it was a while back now...
...about 2 Bahrain Dinar's to fill up. That's under 4 quid.
Makes you sick doesn't it? No wonder they mostly ride around in big American V8's and German Sports cars.
To put that into perspective, I can buy a pint of lager here for about the same price it'd cost me to put 50 litres of fuel into my ATR.
Yup, when I lived out there it was about 5 dhinars to fill up the tank for 3.5L V8 rangerover classic, the choice of fuel was 'Jayad' or 'Mumtaz' which was something akin to our 2 star/4star fuels back when.
When I was there for 6 years there were a lot of small saloons and pickups, nissan patrols etc. Not so much of the americam behemoths, though you did see a few. Most of the locals drove cheap jap cars. You'd see some bmw's and mercs too, but not for your ordinary bloke.
iirc they didn't pay road tax either, or quite a lot of other things; like school fees, medical fees etc etc, all paid for by the government. That's not something that gets a mention in the arab spring. I've heard people decrying human rights issues (and yes, quite a lot are certainly true) but even the rudest sh'ia peasant has the choice to send his kids to school for
nothing. Problem is, many of them choose not to
But I digress.
Fuel is cheap and you could drive, without a license, all over the desert out there, which is where I learned to drive
Can't say about a percentage of income, but we had a much higher standard of living over there by comparison to here, and whilst the locals might not get paid very highly, things are, over all, very very cheap indeed.
Roads were a bit mad, especially in the winter when it rained... all that rubber welded to the roads in 50 degree summer heat, all those cars with racing slick bald tyres, add a film of water, sand blocked drains, and drivers who tale the phrase 'the will of god' as an essential precept for road safety and you get some, er, interesting results.
Three things I remember from being out there on the roads: indian and local workers cycling to work in the mornings, three or four to a single bike, each man carrying a pick, bucket or shovel, travelling the wrong way in the fast lane of a dual carriage way, cows being transported in the back of these small pickup trucks (like vw caddy but toyota) - one day one of these vehicles tipped over going around a roundabout (not far from the pearl roundabout in manama) cows still tied up in the back, injured, the two drivers arguing in the street... the locals came out of their houses with big knives and started carving hunks of meat off these two bloody cows, whilst they were still making a right mooing racket... had I not seen it with my own eyes I'd have called BS. Lastly one government minister gave his 16 year old daughter a top of the line mercedes for her birthday, and he bought her a driving license too. She crashed it, somewhat predictably, at something close to a hundred miles an hour; clipped a car going through a red light, went sideways into a large concrete lamp post. Cut the car in half trough the front passenger compartment, killed her outright.
You have to drive defensively out there too. Also, if you do have an accident, don't mind too much if the police arrest you (as an ex-pat), you might be better off in their care than at the whim of excitable locals. That said, everybody I ever met out there was more than hospitable, except during ashura, and except for the saudi family who lived on the same compound as us. I have quite a difficulty reconciling my memories of the people over there (sh'ia and sunny muslims, mostly) and how many of their type are portrayed in the media.
The whole business over the recent rights riots and such in bahrain and the heavy handed response, caused me no little concern for my one time adopted home; such a small nation, I hope they sort things out with the minimum of fuss. But again having said that, it is easy to understand why they rule with a bit of an iron fist over there - the people are not like us, in as much as we don't really go about getting all excitable over religion and other stuff, so trying to compare british life, society values and security, with theirs, is a bit stupid. But that's a common western misunderstanding when dealing with arab states and peoples, made by ordinary folk, and politicians alike here.
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