Advertisement
Published: July 20th 2012
Wednesday July 18 We arrived in Dubai after a 14 hour flight from Sydney to be greeted by a sandstorm and 44ºC.
There is nothing much to say about the flight. It was long. It was boring and Sylvia was terrified for most of the trip especially when the plane bounced around the sky as we flew through a storm over Borneo. She has been very brave agreeing to fly these first two legs of our trip. It is her fear of flying which drives us to find alternative means of travel and leads us into adventures we probably wouldn't have otherwise.
We were met at the airport and driven to our hotel, only to discover it is about 25kms out of Dubai town near the Mall of the Emirates. Although Dubai town itself is fairly small and compact, the state of Dubai sprawls for miles along the coast. Getting about is fairly easy but tedious, especially in the heat. The new metro system is fast and inexpensive and taxis are readily available and cheap.
After settling in to the hotel, we wandered across to the Mall of the Emirates. It is one of Dubai's main shopping
malls and a tourist attraction in its own right. It is certainly flashy but isn't really any different from the large malls we have in Australia. Even most of the shops are the same.
I was impressed, though, by the indoor snow field they had called “Ski Dubai”. It has a ski lift, a quite long and steep downhill ski slope, tobogganing, luge and big areas for building castles and snowmen and doing other things that people do in snow. It is very popular and there were long queues for everything.
We had a pleasant meal in a Lebanese cafe and went back to the hotel for a nightcap before an “early” bed. We had been up for nearly 24 hours. I was startled to find that people were smoking in the bar. Smoking in public places has been banned in Australia for so long that I had forgotten how unpleasant it is. Later, talking with the bar staff, they all said they disliked it but there was nothing they could do to prevent it. We were only there for about 15 minutes but by the time we got back to our room all of our clothes stank
of cigarette smoke and I could even smell it next morning when we got up.
Thursday July 19 Usually, when we arrive in a new city, one of the first things we do is take a “hop-on, hop-off” sightseeing bus so we can orient ourselves and figure out which bits of the city we want to visit. We were told that there wasn't one in Dubai (which turned out to be incorrect) so we decided to let someone else do all the arranging this time and just enjoy. We booked on a “Mega Triplet” tour which included a tour of the city - including a visit to the Dubai museum, a dinner cruise on a dhow and a trip out into the desert to visit a bedouin encampment. This also allowed us enough free time to wander around ourselves if we wanted, though the 40º+ temperature was a bit daunting.
The city tour was disappointing. Most of the sights were bypassed and only described briefly in commentary. The stops at the spice and gold souks turned out to be visits to specific shops where we were pressured to buy things. Even the loo break was made at
an “art gallery” where personal guides were assigned to each tourist to show them where the toilets were. Getting there involved negotiating every room in the “gallery” and fighting off sales people.
That said, Dubai Museum in the Al Fahidi fort is well worth a visit. It is well laid out. The description for each display is concise and enlightening. The dioramas of everyday life are so good that in some of them I was convinced that there were real people acting out the roles. You could easily spend a couple of hours here and come back for more.
After the tour, on the recommendation of the tour guide, we went to Dubai Mall. Like the Emirates mall it is really just a big shopping centre but it has over 1200 shops and its very size is impressive.
As well as shops, there is an ice skating rink and a huge aquarium where you can watch everything from little reef wrasse to large grouper, grey nurse sharks and manta rays while you shop. Being practical, we went to the supermarket and bought tea (Dilmah, of course) and milk so we can have a cup of tea in
our room without having to order it from room service. We already have a little travelling kettle with us.
There is archaeological evidence that people have been living in the Dubai region since at least 3000BC but it was not until the late 19
th century that Dubai began to develop as a town of significance and not until the late 20
th century that it became a centre for tourism and industry.
Built originally as a fortified fishing and trading village on the banks of Dubai Creek, it was inevitable that one of the tourist offerings was a trip on a dhow. Frankly, I wasn't looking forward to it but it turned out to be a really fun event even though sunset today marked the start of Ramadan. Most of the expected entertainment was cancelled and no alcohol was available. Instead there was a magician who was intended to amuse the children but ended up amusing the adults more.
As a magician he was very skilful but his patter was somewhat stilted and he had a good deal of trouble getting any reaction from the audience even though we appreciated his tricks.
Towards the end of his
routine he was trying to get some of the female children to dance to an arabic tune in order to make a ring that he had made disappear reappear but the kids were not responding. Exasperated, he turned to the adults and asked if any of them wanted to help by dancing. For Sylvia this was like waving a red flag at a bull; she loves to dance.
She leapt out of her chair and started to perform a baladi – a type of slow, Morrocan belly dance that is very demure but very suggestive at the same time. The arabic women on the tour erupted – clapping, yelling, ululating (a loud trilling sound made with the tongue). Suddenly the atmosphere was exciting and everyone was grinning and laughing.
There was no way the arab women were going to let Sylvia show them how to dance their own dances. Soon the floor was full of women – and a couple of men – competing to show how well they could dance. Great fun. The magician never did get to finish his trick and I was so engrossed that I forgot to take any photos.
Friday, July 20 Today was a quiet day, mostly. Being the first day of Ramadan – and a Friday – everything was closed in the morning and many activities were curtailed completely.
The dining room in the hotel was screened off so that fasting muslims were not confronted by the sight of non-muslims stuffing their faces. The bar door was firmly closed. Even the irritating lobby music was turned off.
I spent the morning getting the blog ready to publish and Sylvia repacked everything for the third time. (Incidentally, I don't know how some people manage to publish a daily blog. It takes me about 3 to 4 hours to type up the text, upload the photos and complete all of the things that need to be done and I'm exhausted by the end of it.)
In the late afternoon we were picked up at the hotel and taken to Sharjah – another of the emirates – for a meal with bedouins. The meal itself was pretty ordinary and the nomadic bedouin in Jordan were more interesting than the town-based bedouin we met here who mostly ignored everyone anyway. Probably Sylvia and I are a bit jaded as we
have done a lot more travelling in Arabic countries than most people we meet. Certainly the Chinese, Columbian, Israeli and UK people we talked with thought it was a worthwhile experience.
For me the highlight was the drive through the dunes to get to the bedouin “campsite”. Our driver took great glee in scaring the pants off us. We spun-out on the crest of dunes. We slid sideways down 60º slopes with the sand crumbling away under the wheels. We rocketed over the tops of dunes and dove down the other side nose first into the next dune.
There were about 20 4WD vehicles in the group – during the high season in January to March there can often be up to 300 vehicles – all of which stuck to a fairly well defined track, except ours. Our driver was always on the lookout for virgin dunes and he would race up and around and over them with no apparent thought for safety. All of us were gibbering wrecks by the time we got to the end of the trail. Sylvia made him promise not to do it on the way back from the dinner or she would
Public Housing
These 3-bedroom houses are given free to every Dubai couple when they marryget out and walk.
Truthfully, he was a very experienced and careful driver and we were never in much danger but he sure knew how to scare us.
Tomorrow we are off to Greece. More from there.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.165s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 30; qc: 86; dbt: 0.0969s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
anonymous
non-member comment
Bravo for facing your fears
We agree that the trip to the museum was worth while. We enjoyed the sand dunes and the dinner with the dancers. An interesting city.