For those who are interested in every detail :) (Ireland and Qatar)

My trip started with visiting my sister Becky in Limerick, Ireland. Becky is doing her first semester of college abroad. I stayed with her in her apartment/dorm. For me, the point of this stop was getting my travel bearings and of course getting a chance to see Becky. We didn't do too many touristy things. We did manage to journey to the homeland (which is apparently Cork). Cork was awesome. Just a small city two hours out of Limerick. We went on a Sunday so, of course, very little was open. As we came to the end of the hub street we found ourselves in the middle of a good sized folk festival. At first there was a live band at one end of a big open court yard area and they were calling Irish Folk dancing that anyone was welcome to join in. We watched for a few dances before joining ourselves. Unfortunately this left no one to get pictures. We wondered Cork a little more, tried to get a bus to see Blarney Castle (we missed the last bus) and ended up back at this same court yard in time to see Salsa Celtica. This Cuban /Irish folk fusion band was incredible. I highly suggest looking them up on YouTube or trying to find them online. It was truly amazing music.

Back in Limerick, Becky and I visited her local castle (St. John's Castle) and the museum and made sure we went out for Guinnesses and some more traditional Irish music before I left. All in all Ireland was a great place to chill out and get reorganized after a first leg of my trip.

So I left Ireland. I had a 6 hour stop over in Doha, Qatar. Which I realize doesn't really count as a destination on my trip, except that it was so different from really anywhere I had been before. So there you have it, I am counting it. We off boarded the plane by climbing down stairs and walking outside over to buses that then drove us 15 minutes to the terminals. This wasn't so strange except that it was 75 degrees outside at 2am. That was new. I stayed awake while in the airport. I browsed the duty free shops and tried out the perfumes. I swear it was dark and the middle of the night as I left one end of the terminal and by the time I looked out the windows at the other end it was daylight. I watched the sunrise before getting back in line to board my 6th plane of the week. This time as we rode the 15 minutes on the buses I could clearly see my surroundings. The airport is right on the edge of the city. I feel like we drove pretty close to down town Doha. It was pretty neat. It is clear from the in flight magazine that Qatar is really trying to push Doha as a great new tourist destination. It was interesting to get to see a little bit of it. While through the haze you could see colorful buildings in the city everything directly around me was the all the same desert camel beige color. Everything, the ground, buildings,workers clothes, even the haze turned the air a sky a similar hue. Anyways, I've never been to a desert before. This is what I have to report from Qatar.

I had a really lovely flight from Doha to Bangkok. It was sunny and beautiful the entire way. The clouds just below us made incredible shapes in the sky. I was embarrassed for myself when I looked back through my camera and realized that the 20 something pictures I took of clouds. My friends and I met at the airport and began bargaining with cab drivers. After an hour and a half of one way escalators, not being able to find the buses and resilient Thai cab drives we settled on what we knew was an extremely over priced cab out of exhaustion.