Friday, Nov 8, 2013
Today we visited Failaka Island which is located about 40 minutes off of the Kuwait City coastline. Failaka Island is full of history tracing back over 3,000 years. Alexander the Great once visited Failaka Island and it has been used as a major port over the course of history in several different eras.
Our boat ride was relatively smooth, I have some photos below in the slideshow. Once we arrived to Failaka we each had a short camel ride. I'll save those pictures for next Wednesday so I can have the best Hump Day post of all time. When we were finished meeting Joe the Camel we had lunch before going to ride jet skis. We were only given ten minutes to ride the jet skis but it was really funny and refreshing to taste some salt water for the first time in over 4 years I believe. After that small taste of salt water I think I'll be looking for a Gulf of Mexico trip real soon.
The first half of our day was composed of fun and touristy things but when our jet ski rides were over we wandered into an area of Failaka that is composed of abandoned houses. Houses, streets, and entire neighborhoods are empty and decaying because of the Iraq invasion in the early 90s. The abandoned houses are ridden with bullet holes and the area felt like being on set of The Walking Dead. Failaka once had over 10,000 people who lived there before the invasion but now it's primarily a tourist spot. I have several photos in the slideshow that really illustrate the eeriness of the ghost town.
It's certainly a conflict of emotions going from carefree jet skiing to seeing a town abandoned because of war but that dynamic is similar to how this entire trip has been. One minute you can be in a fancy mall full of designer fashion outlets and the next you can see migrant workers picking up trash and sweeping the streets. These kind of scenes are not unique to Kuwait but they can't be ignored. Still, it's been a great trip and a chance of a lifetime to come here on behalf of my university. I'll have more things to say about the trip-in-review in my next post. I'm unsure if I'll have anything to update again until we return to the states, but I'll try to post tomorrow and perhaps from the Amman airport on Sunday.
Here are some photos from today
Today we visited Failaka Island which is located about 40 minutes off of the Kuwait City coastline. Failaka Island is full of history tracing back over 3,000 years. Alexander the Great once visited Failaka Island and it has been used as a major port over the course of history in several different eras.
Our boat ride was relatively smooth, I have some photos below in the slideshow. Once we arrived to Failaka we each had a short camel ride. I'll save those pictures for next Wednesday so I can have the best Hump Day post of all time. When we were finished meeting Joe the Camel we had lunch before going to ride jet skis. We were only given ten minutes to ride the jet skis but it was really funny and refreshing to taste some salt water for the first time in over 4 years I believe. After that small taste of salt water I think I'll be looking for a Gulf of Mexico trip real soon.
The first half of our day was composed of fun and touristy things but when our jet ski rides were over we wandered into an area of Failaka that is composed of abandoned houses. Houses, streets, and entire neighborhoods are empty and decaying because of the Iraq invasion in the early 90s. The abandoned houses are ridden with bullet holes and the area felt like being on set of The Walking Dead. Failaka once had over 10,000 people who lived there before the invasion but now it's primarily a tourist spot. I have several photos in the slideshow that really illustrate the eeriness of the ghost town.
It's certainly a conflict of emotions going from carefree jet skiing to seeing a town abandoned because of war but that dynamic is similar to how this entire trip has been. One minute you can be in a fancy mall full of designer fashion outlets and the next you can see migrant workers picking up trash and sweeping the streets. These kind of scenes are not unique to Kuwait but they can't be ignored. Still, it's been a great trip and a chance of a lifetime to come here on behalf of my university. I'll have more things to say about the trip-in-review in my next post. I'm unsure if I'll have anything to update again until we return to the states, but I'll try to post tomorrow and perhaps from the Amman airport on Sunday.
Here are some photos from today