National Day

I forgot to mention that December 18 was also Qatar's National Day so I got the day off work. Celebrating this day as the National Day is a relatively new phenomenon only a couple of years old. Before then the national day was September 3, the day Qatar gained independence from Britain, but the Emir decided to move it to December 18, the day the Al-Thani family took power something over a century ago.

I remember the first September 3 holiday that I had here and there was nothing going on in the way of festivities. Made sense I suppose, early September is still bloody hot. Moving it to December means that the temperatures are nice enough for the country to celebrate National Day. This year they had a military parade in the morning, horse races in the afternoon, and a fireworks show on the Corniche in the evening. I only went to the fireworks which were good but started way too late (10:00pm) and there was not much else in the way of activities on the Corniche so if you got down there early there was not much to do. And don't get me started on the traffic since thousands of people went down to the Corniche. Long story short -- nice fireworks, not sure if it was worth the effort to get there though.



Now back to Singapore. While wandering around I happened to come across something that I have heard of and always wanted to try -- a fish spa. This is where you put your feet and legs into a tank of water and tiny fish called doctorfish swarm over your feet and legs cleaning off the dead skin. It tickled so much I couldn't stop laughing! Imagine having fish go in-between your toes and nibble at the soles of your feet. So I was cracking up, and the staff were laughing because I was laughing. 20 minutes later I had nice and smooth feet. They also had a tank with bigger doctorfish but I did not like that as much as the bigger fish pinch a little and I was getting a little worried that they might actually take off some flesh. I will stick to the little fish.

If you ever see a fish spa give it a try.