Fear and Loathing in Bahrain

Ernie was having trouble sleeping in the middle of the night and when it was my turn to wake up and entertain him I realized... I was not feeling well at all. My illness progressed and by the time we stopped at Khalifa Bin Salman Port near Bahrain's capital city of Manama I didn't really want to leave the ship.

I had to drag myself to shore and make numerous bathroom breaks but I survived. I grew strong and I learned how to get along.

What to do when you're in a gulf state with no plans... go to the mall! I was too sick to eat anything but I was satisfied that Lydia got to enjoy this Bahraini Raising Cane's. We don't even have one of these in Seattle!

The Avenues mall wraps around the waterfront along Bahrain Bay. 

In Lydia's defense I'm sure she had better ideas of what to do in the country than go to the mall but I think I was feeling so sick and I knew they would have plenty of bathrooms that it seemed like a good compromise.

I thought it was interesting that Victoria's Secret exists here but didn't have any underwear lady posters hanging up in the windows.

There were a ton of stores selling incenses that frequently seemed to be made out of wood. It was a very fragrant mall.

Lastly we popped into the Bahrain National Museum to learn all the things.

Earlier today I was so sick I had to lean on Ernie's stroller like a walker but by this point I was feeling a bit better.

Pope Francis was the first Papa to visit Bahrain and they seemed awfully excited about it.

This bit is maybe my most enduring memory of the whole country:

"Losing the Milk Teeth

An old tradition is that whenever a child loses any of his milk teeth he holds it in his fist with seven date stones, and pointing at the sun he shouts: "Take this donkey's tooth and give me a gazelle's tooth". He then throws the tooth and the stones at the sun."

I am in favor of many more traditions involving both verbal and physical abuse of the sun.

The elevator seemed to be held together by aluminum foil. What could possibly go wrong?

Ern declared he had officially learned everything in the museum and we departed back to our mothership.

We walked through an eerily abandoned immigration check point on the way to the ship.