Blogs from United Arab Emirates, Middle East - page 157

All you can see in the sky line over here are cranes. They can actually be quite beautiful (check out the photos). The view is of the Burj Dubai being constructed in front of our eyes, its rather cool actually. We has a decidely quiet weekend, we tried to pop over to the gold souk on Saturday to have a look at some of the jewellery (since my 30th is coming up nice and fast I figured it would be a good idea to do some present scoping out). In the priocess of trying to get to the god souk we learnt a most valuable lesson, do not try and drive there, ever, as you will not find a car park for love nor money. After circling the area for half an hour we completley gave ... read more

SCUBA Saz and the wrongest day ever So they’ve now been in Dubai over a week and knowing that Ficks has his open water diver licence, knowing that they could go diving together as they travel round the world, knowing that she loves a challenge, Saz signs up for an open water course at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel. Such an amazing idea, such a beautiful location, such a professional bunch of instructors…such a shame she appears unable to blow out through her nose to clear her mask! 5 attempts later and close to hyperventilating she leaves the pool in tears…Ficks as always is amazing and they decide to get some food for dinner in Spinneys (the local supermarket) to calm her nerves, forget about the scuba for a while, relax…..the afternoon can only get better ... read more

On my way home the other day I stopped at the traffic lights outside Abu Dhabi Mall. As I sat there, some daft sod who was on the phone and not paying attention stepped off the pavement, walked right into my front wing and fell over in front of my car. As he went down he tried to grab my bonnet to stabilise himself, but in doing so he managed to get himself into a position where he was right underneath my vehicle. Next thing you know there is shouting rabble that have heard a bit of a kerfuffle, seen this bloke under my car, put two and two together, made five and now think I've run this pillock over. Luckily there was a copper nearby and some Arab bloke who saw what happened so ... read more

Our first big trip out of Dubai!! It was very exciting for us, although we had to take the yaris as we hadn't bought a car yet. The yaris was a little scary on the open road, especially with Jeremy hoofing it at speeds of around 130km. Even at that speed we still had other cars barrelling past us at great speed. Our trip for the day was to another emirate to go canoeing in Khor Kalba. We met the guide at about 10:30am and then went canoeing for 2 hours through the mangrove lagoons. It was really lovely. The most astounding thing were the numbers of sea turtles that we saw. There we literally hundreds of them. We could see a turtle head pop up for air every minute of so. They were just gorgeous. ... read more

Just a little aside for 5 minutes. The other night I was being industrious and decided to clean off the top or our ceramic hob. In the process of wiping this down with a cloth and some water I somehow managed to childlock the hob. Since, at that time, we did not have an instruction manual for the hob it proved completely impossible for us to un-childproof the hob, meaning that we could not cook ANYTHING! at all. After trying for two consecutive nights to unlock the hob, I finally lost the plot last night and stormed down to the reception desk, in my fluffy pink slippers (which the guy in the elevator commented on) and demanded that someone tell us how to unlock the hob. After approximately 1 hour explaining to various people, with differing ... read more