Tamara Pitelen goes to her friend Rachel’s cocktail party in downtown Doha, in the Islamic Gulf state of Qatar.

“Crazy signal, Madame, you must come to crazy signal then make u-turn!” insisted the disembodied voice of the Kebab King employee for what seemed like the thirtieth time in as many seconds.

My friend Rachel smacked both hands down on the steering wheel of her new Mercedes Benz in frustration at the words spoken by the exasperated and faceless Indian male who was, via speaker phone, giving her directions to Kebab King’s Ras Abu Aboud branch. Rachel was due there to collect an order for several trays of dim sum, chicken wings and spring rolls to serve at a cocktail party at her apartment that evening.

“Like I’ve been telling you for the last five minutes,” Rachel shouted through gritted teeth at the owner of the voice, “I do not know where the crazy signals are! I’m new to town but I have a map, why can’t you give me a street name or other landmark?”

“You don’t know crazy signal Madame?” [The man paused as he was temporarily rendered speechless in disbelief.] “Then how can you ever come here?” His incredulous voice seemed to imply that anyone who did not know the location of the apparently fanatical traffic lights simply could not survive in Doha. The thing is, he was right.

Street names and maps, it seems, are not methods the residents of Qatar (pronounced to rhyme with ‘gutter’) favour when it comes to navigating their capital city of Doha. To get around, you need to learn the universal but unwritten names for local landmarks and intersections. We later heard various stories about how ‘crazy signal’ got its name, one of which was that it used to be a road-planning nightmare involving two small roundabouts that forced drivers to perform a tight figure eight. Chaos, one assumes, ensued.

The roundabouts have long since been replaced by traffic lights, but still this intersection is known as crazy signal. Then there’s mid-mac roundabout, a nickname derived from the plethora of fast food outlets in the area, as well as TV roundabout, so called because it was once the location of the only shop in town that sold televisions. This shop is long gone but happily for newcomers who would otherwise be confused, that roundabout is where Al Jazeera chose to build its television station headquarters so the name still seems to make sense. To the outsider, things making sense in Qatar is more the exception than the rule but maybe that’s part of its charm. Maybe.

An Arab emirate in the Gulf region bordered by Saudi Arabia and the seas of the Persian Gulf, Qatar is one of the wealthiest nations in the world thanks to its large supplies of oil and natural gas. Its population of about 1.5 million is mostly expatriate, workers from around the globe who’ve been recruited in droves to help bring to fruition the obscenely rich nation’s ambitious plans to follow in the footsteps of places like Dubai and become a major player on the world stage.

One of the many expats to be enticed by the potential of Qatar was my friend Rachel. She had moved to Doha three months before my visit to take up the position of editor on The Peninsula, one of the country’s national daily newspapers.

I’m just visiting for the weekend. The same weekend, it turns out, that has seen the city hit by its worst sandstorm in months, which means we’re staying indoors, drinking gin and tonics and watching DVD box sets.

This was all more than fine with me because it was one of those occasions when the decision to get on an airplane and visit foreign parts was motivated by the desire to see loved ones, not sights. Without such motivation, few holidaymakers end up wiping their feet on Doha’s doormat and in the past Qatar has been decidedly disinterested in encouraging visitors; as a result the nation’s tourism industry is virtually nil.

About 98 per cent of the people who patronise the city’s expensive and rapidly-multiplying hotels are business travelers. About 60 per cent of these people are government business travelers.

It ain’t no Disneyland. Still though, I felt it would be wrong to arrive in a new place and not have a look around so one morning Rachel and I climbed into her Merc (this is a hint about Qatar’s newfound attraction for Western expats) for a tour of the town . Then, in a bid to do something ‘touristy’, we braved the vicious winds of the sandstorm to have our photo taken in front of a sculpture of a pearl in an oyster shell – pearl fishing was once the backbone of Qatar’s economy.

In case I’m being overly critical though, let me add that there are some tourist offerings. There are the usual Middle Eastern opportunities for desert safaris, sand skiing, mosques, historic forts – and other reminders of what life was like in Arabia before oil turned the locals from a race of nomadic camel riders into BMW drivers. Generally though, Qatar is not your typical holiday destination.

However – and this is a big ‘however’ – they’re working on this. Since Doha hosted the Asian Games in 2006, the tourism machine has moved into second gear and what the little-emirate-that-could may lack in Eiffel Towers and Statues of Liberty, it makes up for in cash. As a result, construction is booming in Doha as high-rise commercial and residential developments are frenetically built to meet the demand of global players who’re falling over themselves to get a piece of the Qatar cake.

One such development is The Pearl-Qatar, a US$2.5 billion project being hyped as the Riviera Arabia. A man-made island shaped like a string of pearls and diamonds being built off the coast of Doha, The Pearl-Qatar will cover four million square metres and will be linked to the mainland by a four-lane, palm-tree lined super highway. The islands will provide more than 30km of new coastline and house about 40,000.

It’s this kind of grand-scale, ‘money’s no object’ ambition that’s transforming Doha from dull to dynamic. One thing’s for sure, I’m coming back. Despite the sandstorm, Rach and I are having a great weekend. The influx of well-paid Western expats has seen the emergence of some cute eateries, French-style cafes and sophisticated cocktail bars and it’s in one of these that we end up sipping on cappuccinos – La Cigale Hotel to be precise (which offers a fantastic deli.)

Last night, we went for dinner at the stunning Sharq Village and Spa. The food and elegant setting was a match for anywhere in the world and the place was packed with the well-heeled. Yes, things are changing.

Ah yes, this sandy little Islamic backwater has big ideas. To horribly abuse and misquote the late Oscar Wilde, ‘we’re all in Qatar but some of us are looking at the stars’. (Sorry. A stretch, yes, but it kind of works if you squint.)

P.S We never did find the Kebab King shop. They had to bring our party food to us via a motorbike driver. Fortunately the driver then insisted we follow him to the elusive crazy signal so we’d know where it was next time…