Muscat, Oman

Muscat is my favorite place in the Middle East, even on a very hot day like the one where I snapped this photo from my hotel room. The air was a bit smoggy-looking but not from pollution. Instead, it was dusty sand drifting in from the desert region. I only got to spend about 48 hours in town on this visit, but it was enough to visit my good friends and make some plans for future meetings.

Dammam / Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia

This is a photo I snapped in the housing compound I stayed in during my short visit to Saudi Arabia. It was a quiet neighborhood for expats, surrounded by a fortified wall and guarded by military troops in concrete pillboxes. Shades of "The Kingdom",

Dammam, Saudi Arabia in June was hot (125 F / 51.5 C) during the day and the sky was filled with sand and soot, smelling of oil. The traffic was not too bad at the moment I took this shot, but there are some very unsafe drivers who speed recklessly. I saw three serious looking accidents in three days, probably caused by someone speeding.

In case you were wondering, they do sell hamburgers in Saudi Arabia. This is the sign for Burger King.

As far as I can tell from a wikisearch, this little bird is the White-eared Bulbul (Pycnonotus leucotis). I snapped this photo one morning in Khobar, Saudi Arabia.

This is the tv monitor on the jet that took me into the Middle East from Amsterdam. As you can see, we were somewhere to the east of Baghdad, Iraq and just a bit to the west of the Iranian border, descending for a landing in Kuwait.

Manama, Bahrain

I didn't see too much of Bahrain except for the airport and the road in from Saudi Arabia. Here are a few shots I took from the car. There are quite a few interesting-looking buildings in Manama, the capital of this tiny island country.