Pearls Before Swine’s Steve Pastis visits the Middle East. The culture shock is severe:

If there was any doubt that we were not in Kansas anymore, that was resolved by the high blast walls surrounding our hotel. Most hotels I stay in are surrounded by Applebees and Barnes & Noble.

Then there’s the military ship guarding the coastal access to the hotel’s beach. And it’s not pulling any parasailers.

The entire picture is enough to make you understand why there is no “Rick Steves’ Kuwait.”

But the devastating blow was yet to come.

No porn.

That’s right. Kuwaiti hotel rooms have no porn. The closest any channel came was a Kuwaiti soap opera where a fully-clothed man and woman sat ten feet apart in the woman’s living room. When the woman’s husband walked in the front door, there was dramatic music followed by a lot of close-ups: of the woman, of her husband, of the other man. This was the Arabic equivalent of “Girls Gone Wild.”

If that’s not enough for you, consider this:

They have no beer.

None.

No alcohol anywhere.

I don’t know what Muslims call this abstention from sex and alcohol, but I know what we call it.

A really bad party.

The whole thing is enough to make you rethink the first Gulf War.