Dubai, Feb 26 - Mar 3

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The flight from Mumbai to Dubai was only 2 hours but I didn’t eat or drink anything because everything on board the Jazeera Airways costs money, even the water. This is because Jazeera Airways is really cheap and has minimal service, such as, they don’t do baggage transfers if you have a connecting flight. The flight from Mumbai to Dubai was only $100, everything included. The return flight cost the same. I stayed with a friend who is from India but works for a company in Dubai. He recently moved to a hotel apartment because it’s actually cheaper than living in a regular rental apartment. In the hotel apartment, there are people that come and clean everyday. They change the bed sheets, provide soap, shampoo, towels, toilet paper, etc. just like in a hotel. But since it’s an apartment with kitchen and everything, they also do the dishes and basically clean the entire apartment for him. The apartment also has a washer. I noticed when I walked around Dubai that there are hotel apartments everywhere. If it’s cheaper than renting a no-service apartment, I wonder why would anybody live in a regular rental? I guess some people don’t like the intrusion.
We went to a Libanese bakery (that’s what the sign said) for breakfast and had vegetarian zataar—it was soooo good. Food in Dubai is fairly inexpensive and so are the taxis. The meter starts at 3.50 Dirhams (2.9 Dh = 1 Cdn) except at the airport where they start at 20 Dh. It’s good that taxis are cheap because public transportation sucks. There are buses but there are only a few routes and they are not very frequent. We took the bus from the airport once and it took 2 hours to get to my friend’s apartment (including the walking from the bus stop) and by taxi, it took only 20 min. they are building a commuter train system which is suppose to be operational sometime this year.
We did a few touristic things like take the waterbus in the old part of town, walked through the market, went to Madinat Jumeirah which is a mall/apartment complex built in the traditional Arabian market style and it was quite impressive. The Madinat Jumeirah is surrounded by water and everything, the building, the details in the architecture, all the stones were incredibly beautiful. The mall and the apartment complex form a stunning skyline that takes you back to ancient times, but was unfortunately totally ruined by the tall modern skyscrapers in the background. I guess with digital photography, you can always airbrush the skyscrapers out. We also went to the biggest mall in the world—the Dubai Mall. The only thing great about that was the gigantic aquarium that had humungous fish, we're talking fish that's about 9 or 10 ft long! The mall also has an ice skating rink. The mall complex was also surrounded by water. Hmm... The famous 7 star hotel is also surrounded by water. these desert people seem to have a thing for being surrounded by water. I guess it has something to do with too much sand and sun.
Car rentals in Dubai are also pretty cheap. We rented a Yaris for a day for 120 Dh and if we shopped around, we could have found one for 90 Dh, as my friend had done before. We drove all the way to Khor fakkan beach which took us 4.5 hours because we kept getting lost. The highway limit is 100 km/hr but the radars are set at 120 km/hr. In general, you can drive 20 km/hr over the limit and not get a ticket. There were tons of people driving over 200 km/hr. I guess maybe speeding fines are pretty cheap too, or these people can afford to pay fines. The Khor fakkan beach is unswimmable as it was at a very built up city area but it was still quite scenic. Then, we drove (or I should say, I drove, since I was the only designated driver) to Jebel Hafeet, which is 1240m high, I guess a pretty impressive summit for the desert. Just like in India, the scenery was awesome but would have been more amazing if there wasn’t a haze that prevented us from seeing the horizon.
The desert was so incredibly beautiful because the colour of the sand were in so many tones. it was the infinite tones of colour that made it so beautiful. Maybe because it’s the colour of the earth, I’m not sure but it had the same effect on everyone. Everybody just melted when they saw the desert. So many shades of earth presented through the undulation that occurs naturally in sand dunes—another inimitable work of mother nature.

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