Friday Outing to the Dunes

This friday i wasn't working and basically lost alot of money, to make things worse i agreed to have some fun and go out with a few guys to a beach resort about 50 Km south of Doha and probably have to spend some money. We drove down after lunch and found ourselves in a moonscape of desert and then an unbelievable string of refineries along the coast all towers and belching black smoke flare stacks. The road was diverted around the town of Al Masieed and on the road there were lots of large 4X4 trucks with trailers with quad bikes on them. As we approached the resort which was signposted for about 20 Km, we saw some huge sand dunes surrounding the place and just hundreds of kids riding quadbikes about like loonies pulling wheelies and doing donuts everywhere all along the roadside. We pulled into the car park and saw a quad bike/truck thing doing a two wheel stunt along the road in the car park, this was not only crazy but pretty dangerous as there were many cars driving about, this was only the start of the quad bike lunacy. We parked up outside the main gate and then watched as one after another of these rich qatari kids were trying to outdo each other burning donuts down the road including a fat kid with a balaclava on his head in the blazing sun, he looked like a suicide bomber and would have been shot many times had this been in Iraq, and i actually wished he had been in Iraq with the amount of noise and irritation he was causing us. It was so crazy at the entrance we decided to abandon the idea of leaving the car there and tried to drive away over the sand to the beach ourselves and within 50 yards we got bogged down in the sand, as we only have front wheel drive. we managed to dig out the front wheels and then push the car backwards until it was driveable again and then tried to get back to the road and the driver thought we was going to find some less bumpy section of sand to find it was the softest sand available known to mankind and the car sank up to the axles, we were screwed this time and as we were pathetically attempting to dig out the car again with our bare hands a local Qatari redeemed the whole nation by stopping and getting out a custom built tow rope and pulling us out of the sand, he did have the standard car for Qatar, a 4.5 L Toyota Landcruiser. We decided to pay the 50 Riyals and get into the beach resort itself as we needed beer to recover and we had to get away from the quadbikes. Inside was a sanctuary with a large hotel, bar complex with swimming pools and lawns and a quiet beach area without quadbikes roaring everywhere.
When we actually sat on the beach after the beers we could see and hear the quadbikes racing up and down the beach down the coast, literally hundreds of them down the along the beach and then up onto a huge dune that was about 200 feet tall, it was something i hadn't expected as we were so far south of Doha, but as there is nothing in Doha at all to do then this is where it all happens at the weekend. When the sun went down we set off for Doha and found the Ponderosa restaurant, for an all you can eat meal for 42 Riyals ( about $12), i stuffed as normal and ate more black olives than an normal man should, along with chocolate ice-cream with M&M's, i felt sick but for me that is pretty normal here. I got back to the camp at 9.00pm and felt ready for bed but something i ate just kept my head spinning I am worried my allergies are getting worse as i get older and i spent 2 restless hours in bed rolling about trying to get to sleep until i gave up and took my saviour, a valium tablet, i slept like a corpse all night and felt OK the next morning but what is it that if I eat a tiny amount of chocolate i cant sleep, life is a bitch and then you die