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