2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

Screenshot from Green Book

The movies below are now showing at Cinescape, Grand Cinemas, Sky Cinemas and VOX:

New This Weekend:
Black ’47 (6.9)
Green Book (8.3)
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (8.5)
Mia and the White Lion (6.9)
The Mule (7.2)
The Super (6.0)
Zoe (6.1)

Other Movies Showing Now:
Aquaman (8.2)
Backtrace (3.7)
Bumblebee (7.2)
Cold Skin (6.0)
Creed II (8.0)
Mary Poppins Returns (7.4)
Prospect (7.0)
Ralph Breaks the Internet (8.1)
Second Act (6.2)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (8.6)
The Grinch (6.1)
The Sisters Brothers (7.1)

The movies below are also now showing at the Scientific Center IMAX theater:

Amazon Adventure 3D (6.6)
Oceans: Our Blue Planet (7.4)
Planet Power 3D (N/A)

Numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at time of publishing.

Earlier in the week I posted about the new dumpling place Wu Fu Dumpling Bar but, the day I posted about them they closed down for some reason. But, they just reopened again today so if you wanted to try them out they’re now back online on Carriage.

The UAE cabinet has begun the implementation of 100% foreign ownership and 10-year residency visas for expats, investors and businesspeople.[Source]

What I found sad is the sub headline for the article which states that the new laws are expected to help retain expats in the UAE. It’s sad because most of the articles in Kuwait talk about different ways to get rid of us while UAE is appreciating their expats and wanting them to stay longer.

The Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmed causeway project is nearly complete and is set to open this coming April. Once it opens the bridge will be the world’s longest with a total span of 48.53km [Source].

Going by the drone footage in the two videos here, the drive will be very scenic over the Kuwaiti bay and take around 35 minutes from one end to the other. There isn’t anything on the other side to see yet but at least the road isn’t broken and full of potholes and little rocks flying around like every other road in Kuwait at the moment.

The new Suzuki Jimny is one of the hottest and hardest to get cars right now in the market. When it launched in Kuwait back in October the dealership sold out of the Jimny on the same day (65 cars is what I heard). The resale value of the car is probably the highest right now as well since whoever was lucky to buy one can sell it for basically the same price they paid for if not more. I’ve been wanting to try the Jimny ever since it launched and I was lucky enough to have a friend who lent me his to drive for a few days. Spoiler: It was a lot of fun!

The Jimny is a very tiny SUV that kinda looks like a mini Mercedes G-Class. It has a very boxy minimalistic design which I fell in love with ever since I saw the car when it was announced early last year. The car comes in 8 colors but my personal favorites are the Jungle Green and the Chiffon Ivory which is the color my friend luckily had and pictured in this post. There are no options for the interior color, all Jimny’s come with a black interior (thankfully). Locally, the car comes with practically no options other than powered windows. For some reason the GCC spec doesn’t include options like LED headlights or a stereo with a seven-inch screen and Apple CarPlay. The GCC spec also doesn’t include safety features like Weaving Alert and Lane Departure Warning. This isn’t the dealers choice, Suzuki just doesn’t offer these options for the GCC models right now.

As soon as I sat in the car I felt very comfortable and cozy. I’m 6’1 and there was lots of room for me, even in the back seat surprisingly. The car’s pillars are also fairly thin so there are no blindspots around the car and the large windows bring in a lot of light helping give the car a very open and spacious feel.

Driving the Jimny is a lot of fun, the small size and the fact you can see outside in every direction helps give you a layer of confidence you might not usually have when driving. Actually driving the Jimny reminded me of the Fiat 500 and my old Vespa since both of those were super fun and very easy to manage. You can tell what kind of mood the car put me in from the photos in this post, it’s not a serious car and so I wanted to have fun with it. But don’t get me wrong, the Jimny is still a very capable SUV, it’s actually why the older model had such a cult following. I took the Jimny out to the Mutla Ridge (pictured above) and it didn’t have an issue climbing up the ridges and even the deep sand wasn’t much of an issue since the Jimny is a fairly light SUV. It’s an off-road car as much as it is the perfect city car.

When I finally had to give the car back to my friend it felt a bit sad. Because its so easy to get comfortable with the Jimny, I quickly got used to it, and for the few days I had it, the car felt like it belonged to me. Thankfully the dealership doesn’t have Jimny’s for sale at the moment or else I might have been tempted to just pass by and pick one for myself. At only KD5,500, the Jimny is pretty much in impulse buy territory for a lot of people. But even if you weren’t looking for a fun second or third car, the Jimny would be a great primary one. The car is perfect for driving around in the city or areas like Shuwaikh because of the small size, but even on my drive to Mutla I didn’t feel like I was in a slow car and the ride was pretty comfortable.

If I didn’t already have an SUV I would buy one without hesitation. Plus, the amount of accessories and customizations available for the Jimny is just crazy. For KD5,500 I don’t think there is any other car on the market thats as fun to drive or as good of a deal.

The Bait Al-Othman Museum originally opened back in 2013 and I passed by it a few months after opening to check it out and post about it on the blog. But last week I went back to the museum again and to my surprise, it turned out they had expanded the museum considerably since my last visit 5 years ago.

I’m having a difficult time trying to decide how much information I should share about the place. When I visited the museum last week I went expecting to see the stuff I had seen the last time I was there, basically various rooms covering important aspects of Kuwait and its history. But once I started exploring some of the new sections which I hadn’t seen before, I realized Bait Al-Othman is by far one of the most bizarre and entertaining museums in Kuwait. I had such a good time that I want to go back again with more friends.

Some of the new areas of Bait Al-Othman felt like they had been taken from the now closed old Science Museum in Kuwait City. The museum has such a random combination of content including a small haunted house, loads and loads of stuffed animals and even a hostel. I really want to share more details but I think it would be a lot more fun to just go there without knowing too much about the place.

So if you haven’t been to Bait Al-Othman before or at least not recently, you should definitely pass by the place. The museum is located in Hawalli [Google Maps] with loads of parking space available. Their opening hours are from 9AM to 1PM and 4PM to 9:30PM everyday except on Fridays they don’t open in the mornings.

Pro Tip: You need around 3 hours or more to see everything, and make sure you visit all the rooms. There are some areas which look closed off but they lead to other areas. So explore it all.

On Saturday while at Qout Market, I got to try a new dumpling place called Wu Fu Dumpling Bar and it was delicious. It was so good I actually had it again last night at their restaurant. Well technically not their restaurant, they operate out of the kitchen of another restaurant that’s located inside Shuwaikh Market called Zoi. If you’ve never been to Shuwaikh Market, it’s a fairly gloomy looking place and pretty much dead all of the time. When I was there last night there was nobody else at the restaurant so the atmosphere was non existent. Also, if you’re expecting a Chinese theme of a sort then you’re also out of luck since Zoi is actually a Greek Restaurant with an interior that looks like an inside of old cottage with other parts looking like an outdoor garden. Not a nice place to sit, but I was there for the dumplings so didn’t really care.

Wu Fu are also on Carriage so you don’t have to visit the restaurant if you don’t want to, but I like my dumplings fresh out of the pot which is why I chose to go to them instead of have the food come to me. Last night Wu Fu were super busy with Carriage orders and I ended up waiting around 40 minutes for my two dumpling dishes. I actually had a third order but they had to cancel it for me since they ran out of it before it was my turn, in fact, they were pretty much out of everything on their menu last night. The food took forever to come and I was pretty frustrated, but when the food finally did arrive it was so good it made everything better. They were very apologetic about the delay, they just had a ton of Carriage orders and were trying their best to keep up.

I should mention that other than the fact their dumplings are delicious, they’re also reasonably priced. An order of dumplings which consists of 10 pieces costs around KD2.800. They have around ten different kinds of dumplings they make using either lamb, beef or chicken, as well as having vegetarian and vegan options available as well. But if yesterday was a regular day for them then it looks like they sell out from most of their stuff by around 7 or 8PM.

If you want to have the dumplings fresh then you can visit Wu Fu at Zoi in Shuwaikh Market or else find them on Carriage and maybe the next Qout Market. Check them out on instagram @wufu_kwt

Either Kuwait Airways are being super honest here, or someone hacked their @kuwaitairways instagram account…

Thanks Maz99

Over the weekend Carriage launched an amazing new membership service called Carriage Black where for just KD3.5 a month you’ll get unlimited free deliveries. For someone like me who basically uses their service every day, and sometimes multiple times a day, this is a pretty incredible deal. But, I think I know why they’re doing this.

From what I’ve heard, when Deliveroo launches in Kuwait (any day now) they will be offering free delivery to customers for at least the first 6 months. That would pretty much kill Carriage so this is a way for them to compete with Deliveroo.

If you want to sign up to Carriage Black then make sure you have the latest updated version of their app since the service only became available with their most recent update.

Sheikh Ahmed al-Yousef, head of Kuwait’s Football Association, said that Kuwait cannot facilitate the conditions of participating in hosting some of the World Cup matches.

Yousef told Kuwait’s al-Rai newspaper that it is hard to accommodate FIFA’s main conditions in Kuwait, the biggest of which is allowing all nationalities to enter the country with a visa upon arrival, including Israel.

He added: “Even if we selectively picked the teams playing in Kuwait, we cannot prevent the audience from attending. There are also alcohol brands that are sponsoring the event and would like to sell and promote its products during the games, and that is forbidden and criminalized in Kuwait, so how would we solve this problem?” [Source]

I didn’t even know Kuwait was even in the consideration to co-host the World Cup. This is such a huge missed opportunity, one which I don’t think we’ll have again. Qatar spent a lot of money getting the World Cup to come to the region so we basically would have gotten a free ride. The amount of publicity and visitors we would have gotten by hosting the World Cup, and all the improvements the government would have made to the local infrastructure, it’s so sad all this isn’t going to happen now.

Qout Market is back this coming Saturday and it’s taking place in Safat Square again (pictured above). Other than that there are a few other things going on this weekend, check out the full list of events below:

Thursday
Exhibition: Abstraction by Farouk Hosny
Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra

Friday
Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra
Friday Run
Stargazing in AlSalmi Desert

Saturday
Sunrise Yoga
Qout Market
Exhibition: Abstraction by Farouk Hosny
Movie Discussion: 12 Angry Men
Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra

If you’d like to share an event on the blog [Email Me]
For a full list of upcoming events click [Here]

Sometimes events get canceled or have details changed so always double check with the organizers.

Screenshot from Prospect

The movies below are now showing at Cinescape, Grand Cinemas, Sky Cinemas and VOX:

New This Weekend:
Backtrace (3.7)
Cold Skin (6.0)
Dead in a Week: Or Your Money Back (6.3)
Girls of the Sun (5.6)
Mia & The White Lion (6.8)
Prospect (7.0)
The Cleaning Lady (5.8)
The Sisters Brothers (7.1)

Other Movies Showing Now:
Aquaman (8.2)
Bumblebee (7.2)
Capsule (6.2)
Creed II (8.0)
Mary Poppins Returns (7.4)
Ralph Breaks the Internet (8.1)
Remi, Nobody’s Boy (6.9)
Second Act (6.2)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (8.6)
Speed Kills (3.9)
The Fixies: Top Secret (5.7)
The Grinch (6.1)
Widows (7.4)

The movies below are also now showing at the Scientific Center IMAX theater:

Amazon Adventure 3D (6.6)
Oceans: Our Blue Planet (7.4)
Planet Power 3D (N/A)

Numbers in brackets refer to the IMDB rating at time of publishing.

Pattaya Beach which many people consider to be the best Thai restaurant in Kuwait is opening a second location. Their new store is going to be in Salmiya, right next to Al Bustan Mall [Google Maps]. I think their current location in Kuwait City in the old travel agency complex along with the shop design helped make the place feel unique (along with the food of course), so I’m curious to see how the old charm translates into a new location.

No idea when its opening but you could follow them on instagram to stay posted on their progress @sahil_pattayaq8

I’ve been getting messages asking me if there will be any fireworks at Kuwait Towers tonight and honestly, I have no clue. If there is going to be fireworks around the Kuwait Towers area then they’re keeping it a secret because I can’t find any info on it in the local papers or online. But, Al Kout Mall are having activities and fireworks tonight and you can find out more about that [Here]

If you know of anything else taking place tonight, let us know about it in the comments below.

Last month I posted about how you can skip airport queues with the Pearl Assist meet & assist service. I had previously tried Pearl Assist on arrival but these past two weekends I used them for both departure and arrival and I loved it.

Pearl Assist on Departure
I hadn’t tried Pearl Assist when departing before so I was curious to see how useful it would be. When you arrive to the airport the first thing you need to do is head to the Pearl Assist kiosk in the arrival section. There you hand over your passport to the employee who will then take you to your airline check-in area, skip to the front of the line and get you checked in at the first available check-in desk. This could be super useful on a very busy flight. Once you’re checked in the employee will then take you through the fast track security check and passport control area. After you’re done with passport control and enter the duty-free hall, they’ll hand you back your passport and you’re done. If you tend to travel during busy seasons or during holidays, this will save you so much time since you will avoid all the long lines.

Pearl Assist on Arrival
Once you land and get off the plane you’ll find a Pearl Assist employee waiting for you outside the gate, you hand them your passport and follow them to passport control. Kuwaitis might not benefit much from arrival since the passport control lines for Kuwaitis is pretty organized, but for expats it’s a completely different story. Expats are squeezed to the side of the passport control hall in a messy crooked line that’s long and packed (pictured above). It doesn’t matter if you flew in business or economy, you don’t get to fast track and everyone has to stand in this line, it gives me anxiety and I hate it. But with Pearl Assist you get to skip all that mess and head to the front of this line, it really makes the airport experience on arrival a million times better.

So how much does this cost? You have two options, the first is to pay for this service per use and that costs KD11. It’s what I did and it cost me KD22 for departure and arrival. The other option which I’m going to sign up with is their unlimited use membership. This costs KD110 for the year and you can use them as many times as you want. So if you travel more than 5 times a year then really this is the way to go.

If you’re interested in signing up to their membership plan or to try them out, here is the link to their [Website]

Update: I was just informed by Pearl Assist that they’re running a promo that expires at the end of the year (tomorrow night basically). If you sign up to their unlimited service before the end of 2018 you get extra benefits including 50% discount on your +1’s and 15% discount on their global services (over 200 airports). To get these benefits you just need to sign up from the same link I’ve posted above.