Yesterday I was invited to the Abdullah Al-Salem Cultural Centre (ASCC) for a conference and tour of all the museums. The event was meant to start at 5PM but I decided to get there half an hour early. When I got arrived I realized I was one of the first people there since the parking lot was fairly empty. So I decided to walk around the museums and explore.
For those of you who asked if the museums had enough parking, they do. There is a decently sized lot on the ground floor and another much larger lot in the basement.
The museum grounds is pretty huge and involves quite a lot of walking. It took me around 30 minutes to walk around outside the museums before I decided to head back to the first building where the conference was going to take place. When I got there I realized people were just starting to show up and that no way the conference was starting on time. So I decided to ditch the event and instead go back to exploring the insides of the museums. That turned out to be the best idea because I ended up having the all the museum just for myself and I have to say, the place is amazing!
There are four museums occupying six main buildings:
– Natural History Museum
– Science & Technology Museum
– Arabic Islamic Science Museum
– Space Museum
I literally was running around trying to capture photos for my instagram before it started getting dark and it took me over an hour and a half to run through the whole museum. I didn’t even stop to read a plaque, interact with an exhibit or walk around every hall properly and it took me that long, so imagine how long it will take you to explore the exhibits fully. I was told you’d need around 6 hours per museum and that doesn’t include attending any of the shows or workshops that are going to be held there frequently.
From all the exhibits I think my favorite might be the Human Body building of the Science & Technolgy Museum. Although I had left it until the end because I thought it was going to be lame, I think it’s probably one of the most fun and interactive areas. For example, they have a 15m running track where you could run and it would calculate your time and then compare it to famous people including record holder Usain Bolt. So you know I’m definitely going to go back in my full sports gear just to try that out. The whole lower section of that building was filled with different sports activities for you to try, interact or play around with. Then upstairs you have one of the visually most colorful and exciting looking exhibits that deals with viruses (pictured below), and there was also a biology lab where they’ll be holding workshops for people of all ages. That’s another thing I really liked about the museums, not only were their exhibits but in each museum, there were also classrooms and spaces to hold workshops.
The most surprising exhibit to me was probably the Ecosystems building under the Natural History Museum. I walked in and was mind blown, they had converted one of the buildings into an indoor rainforest with an active waterfall and water pools. I was not expecting that at all. You could walk around the rainforest from above it or from the ground floor. I started from the top since that’s where I came in from since I was at the dinosaurs exhibit next door, and then headed down. Once I was done on the ground floor I got another surprise, turns out the pools of water I had seen from the top were actually the top of the huge aquarium which was located in the basement. It’s a huge aquarium, I probably larger than the one at the Scientific Center although it wasn’t yet filled with a lot of fish.
I think I’m going to stop here since this post would end up being gigantic if I described every section of the museum. All you really need to know is that this is a legit and proper museum. I don’t know how they were able to build it and put it together in such a short period of time, and I am really impressed. The only negative thing might be in regards to the ticketing system. The museums were originally meant to be free but late into the project they decided to charge a nominal entry fee of KD3 for adults and KD2 for children. Since the building wasn’t built with the idea of ticketing in mind, they installed drive-thru ticket stations at the parking entrance. There are nine ticket stations in the parking area, you drive up to one, purchase tickets for every passenger in the car and then you’re allowed in. I can imagine that causing a lot of traffic to get in, especially in the beginning when people are rushing to see the museums. But, there is a side entrance for drop-offs and pedestrians, so if it does get super busy, I’ll just ride my bicycle down the street to the museum or have a cab drop me off.
If you want to know more about the museum including location, ticket prices, opening hours, you name it, then check out the ASCC website which is really thorough [Here]
