Bahrain

I was in Bahrain for a couple of days on business. It had been a couple of years since my last visit so I was curious to see if all the trouble caused a lot of changes.

It started off annoyingly when my colleague (also a Westerner) and I got stuck at passport control for over an hour. We walked up to passport control, give them our passports, then were told to go back and wait while they did checks. What they were looking for I wasn't sure but all in all we were there about an hour waiting. There was no one left in the customs hall when they finally give us back our passports. No explanation was given for what they were doing that took so long. While some people I met in Bahrain speculated about what was going on there is no way to know for sure so there's no point in repeating it here.

I did not see much of Bahrain and what I did see did not seem out of the ordinary. People there told us that in certain neighborhoods there was still a bit of trouble, mostly youths burning the occasional tire. Sure enough twice during our visit we could see small columns of black smoke a few kilometers away from the office tower. The people around us were pretty blasé about it, guess it was a common occurrence.

The F1 race is this weekend so the country likely has a lot of security out to make sure nothing happens. It would be a real public relations blow to the government if things got out of hand at the biggest event of the year. Guess we will find out next couple of days.