Dubai Creek: The Old Town

--> Friday afternoon and Saturday morning we explored the older parts of Dubai. There isn’t a lot of really old stuff in Dubai; the area might have been civilized for a very long time but it wasn’t the kind of civilization that builds things that would survive until today. The creek was the one part of this region that was livable before electricity and water services, and it was a trading hub on the Persian Gulf that today is a mix of old souks, riverboats, and neighborhoods with high rises and urban grunge. There are four main souks (markets) in the area: textiles, gold, spices, and fish. Textiles are on one side of the creek (actually a gulf inlet the width of the Mississippi), gold and spices are together on the other, and fish is right against the sea. Old-style canopied wooden taxi boats still provide the only means of pedestrian crossing, but at 1 Dirham (about 25 cents) a ride, it’s really affordable.

 

Boats lining up to get passengers.

  

One of the boats. 

  

We took the metro to the Textiles side of the area and walked for a while up the river until we found the souk. Friday is the Sabbath in Isalm, so it wasn’t at full bustle but there was still plenty going on. Direct salesmanship—where the merchant will come up to you and try to sell you things or direct you to his shop—is very much the practice here, and it took us a moment to warm up to it. I love a market, but my reflex is to say no if someone tries to shove something in my face! We got our rhythm, and started checking out the stalls and shops. Martin is a champion haggler (I tend to give up too soon), so he was put in charge of the purse strings. He did really well! At one shop I was buying a few silk scarves and he talked the shopkeeper down from 400 Dirham each ($100) to 40 ($10)! I always start to feel guilty, but Martin has a point: they wouldn’t sell it if it wasn’t worth it to them.

 

Textile souk!

  

We wandered the area a bit, crossed the creek, and headed home. That evening we walked the marina area and got Lebanese food, which is very common there. It’s kind of the local cuisine (again, this area was not heavily settled), with Hummus, Lebneh (delicious yogurt and mint mixture), Pita bread (fresh pita bread is a revelation), and lots of lamb. We had traditional-style tea and coffee after, and they were both delicious but super sweet! Mine was a little bit syrupy, but Martin’s coffee was thick almost like a milkshake.

 

Martin on the crossing boat

    

View from the boat. I love the old boat and the high rises in the background.

 One thing that I haven’t mentioned yet but that I was obsessed with the entire time is the local lemonade made with mint. Not just a few mint leaves mixed in, but completely juiced or pulverized mint to the point that the lemonade is green like wheatgrass or something. It was unbelievably delicious (I’m growing mint when I get home just for this) and I had it at almost every meal.

 

This is from google, but it conveys the green-ness. So tasty...

After dinner we went to Barasti, which is an enormous beach bar near the marina. We got some looks for walking there instead of driving (car culture is huge. Incidentally, if you’re a car fan there are plenty of very fancy cars driving around to ogle), but it wasn’t far from the restaurant! Barasti had three levels descending to the sea, and it was full of twenty-somethings. It was fun to be in a crowd our age after the swankiness of the night before, and being on the beach was great. We walked home after and crashed after a very long and fabulous day.

  

Old town!

Saturday morning we got up early again, grabbed breakfast at the Marina Mall, and took a cab back towards the Dubai Creek area to the Jumierah Mosque. That is the only mosque in Dubai where non-muslims are allowed, and they offer a tour/cultural information session/question and answer time through the Sheikh Mohammed Center for Cultural Understanding. We both had to dress modestly—maxidress, cardigan, and head scarf for me, long pants and a t shirt for Martin, plus they gave him the white tunic—and take off our shoes at the entrance. A very knowledgeable woman explained many of the local and religious traditions and they encouraged asking questions and taking pictures as she and a man demonstrated variations on traditional dress and customs. After seeing so many people in different variations on traditional dress, it was really interesting to be able to ask questions. There were a lot of other Western tourists there, and it was clear that everyone had things they wanted to know. The hosts really wanted to answer any and all questions we had, even ones based on something we had seen on the news, and seemed eager to explain the beliefs or practicalities behind what people had been seeing.

Jumierah Mosque

After the mosque, I stuffed my warm layers in my purse and we headed to the gold souk! You should google image that right now, it’s pretty cool. The official souks are along covered streets, you can clearly tell when you’re in the souk and when you’ve gone off-route. Within the souk there are strict quality control measures so people can be assured they’re buying the real thing. Apparently, as much as 25% of the world’s gold supply is in Dubai, and I would believe it! As you walk along the official street, salesmen from the unofficial side streets try to lure you into back allies with promises of “good copy” designer handbags, sunglasses, and other goods. It’s a pretty fun combination of fancy and sketchy. If you do explore the back alleys, it’s a warren of complicated, narrow streets and stores selling all kinds of knockoff and kitchy goods.

Gold souk!

A few streets down from the gold souk is the spice souk. I was really excited about this one, and Martin and I went into it with a strategy. We went in nearly every shop and inquired about the prices of the things we were interested in, and didn’t buy anything unless it was way lower than other stalls. Martin was after Turkish or Arabic coffees, and he got offers of everywhere from 5 Dirham (about $1.25) per 100g to 25 Dirham ($6.25). Eventually we found good prices, and I got some green tea with mint and a couple of vanilla beans (in Zurich it’s vanilla sugar, you can’t get the extract and I’m pretty sure you have to trade in a finger or your firstborn child for the beans). I didn’t want to get too much because I have to get everything home, but I might be e-mailing Martin in a few weeks asking for certain spices when he comes home.

 

View of the textile souk side from the water 

After a long, hot morning, we grabbed lunch and went to the beach to nap and relax. We got some ice cream on the way home (lemon mint sorbet!) and spent the evening packing, organizing, working out, eating delivery food again, and trying to find the Champions League Final among the thousand multi-lingual channels available on his TV. This morning we were up at 4:30 to catch early flights back to Saudi Arabia and Zurich, and an absolutely amazing weekend is over.

Love Katie

Dubai Part 2: Dune Buggy in the Desert!

Hi!

On Friday, we got up bright and early for our desert dune buggying adventure. We were picked up at 7:30 and we drove about an hour into the desert. There is a lot of sprawl around Dubai, I was surprised that the city didn’t drop off immediately. Even half an hour out into the desert, there were still high rises and the occasional housing development. As we got even further outside the city, there was an area that’s planned to have a number of amusement parks. One of them is done, but there’s an unfinished and currently abandoned Universal Studios that’s still awaiting a restart after the recession stopped the project. The recession is almost over here the way it is in the rest of the world and there is plenty of construction going on, but I guess this project is still stalled.

 

Desert!

Once we got out into the desert, we deflated our tires a bit (like you do, apparently) and went off-road, where we met up with our buggy! We would get to drive our own buggy—following a lead car because we don’t know anything about how to drive in the desert and where to go—around the desert for an hour! They gave us a quick rundown on how to do it (dear Daddy, thank you for making me drive a manual!) and we were off! I drove first. One thing that’s really important for the buggy and for driving on sand in general is that you can’t stop on an uphill. If you do, you’ll just spin your back wheels (it’s rear wheel drive) and dig them into the ground, making you more stuck. You also have to accelerate a lot more for the same movement, and run the vehicle at pretty high RPMs to make sure you have enough power. It was a 6-speed transmission, but we only used 1^st and 2^nd gears.

 
Martin and our ride!

I was doing pretty well until the first time they went down a really steep dune—the lead vehicle just goes vertical and disappears—and I slowed down just before I came to the cliff. Unfortunately, the part just before the cliff was a very slight uphill and I got stuck! Our lead car came back and pulled us out, and we were off again. I didn’t get stuck after that, and we got to drive through a herd of camels, up down and around dunes, and all over the desert until it was Martin’s turn.

 

Me driving!

 

Getting rescued.

 

 Camels!!

 

Following the pace car. It looks like the Mars Rover footage. 

He did much better than me, and soon we stopped for some sandboarding! That’s exactly what it sounds like: you strap on a snowboard and go down a dune! The trick is that sand is much heavier and has much more friction than snow, so you can’t really turn but you don’t go quite so fast either. Still, it’s a bit scary to just go straight down a steep dune in a way that would kill you on a snowboard! The hardest part was climbing back up—you don’t want to board on a lame dune but getting back up a good steep tall one is rough!

 

I love this picture so much.

 

Boarding!

 

The climb

 

My turn!

 

Whee!

Video of my last run.

We hit the sand again, and our guide warned Martin that we were doing the big dunes now and we needed “more power.” I thought some of the dunes we’d done earlier were pretty big! We would ride up one side of the dune and down the same side in a kind of half pipe maneuver that was always an adventure because you need tons of acceleration to avoid getting stuck on the way up, but then it’s almost impossible to turn back down the dune because you were getting pulled to the outside of the curve. Sometimes we could drift a little and make the turn, but Martin and I had already had close calls where we almost rolled ourselves back down the dune (no worries, that happens and it’s not too dangerous, just very sandy).

 

Lead vehicle and us.

 

Martin driving!

We took off, headed for the big dunes. Martin did great on the first few, but then we had a really really big one and just as he was about to pull us out of it, we started to lose traction (read: we almost rolled so we only had two wheels on the sand) and we got stuck! We had the engine going so hard at the time that we finally came to rest the back tires threw a huge wave of sand over the top of the vehicle and we got covered! The guide laughed at us and pulled us out, and we were off again. Back through the camels to where we had started, and our dune buggying adventure was over. We both slept in the car the whole way back.

 

Martin driving again!

 

Going into the camels!

 

Camel! In the desert!

 

When we got home around 1:30, we ordered in lunch (a big luxury that we really can’t afford in Zurich), showered and excavated our shoes.

   

Dubai Part One: Disneyland for Grownups

Hello!

Martin has a consulting internship right now that has him working out of Dubai, and I got to go visit him this weekend! Beyond being completely fantastic to see him, it was an amazing weekend. I don’t think I would have gone to Dubai without a reason, but it was really cool and we got to do some things we wouldn’t have otherwise.

I worked a Wednesday morning and headed to the airport for my afternoon flight. It was pouring rain and cold in Zurich like it’s been for most of May (we’re in the upper 40s for our highs, Fahrenheit!), so I was extra excited to actually see the sun and maybe get some bloodflow back into my toes.

  

I made friends with the flight attendants on the way there. She just got engaged!

Martin was flying in from Saudi Arabia where his project is located at the same time I was from Zurich, so we met up at the airport around midnight and took a cab home. The airport is on the opposite side of Dubai from the marina, where Martin’s apartment is, so we had about 25 minutes of cab ride to stare out the windows at everything.

This is the Dubai marina! Obviously I did not take this picture.  

The Marina Mall is the round thing in the bottom right on the near side of the water.

Thursday morning we got up and went for a run around the marina. It was great for me to get to see everything, but I have to admit that the 3-mile run nearly killed me because I’m so unused to heat! Going from 40F to 90F plus humidity is a bit of a killer. The marina is a newer area full of high rises surrounding a canal that connects to the sea. We’re close to the famous palm tree-shaped island off the coast of Dubai, and there are lots of restaurants along the water. After the run we went for breakfast at a really fun restaurant in the Marina Mall.

 

At the marina after breakfast! 

There are a lot of malls in Dubai, and they’re a very big deal. I think it’s a combination of air conditioning, awesome construction budgets, and car-based transportation culture (good luck finding sidewalks to wander down!) plus the tradition of having souks, which are basically malls before malls. More on souks later. The malls there have the usual movie theaters and food courts, but some of the bigger ones have theme parks and aquariums (Dubai Mall), or even an indoor ski slope (Mall of the Emirates)!

 

Fish at the Dubai Mall!

 

After lunch we walked to the beach, which is really close to the apartment. The beaches there are pretty amazing; fine sand that’s so light in color it doesn’t burn your feet, very impressive seashells, and the crazy-warm water of the Persian Gulf. Getting in the water—even coming from 90 or 100 degrees plus—isn’t cold at all. You barely feel it on your skin, but it’s still refreshing because of the wind on your skin when you’re swimming. We couldn’t stay long at the beach because I haven’t seen sun in months and there isn’t SPF strong enough for that, but it was okay because we needed to go exploring.

We took the metro to Dubai Mall, which is the biggest and fanciest of them all. I think we saw about 50% of the mall, generously, and we were walking around for hours! The malls are especially interesting because there’s a really varied mix of people in them. The Emirati women and men usually wear traditional clothing, which is white tunics, loose pants, and head scarves for the men and black robes and veils for the women. There’s a fair amount of variation in coverage for the women—everything from only their eyes showing to full face and a couple inches of hair. In general, if you’re in a more formal place (which includes this mall but other malls less so) you should wear “respectful dress,” which means you should cover your shoulders to your knees, or some variation on that. You still see tourists and Western expats in tanks and shorts, but the air conditioning is so much that you’ll probably want to wear either a cardigan over that or longer pants anyway.

 
Dubai Mall waterfall
 

The Dubai mall is seriously enormous, and it’s divided up by what’s being sold. There are “districts” for kids stuff, electronics, and shoes, among lots of other thigns. There are also cinemas, department stores, a food court, an aquarium, an indoor theme park, a children’s playland, and an ice skating rink.

 With the aquarium and the shoe district.

Afternoon tea is a big thing dating back to when the British had control of the area, so there are important-looking tea cafes as frequently as we would see coffee shops. There are also a lot of Western chain restaurants throughout Dubai, like T.G.I. Friday’s, the Cheesecake Factory, Tim Horton’s (hey Canadians!), Chili’s, Johnny Rockets, Baskin Robbins, Subway, and of course Starbucks. I loved seeing how they write the brands and names in Arabic in such a way that the font is the same as the Western version.

 

Starbucks, in both languages!

We did our best with the mall, but there’s only so much you can take and so many times you can goggle at what people are willing to spend on hedgehog-spiked shoes. We left the mall for the plaza and esplanade between it and the Burj Kahlifa—the tallest building in the world. At the plaza, there’s a large pool with a fountain and light show synchronized to music that plays every half hour after 6:30pm. We made it just in time for the 7:30 show, and the song was Whitney Houston’s “I will always love you,” which is a personal favorite. The show was great and we had an excellent viewing spot, I was completely overexcited. You really need to go watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssFJhuXTvUE. Right now. I'll wait.

Burj Kahlifa and its plaza!

You can go to the top of the Burj Kahlifa, but it costs 150 Dirham (about $35) per person to do so. Martin had found out that we could go to the bar one floor below the top for free, but with a minimum drink order of 100 Dirham (about $25) per person. He’d gotten us reservations, so we went through about 5 layers of concierges, receptionists, and elevator guards to get to the top. The view was unbelievable. The building is surrounded by other tall buildings, but it’s more like a tree in a grassland than a forest. We could see all of Dubai lit up below us, and if there had been lights on the ocean and in the desert I’m sure we would have seen the curve of the Earth. The bar knows what it’s good for: our table faced right out a window and the walls were nothing but glass. It was very swank, and we decided that the drinks we ordered were the first time we’d had $20 cocktails that seemed to be worth $20.

 

View pictures never come out but we had to try!

We had those two cocktails and split one more while we sat up there for a couple of hours, but we had dinner reservations (I know, wrong order. It’s how the reservations worked out!) at a Thai restaurant at the fountain so we left just in time to catch the 9:30pm fountain show. I had to see it after the first one had been so good.

 

By the fountain and the bridge that led to our restaurant

 

This turned into the fountain every 30 minutes. The building on the far right is the base of the Burj Kahlifa.

The only problem with our plan was that we’d gotten really hungry after walking around so much and taking so long between meals, so we’d finished the nuts and olives that came with our drinks. We totally ruined our appetites! We still wanted to check out the restaurant, because it was supposed to be really cool and because it was right next to the fountain, so we had appetizers and got to watch two more fountain shows while we ate. It was easy to eat slowly, since I got brave and ordered my Thai ceviche appetizer spicy—it most definitely was! The metro stopped running at 11 so we took a taxi home, and made it to bed before 1am because we had a 7am wake-up for our desert dune buggying adventure the next day. The whole evening I didn’t know whether to be happier with what we were already doing or excited for what we were going to do.

Part two to come!