Qatar Tours Video - When looking at modern Qatar, its easy to imagine the great Oriental scholar, Edward Said, turning in his grave. Nineteenth-century Western travellers to the Middle East went in search of an imagined Arabia. When they couldnt find it, they described an Orient they thought their readers would prefer to the reality. Even today, its tempting to go searching for such stereotypes and Qatar has its share: there are rock carvings to testify human endurance pitched against adversities of nature; forts to hint at the ruins of empire; and occasional goat-hair Bedouin tents to suggest the noble savage nature of life in the desert. Qatar has spent its energies (and considerable fortunes) in eschewing this stereotype, however, and showing that these Orientalist flights of fancy are more a product of feverish Western imaginations than anything related to the Middle East. To this end, vast vertical pleasure domes of the postmodern variety have been erected in Doha as if to demonstrate that the country is as international as any other. At least, that was until recently. Suddenly, wind-towered developments like Al-Sharq Village Resort Spa proclaim to be genuinely Arabic Al-Waqif souq sports antique passageways; tented accommodation in Khor al-Adaid comes with air-conditioning. Qatar, in other words, appears to be reinventing itself in the image of Western otherness fantasies. For the visitor, its wonderful: everything one imagined of Arabia is there in all its sanitised glory. For those who knew the Qatar of hawk souqs and dust storms, however, theres the suspicion that this country is turning Disney. Amazing Qatar Tours Video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6ZOCYigHao

• published: 24 Jun 2014
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