Okay this week has been hectic with all of the Asian Games activities. I was hesitant about the Games at first but it turns out that it's been really cool and I've been having a great time.
I skipped the Opening Ceremony because the tickets were QR500 (US$140) but I watched it on TV from a friend's place across the street. Good thing too because an hour before the ceremony started it bucketed with rain and many in the stadium, which was only partly covered, got soaked. The ceremony itself was great to watch though, culminating with a Qatari riding a horse up a long ramp to the top of the stadium to light the flame. Thanks to the wet conditions the horse barely made it up, nearly falling over because it was slipping so much. That would have been a disaster - the climax of the ceremony would have been ruined. Afterwards I ran outside to catch the fireworks.
Tickets for events are so cheap (US$1.35-2.75) I have tickets for every single day. So far I've seen badminton, gymnastics, boxing, basketball, judo & table tennis. In many of these sports the best in the world are playing; in badminton I watched the current world champion play the current Olympic champion and all of the table tennis matches that I saw were with top-15 players. I assume the judo was the same.
Doha doesn't have a lot of hotels (I think there are around 3000 rooms) so there aren't hoards of people. Most of the events are well attended but you can usually find a seat somewhere, which is handy.
I'll give updates on individual sports over the next couple of weeks.
No comments:
Post a Comment