New house in Bahrain...

After living in hotel for 10 days, I found my house and moved in on 8th of March 2010. Seen many houses in Bahrain, most of them are above 350BD (*Note:1BD=RM9) with fully furnished house and very nice environment. But in the end I decided to take the cheap one, 260BD per month rent, it is in the middle of Gudaibiya area, somewhere like an old town of Manama city. By the way, Manama is like capital of Bahrain, beside Gudaibiya, it is the Central Business District (CBD) of Bahrain. For me, I feel that if CBD is like KL, then Gudaibiya is like Setapak, a place with congested traffic and crowded with all kind of people. Every evening, finding a car park is a headache problem. But for the sake of saving 90BD per month, it is worth to park far and walk 8 minutes distance home every evening.

This is the alley where my apartment is. The crime rate at Bahrain is extremely low, so it is absolutely not a problem.

The main gate guarded with security lock. Non-resident can only gain access by calling the resident house number and wait for the resident to open the gate. In Bahrain, sometimes the buildings and the roads are named, but most of the time it is numbered. My building is name as Gudaibiya Suite II, but postman doesn't recognise it by building name. The easiest recognisation is by the number. See my building is building 3933, and road 2158.

This is a 5 stories apartment building, of course lift is necessary. But I'm living at mezzanine floor, the floor between ground floor and first floor, and the lift doesn't go to mezzanine floor. So I don't use it.

This is the main door of my apartment. The door at the left leads to laundry room and gym room. That's why doing laundry and gym is so convenient for me.

It is a studio apartment, you find everything in one room. My bed, sofa, dining/study table.

The 21" TV, just a normal TV. If I went for those 350BD apartment then I would get LCD TV.

The TV is connected to satellite channels. There are 300++ channels but most of them are in arabic, I only watch BBC World News for most of the time. Feel like I living the life as I was in UK, watching BBC news.

The table was originally placed right to the wardrobe, but I like to eat and do thing in laptop in front of TV, so I moved the table to the front of bed. That place now is occupied by some chairs and ironing board.

The small kitchen, the size is just nice for people living alone in this house. It is furnished with fridge, stove+oven, microwave, coffee maker, kettle and dining utensils. I bought myself a blender for making fruit smoothie for breakfast and dinner.

A simple but clean toilet.

Bathroom compartment with hot water running all the time to bathroom, toilet and kitchen. Here, the rental includes electric and water bill. That's the best thing, I just switch on the air-con whenever I'm home.

The laundry room. Have to use shared laundry machine because the laundry machine is not provided in every room. Not a big problem for me, it is just like the life I lived in university hostel. The good thing here is they provide tumble dryer too. It is not provided at most of the house, even the 350BD house. Can't imagine drying cloth by hanging them out there in this sandy and dusty country.

A small gym room, better than nothing. Never seen any other resident uses it, maybe I'm the only one using it.

So, it is a nice house, isn't it? Definitely worth of 260BD in Bahrain context. For those planning to come and visit me, now you know what kind of place you are going to live, hehe :p