any better than photos,
Charlie Yester was the Vice President/General Manager of the Middle East division at that time which included India, unfortunately I never had the opportunity to visit India. Tom Prosser would take me to the Doha office in the very early morning where I had the pleasure of meeting many of the staff that I had spoken with either on phone or by email almost every day of the week. During my second trip to Doha, Qatar the rigs crew-change days were happening so Jim Shetter invited me along to their luncheon where I was able to meet many of the fellows that were crew-changing. It was great seeing the fellows I knew and may have hired also putting faces to the names of those I'd only met through a CV and the phone..
These cities are so clean and modern, fast food chains and all. The shopping malls and the gold suq. (market) in Sharjah is a shopping experience like no other I'm sure, with the exception of the malls in Dubai which I could only afford to walk through, too expensive to even window shop!. If I ever win the lottery I will be going back simply to shop.
The hospitality is everywhere, since a lot of the shore-based staff are expats they are happy to entertain anyone from home and we love being entertained in such a fashion. I attended a Robbie Burns day party which is something I didn't expect to be celebrated in the Middle East plus I'm not sure how many Scots were in the crowd.
The picnic in the desert was such a wonderful experience, drivers picked us up at noon in their all wheel drive SUV's and delivered us back to the yard around 11 PM that evening. The travels through, around and over the Sand Dunes has you holding your breath the whole time, this takes some amazing drivers to get you to and from with no problems, I suspect getting stuck in the snow or mud is nothing compared to being stuck in these dunes, fortunately I wasn't able to make that comparison. As we were having fun in the sand, a crew had gone ahead setting up the tents and the barbecues, so by the time we arrived to our destination the refreshments and snacks were waiting and dinner was on the grill. When the sun goes down it gets quite cool so we all had jackets with us. We sat around on cushions enjoying conversation, food, refreshments and fresh fruits.
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