City of merchants

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Day 2 in Dubai, (I'm late posting this because we've now been in Denmark a few days catching up with family, but better late than never, right?)

After a lazy start we decide to brave the heat to go out for a walk in the local area. Mostly computer stores on our street so we venture down another way where we find lots of stores selling traditional Indian and muslim clothing. The colours are vibrant and the fabrics are beautiful. I stop to admire a beautiful Indian sari in red white and black and the store owner immediately dashes out of the store and wants me to come in and try it on. No thanks I say but he continues to beckon as we keep walking down the street. Every time we linger outside a store even momentarily the same thing happens. We are also approached many times by fellows who want to sell us a "genuine" Rolex or brand name handbags and they follow us halfway down the street.. We continue on our way until we come to an icecream store - only purchase we make on this excursion. The heat is oppressive so we return to the cool of our hotel room.

At 2.30 a mini bus arrives to collect us for our City of Merchants tour. Barj is our guide and he hands out bottles of iced water to everyone. We drive to a large vacant lot and meet up with several other mini buses, whereupon we all transfer to a big bus and set off on the tour. Despite rave reviews on the web about this tour we found it a little disappointing. It was a 4 hour tour promoted as a historical tour of Dubai but we spent the first hour stopping at big hotels and a more recently built mosque for photo opportunities. It was so hot outside the bus that only few were interested in going out. Then Barj told us about all the other tours we should take - many sounded very interesting so it's a pity we didn't know about them earlier, but too late now, we leave Dubai tomorrow morning. We stopped at the original village site of Dubai to see the old buildings but they didn't look at all old because they had been rendered over and were now the offices of accountants and hairdressers. Next was the museum which was much more interesting and also a welcome relief because it was located underground and hence cool. Last part of tour was a boat ride on an Abra ( a traditional boat) on the Dubai Creek. This creek is half a mile wide and as one of our taxi drivers told us, there is no shortage of Australians who like to explain that a creek is supposed to be a trickle of water. Guide takes us to the centre of the Gold Souk (market) and we are left to wander for 30 minutes. Wall to wall jewellery shops with enthusiastic hawkers outside urging people to come in. Not sure how you could be certain of the authenticity of the wares you buy in this golden paradise. I went looking for a scarf because I thought it would make a nice souvenir from here but it's hard to cope with the harassment that begins immediately you begin to show any interest in their goods. We are not good at playing the bartering game but I imagine if you were you would get things for very little money. In a way I feel it is a little obscene for well off Westerners to be beating down the price on goods sold by people who are clearly much worse off than we are.

By the time we returned to our hotel it was nearly 8pm and we were very tired, probably more from the heat than anything else. Had a light meal and then went back to our room to pack for the 4:30am start next morning.

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Photos

If ever you need to write STOP in Arabic, here 'tis.

Old Dubai
Narrow alleys to create shade