Middle Eastern Adventure

Well, I am a little late at getting this post up. It has been a hectic couple of weeks and the good ole' blog ended up moving to the back burner. However, I figured that I'd better upload this story to cyberspace before any of the details fade from memory.

We left for Dubai on February 16th which happened to be a Indian holiday. What better way to take advantage of a three day weekend than to head to the Middle East? We flew Emirates which was pretty cool. The flight attendants have pretty horrendous uniforms, but overall the flight was good.

On a little side note, I have decided that Emirates' tag line is my favorite of all of the different airlines that I have flown. It isn't just catchy, it's a command.

'Fly Emirates'

You can't get much more direct than that. It's way better than the tag lines that some of the Indian airlines have.

Air Deccan - 'Have you flown Air Deccan lately? It's WOW'

Pretty awful, huh. Anyways, I'm getting off track.

We arrived in the Dubai airport which is very nice and the whole time I couldn't stop thinking, 'I'm in the Middle East.' The Dubai airport is very modern and we soon came to learn that the rest of the city is, as well.

Until I had arrived there, I was not exactly sure what the UAE was. Well, for those of you who don't know, it consists of seven different emirates that are each independently ruled by Sheiks. These seven emirates have banded together to form the infrastructure of the country, but other than that they have their own rules and the respective Sheik governs each one.

We headed to our hotel on Sheik Zayed road, which I came to know very well as it is the highway that is used to get just about everywhere in Dubai. We were staying at the Novotel, which is a fairly nice place, but much more reasonably priced than the 5 star resorts closer to the beach.

On our city tour we learned that Dubai is currently trying to become the premier tourist destination in the world . The city which has about 2 million people is made up of over 80% expats. By 2010 they would like to increase the number of tourists that visit to over 16 million which is a 200% increase from 2006. They are expanding their airport to accommodate this increase and by the time they are done, the airport will be bigger than the city of Hong Kong!

After checking into our hotel, we hopped on the shuttle to the Mall of the Emirates which is the second largest mall in the world. On the shuttle with us was a group of European consultants who had been in Dubai for a while and gave their insight into the UAE. They described it as 'a bunch of rich kids playing in the sandbox who are always trying to do one better than the other.'

As evidence to this Austrian's view of Dubai, they are currently building what will be the tallest building in the world in Dubai, the Burj Dubai. When construction began it was set to exceed the height of the Taipei 101 in Taiwan for the tallest building in the world. However, the Sheik in Qatar got wind that Dubai was going to have the tallest building so he set out to build a building that was just a few meters taller to claim the title. The Dubai Sheik wasn't having any of this and had the plans for the Burj Dubai altered, had a few stories added and voila, back to number one.

We reached the Mall of the Emirates and I was blown away by the size. It was ridiculously huge and the entrance was flanked by just about every type of high end car you could imagine. You'd think that simply building a 500+ store mall would be enough, but no. This mall had an indoor ski resort. No joke.

David, Jeff and I decided we couldn't pass this up and for about $60 you got 2 hours on the lift with snow gear and skis included.

There was a legitimate ski lift that took you up to the top and gave you the option of 2 different runs, and despite the fact that we were in the middle of the Middle Eastern desert, it was freezing inside. After about an hour, the novelty began to wear off and the cold was beginning to bite so we headed in, but what an experience!

After tooling around the mall and grabbing dinner, we headed back to the hotel. It was pretty late, so Mahin and Anna went to bed, but David, Jeff and I headed down to the jazz bar in our hotel. The band was okay, but what I found most interesting was the fact that there were like 4 hookers just hanging out at the bar.

Now I have been to Vegas, and I have seen hookers, but this is a Muslim country. Most of the local women you see on the street are wearing burqas, many with a niqab covering their face, and in our hotel, we have hookers?! So strange.

After an extremely overpriced drink, David headed up, but Jeff and I weren't ready to end our first night in Dubai and headed to a sheesha bar that Jeff had located in the Lonely Planet. The joint was located over by the airport and as the taxi driver dropped us off, we asked if he knew anything about the place. He took one look at us, chuckled and said, 'Yeah, it's an old Arab place,' implying 'silly westerners'.


The taxi driver was right. The place was somewhat empty when we arrived, but there were still a few families there, kids and all at 1:30 am. Ohh yes, and Jeff and I were most definitely the only Westerners. That was very clear. We ended up staying until the place closed at 3 am, headed back out to the front to catch a taxi.

Now this place was pretty much directly off of Sheik Zayed road which is effectively a highway. It's 3 am. We are a couple of Americans in the Middle East and have no idea how to get home. There are people still up, but depending on whether they are a guy or a girl, they are either wearing a thobe or a burqa. We ended up flagging a taxi and made it back to the hotel, but it was a fantastic way to end the first day of our Middle Eastern Adventure.

The next day we slept in a bit and headed down to Jumeriah beach next to the Burj al Arab hotel. Now the Burj al Arab hotel is the self-proclaimed only 7 star hotel in the world. The rooms start at $1000 a night and to even get in to the place you have to have a reservation for something, whether it is tea for $100 or a $60 drink. We didn't make reservations far enough in advance, so had to settle for the view from the outside on the beach. I went for a dip in the Persian Gulf and grabbed some shells from the beach. The fact that I had a chance to do that still kinda blows my mind.

Just a funny little factoid... The maps in Dubai do not refer to the gulf as the Persian Gulf as I have always heard it called. They call it the Arabian Gulf. Makes sense. They're Arab. Just to clarify, I asked one of our drivers, "Is that the Persian Gulf?" He responded, "Yes, that is the Arabian Gulf."

After the beach, we met up with the girls, did a quick jaunt through Kamara where they sell all the counterfeit goods, and then headed to the ultra-high end mall underneath the Emirates Towers for lunch at the Noodle House before our desert safari.



Rashaun (sp?) our desert safari driver picked us up at about 2 pm and we headed to the desert outside of Dubai to romp around in the sand dunes. We had booked our desert safari with Orient Tours and met up with about 30 other matching, tricked out Toyota 4Runners at a gas station before actually heading into the desert. The desert safari was definitely fun, but Rashaun let us know that there are red sand deserts about an hour outside of the city where the dunes are much bigger and made of pure red sand. When I make it back to Dubai, I'll make sure to give it a whirl.

After the desert romp, we quickly stopped at a camel farm and then headed to the camp where the final activities were planned. They had sheesha, camel rides, a falconer, a henna artist, and food, followed by a belly dancer. All in all, a pretty great deal for $55.

Reshaun dropped us back at the hotel and we cleaned up and headed to the marina just outside of Internet City, and to the Grosvenor Hotel. When we arrived, I was simply amazed by all of the construction that was going on.

I commented on it, and the taxi driver said that 5 years ago there was nothing there. Now it was packed with high end hotels and condos rising hundreds of feet above the desert floor, and the foundations laid for many more to come. To give you an idea about how fast Dubai is growing, Jeff read that they currently have 1/6th of all of the world's cranes in Dubai which they are using to construct the tens, if not hundreds, of skyscrapers that are popping up everywhere. If I have a chance to make it back in five more years, I have a hard time imagining what it is going to look like.

Inside the Grosvenor, we headed to the top floor to Bar 44 which is possibly one of the swankiest bars that I have ever been in. However, we couldn't get a table which was probably for the best because I'm guessing would have cost me an entire paycheck for a drink. We then headed downstairs to the Buddha Bar which is a chain with locations in places such as Paris, NY, and Hong Kong.

Now this place was cool! Awesome styling, good music and a great atmosphere. We stuck around for some overpriced appetizers, drinks and desserts, and then decided we wanted to check out a club.

Now finding a club on a Sunday night proved to be more complicated than we had expected. A club at the Jumeriah Beach Resort had been recommended to us, but happened to be closed that night. The club next door which appeared to be popping wouldn't let Mahin in with her head scarf which I found very strange considering we were in a Muslim country.

Mahin and David ended up heading home, but Jeff, Anna and I were able to find a Euro-trashy cub in the Crowne Plaza Hotel that played bad trance, but we had a good time.

The next day, we woke up, headed to a local restaurant for some lamb shawarma , hummus, and baba ghanoush. Ohh I was in heaven. Soooo good.

We had booked a city tour with the same company that had offered the desert tour which ended up being pretty informative. One of the more novel things that we learned was that the license plates of the cars in Dubai are indicative of the status of the Sheik who is driving. The ruling sheik then has license plate '1', second highest '2' and so on. The highest we saw as '96.'

The tour took us to a museum at Al Fahidi fort and then up to Diera which is the other half of Dubai located on the other side of Dubai Creek. Here we went to the spice and the gold souks and got a feeling for what the real people of Dubai lived like.

We ended our evening with another round of really great shawarma at a hole in the wall, and were very amused to learn how women wearing niqabs eat in public. I bought myself some authentic Arab wear, joking that I will wear it when going through US customs on the way home.

We headed back to the hotel and then to the airport to fly home to Hyderabad.