There’s not very much to do in Kuwait City. I’m not saying that as a knock on the place, it’s just a fact, and I think most Kuwaitis would readily concede the point. The country just doesn’t receive a ton of tourists, so I think they’re probably just at a loss for what to do with us Westerners. And even though this tiny nation sits right alongside the Persian Gulf, the beaches there simply aren’t a destination. Besides, most of the year it’s too simply hot to enjoy being outside. And while the air conditioning flows freely inside Kuwait’s countless luxury shopping malls, you can only visit these oases so often before you begin to question your life choices. It only took me a couple days in country to reach this point, which is why I jumped on the opportunity to join a group tour at a weaving museum.
Kuwait is a country that rushed into the modern age within a single generation, so it was particularly nice to learn more about the area’s nomadic Bedouin traditions. Even though I found the Beit al-Sadu (House of Traditional Weaving) a little on the small side, at least as far as national museums go, it still worked out well since I’ve got no particular interest in textiles. But even the most jaded business traveler could easily kill an hour wandering through the place, appreciating the effort and enthusiasm that went into each display, if not the actual craftsmanship and technique used in the weaving. And the lack of English signage was actually a little refreshing, since it meant that Western visitors weren’t obligated to read every last word on the displays.
Like all good tourist traps, the exit door was located beyond the gift shop, which also served to snap our group back to reality. The Beit Al-Sadu had several dozen hand-woven products for sale, the cheapest of them starting at several hundred Kuwaiti dinar. Even the most utilitarian items, things like hand-woven towels and bookmarks, were well beyond my price range. This revelation was just as enlightening as the museum’s actual exhibits: in a wealthy country like Kuwait, a place where most products (and even most laborers) are imported from other lands, a traditional hand-made product has become just another status symbol for luxury shoppers. And even though I didn’t end up picking up a souvenir during my visit, at least I had something to dwell on for the rest of that trip, while I wandered aimlessly around the malls…