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Wednesday, November 23, 2005 - (see all news for this day)
driving - 12:00 PM
(filed under 'bahrain')
an hour or so ago, i just came back from having my first driving experience in bahrain. my cold seems to have cleared up a lot & my head was in working order enough to feel capable to drive, so i went with shroom to work so that i could take the car & run a few errands. i've only done one of those errands so far, but i think i did well doing that.
i had to go to the budget rent-a-car place to get my international drivers license stamped to say that i'm allowed to drive the rental car. i drove the car there from the airport (shroom's workplace) before it was stamped, but they didn't need to know that. of course, if the lady behind the counter had looked closely at my face she might have seen that i'd just had the driving experience of my life. 
this is going to be long entry, so read on for more if you're interested.
when i first got into the car & did a u-turn in the car park near where shroom got out of the car to go to work, not only was it confusing enough trying to get used to the gear stick being on the right instead of the left (thank goodness it's an automatic) & then then turning the windscreen wipers on when i was acually trying for the blinkers, but when i turned out of the car park i wondered why the hell the guy who was trying to turn into the car park was on the wrong side of the road & wasn't moving out of my way! when it dawned on me that i was meant to be on the other side of the road i flailed my arms around apologetically at him & looked embarrassed enough for him to proabably realise that i was just a silly foreigner. hehe.
i had to find the sheraton centre, which is where budget is located, & was using only a very basic map which was from budget themselves. after being amazed that i was on the right road, sitting at a red light i saw the sheraton ahead of me & did some celebratory chair dancing & arm waving. a lady driving in her car to my left saw me & laughed. when the lights changed, in my haste to make sure i didn't miss the turnoff, i turned off too early for the sheraton centre & ended up going for ages down some highway which was taking me to saudi arabia! i finally found a turnoff which went under it & back the other direction again.
i may have entered through the wrong carpark entrance (a kind security guard had to move a barrier out of the way to let me through when i showed him the dicky map i was using) but when i eventually got into the sheraton centre i found budget & got my license stamped no troubles. on the way home, after going in the wrong direction for a bit (all i can say is that i'm really pleased bahrain has quite a few roundabouts so that i could go all the way around & back the way i was coming) i got on the right highway & saw the grand mosque right on cue. it's a major landmark in bahrain, as well as the place where we need to turn left to get home.
i got on the correct road home but left it one block too late to find the hotel. however, i then found the street that the shops are on, so i just went around the block. by the time i got home i felt like i was ready for a big sleep. lol!!
what an adventure! that was my first time ever driving in a foreign country. i rode a little moped around the streets in vanuatu on our honeymoon all those years ago, but that doesn't really count. this was 'real' traffic & traffic lights & highways & roundabouts. i did it & i survived. i feel like such an grown up. lol!!
The joys of driving on the other side of the road...
:O
just wait till you come home and step out onto the road looking the wrong way... or when you cant work out how to turn right properly at lights because there are too many lanes... its fun though.
congrats on your first time!
thats how i was when i first got to sydney and drove for the first time....LOL....it was a long drive every morning at 5 am from Watsons Bay to Double Bay ill tell you that!!
Thank God the merc wasnt a standard, or else i dont know what id would have done...
well done - i know how you feel about the wrong side of the road - i was the same in the US just remember when turning "right is tight" "left is long" took me awhile to get into the proper side of car - felt like an idiot sitting in front of the glove box!!!
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and so the big adventure in barhein starts