Thankfully Tubby Taslim the Taxi Driver is wised up to these obstacles and so we sped off on Wednesday lunchtime when there is little traffic - the calm before the weekend storm - and I was swimming round the hotel pool by one in the afternoon having fended off Tubby Taslim the Taxi Diver's latest, hapless attempt to rip me off.
Back in the room, watching cricket (India v Bangladesh) on TV, there was a knock on the door and I found a giggling Chinese chick standing outside in not many clothes offering me a massage. I said I was a bit busy as the Indians have got a new-look team after the Tendulkar era came to a close, but she had trouble taking no for an answer and I had to manhandle her from the room. Ten minutes later her friend turned up, similarly attired in skin tight mini-dress, layers of make-up and high heels. Ten minutes later, another. And so on. They must have been the roughest looking hookers this side of Shanghai and you'd have to pay me to even consider it.
Back to the cricket, so rudely interrupted.
When I ventured out at dusk the hookers were brazenly struttting up and down the corridor catering to a full house and alongside the Deputy Manager we watched one give an over-the-top goodbye to a highly embarrassed suit in the lobby with an audience ranging from enrapt reception staff and assorted guests, women and children among them, lounging round on blue plastic sofas. The porter and his cart stopped abruptly at the sight, cartwheels squeaking to a halt. The finale involved her dangling from his neck and slobbering a kiss. The Deputy Manager smiled proudly. All in a day's work.
Every self-respecting hotel in Bahrain with 3 stars or more has a host of entertainment on offer, most of it involving scantily clad women. The hotel I was in - Gulf Gate - has five different bars that are all themed - Russian, Arabic, Moroccan, Philipino, African - as well as a gay bar called Wendy's, which one imagines has no need for chicks in lingerie and there is also an A1 Disco but it was being refitted. I was refused entry into an Arab packed, raucously wild Marrakesh Club on the spurious grounds that I was wearing shorts. White man unwelcome was the hidden message.
When perusing the hotel entry online at booking.com I had to laugh at the brazenly alluring photos of foxy Russian girls in the pool. The locals drool over blondes and a Saudi told me a story of how he was just about to go to bed when his phone rang from a friend who had been arrested in Bahrain for pinching a Moroccan woman's bottom; goosing her, as the Yanks say. The fine was 100 dinars ($265), which he didn't have, hence the call to the guy in Saudi who had to get dressed, drive 2 hours, pay the fine, release him from custody then drive 2 hours home, arriving about 5am with work at 7am. "You know what?" he told me, eyes saddened and sleepy. "He is a bad friend. When he came out of the police station, he didn't even look at me. Didn't say thanks or nothing. He just drove off."
Out on the street, a taxi driver leaped to his feet at the sight of me and bellowed "Taxi!" To avoid him, I wandered into an Indian bar - joss-sticks burning, clothes rustling, sniggers and whispers - that had almost no lights on and everything was in the dark so I had no idea what furtive liaisons were being enacted in the shadows because I couldn't see a bloody thing and when I'd located the door I was almost blinded by the glaring sun and TAXI! bellowed out again.
Away from the hotels, life in Manama goes on as if it were a small provincial town and I did my bank business in five minutes flat thanks to a gentle Punjabi in an office behind Bab al-Bahrain, the original port where dhows would unload their frankincense, gold and myrrh, whatever that is, and spices, giving off an exotic air that remains to this day. Manama, with freshwater wells found just below the sea bed, fast became a trading hub with ships sailing in from the Orient and caravans setting out across the deserts to the Levant and northern Africa, even on to Europe. I had dinner in my usual spot at the Charcoal Grill. Then I got hammered in Diggers Bar and the next day, when I was swimming off the hangover, a Chinese madamoiselle appeared poolside in standard hooker attire and started shouting at me, "Hahaha, you swim? You swim good, yes? You no want massage now?"
"No thanks."
That didn't put her off jabbering away for five minutes while I did the backstroke.
"Hahaha! I see you know how go backward. Hahaha! You want massage now?"
On the final morning, on the way down to an awful breakfast, I was accosted by an entrepreneurial early bird, dressed to kill and armed with the stock question. Her lime green dress was entirely see-through and I said, "No, I don't want a massage. I want breakfast and then I am going to embark on The Magnificent Journey That Not Many People Know About ... have you heard about it?"
"You want massage now?"