Playing in the Sand

Everyone grab your travel bucket list. Got it? Good. Now rip it up and throw it in the trash.

Now grab a new sheet of paper and put these words on the top line;  “Visit Dubai and Abu Dhabi”. Then fill in your list from there.  While you’re at it, go ahead and throw India in at around 85 or so. (Just kidding. Kind of.)

That may be a little dramatic, but after visiting the United Arab Emirates with my friends and fellow Target Expats Chris and Casey this weekend, I am in love with the place and highly recommend a visit. Especially if you are in the construction or architecture industry or just plain like cool buildings, it’s a must see. The city is clean, not crowded, and is actually ahead of the curve on infrastructure.  Apart from the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is the tallest building in the world, there are countless other massive yet awesome buildings in both cities. You could take any one of probably 20 buildings, put it in any US city, and it would be a signature landmark. Maybe I’ll do another post just on the buildings. For now I’ll just give a (probably not so concise, but with a lot of pictures) summary of our trip.

Me and the Burj. It's tough to get a feeling for just how massive this building is.

Friday

After finally waking up Casey and hearing about how her room was haunted by a ghost, we caught a quick breakfast (which included beef bacon, as pork isn’t eaten by Muslims) and headed out for the day. We didn’t have any plans until 3:00 that afternoon, so we just decided to go downtown and look around. We ended up by the Burj and walked around it for a while, as well as the world famous Dubai mall. (I say that tongue in cheek, as the cab drivers describe everything they point out as either world famous or very famous.) Since Chris and I didn’t bring sunglasses, we made a stop at the sunglass store, as we didn’t want to brave the desert sun without them. This also gives me the chance to explain to you that Casey takes a billion pictures, and talks you into posing for anything and everything with anyone. It’s easier to give in rather than argue.



Exhibit A: Taking picture with the sunglasses sales lady.



After walking around the mall a bit more, we decided to go to what we thought was a 7 star hotel shaped like a sail boat. Turns out we got the name wrong, but our wrong name still led us to a hotel that was out on one of the man made islands shaped like a palm tree. As we later learned, the hotel we thought was a 7 star was actually “only” a 5 star, so I guess our blunder wasn’t too bad.



Sailboat hotel, as stolen from google images.



That afternoon we got picked up for our desert safari. We started the safari by going dune busting, which basically means you pile into a Toyota Land Cruiser fitted with a roll bar and drive up and down sand dunes in the middle of a real desert. It was a blast! There was a few times where I thought we might topple over, but we were able to avoid that. The car in front of us had some problems though. One of the passengers got car sick, so they had to stop suddenly so she could get out and womit. (Most Indian people say their W’s like V’s and vice versa. Some words are freaking hilarious. My favorite is when they say Vomit but it sounds like Womit. Which is how I’ll pronounce it for the rest of my life.) They also got high-centered on the top of a massive dune, and we had to pull them off. If I could do one thing differently (and that I will do when I go back) I would spend the extra $100 for my own dune buggy. That looked amazing.



Preparing to bust some dunes!



After our dune busting, we were driven to a different part of the desert where our guide company had their own private camp set up, with all sorts of fun activities. We had a lovely traditional buffet which we ate sitting on pillows in the sand with our new friend Julio, whom Casey recruited to be her own personal photographer throughout the entire day. (Julio took half of the pictures in this blog...) Chris enjoyed the meal so much that he fell backwards off his pillow into the table behind us!



If you imagine Chris falling backwards into the table behind us, it makes this picture a lot funnier.



We got to dress up in traditional local gear….



The last time I had this outfit on, I believe I was playing a wiseman in the church Christmas program.



Smoke a hookah…

Don't worry mom, it's perfectly legal.

Camel rides….



I didn't ride the camel this time, as I didn't want to spill my $8 Bud Heavy.



Henna tattoos (which only Casey participated in, and I’m glad because Casey’s turned out to look kind of like an unfortunately colored stain), and we saw a belly dancer (which I didn’t get a good picture of).

All in all it was an incredible and memorable day!

Saturday

The day started with waking up to find Casey on the couch again, as the ghost had apparently come back and choked her in the middle of the night. Not having gotten much sleep, she was a little crabby when Chris decided to try to wake her up by dancing with her to the music he was playing. The rest of us were having fun, but Casey wasn’t amused.



Chris felt like dancing, Casey felt like sleeping. Chris won.



We were supposed to be picked up at 9:00 for our day tour of Abu Dhabi, and our driver had called to confirm that the night before. Those of you who know me well, know that I am intolerant of people being late and wasting my time, especially when I am paying someone to perform a service. Therefore, when 9:30 rolled around and we still hadn’t heard from our driver, I was starting to get a little antsy. So we called the company and they ensured us that someone would be there in 15-20 minutes. Of course, our driver finally showed up at 10:30, so I was pretty cantankerous by then.

Luckily the day picked up by then as the drive to Abu Dhabi went pretty quickly. Our first stop was Yas Island, which is a man-made island that houses an impressive Formula One racetrack, as well as Ferrari World, which is an amusement park that is home to the world’s fastest roller coaster. Unfortunately as we didn’t have time to enjoy the park ( it costs something like $100 to even get in) we just were able to look around and visit the gift shop. When I go back, I’m definitely doing the roller coaster.

From there we went to a visitor center that laid out the vision of Abu Dhabi. It really is an impressive city with a great future. Amongst the other impressive buildings, beautiful beaches, and man-made islands, it will also soon be home to its very own Guggenheim Museum, as well as its own Louvre.

From there we visited a local fish market and a date market…

Sharks! They smelled like roses....

And then we were off to the Sheikh Zayed Mosque, which was an incredible experience. It is the third largest mosque in the world, and can hold 40,000+ worshippers. The entire building is a mirror image of itself, and made almost entirely out of marble. The carpet in the main prayer hall is the world’s largest carpet, made on site by 1200-1300 carpet knitters. The carpet weighs 35 tons and took 2 years to complete.

Women have to dress in Burka before they enter, and everyone has to take off their shoes.

The mosque has seven chandeliers that are made entirely of Swarovski crystals. The largest chandelier is the third largest chandelier in the world, and is 33 ft in diameter and 49 ft tall.

After the mosque we drove around and looked at the Royal Palaces, saw the supposed Sex and the City 2 hotel (which it turns out the entire movie was filmed on Morocco.) Apparently the cheapest room is $7k a night.

View of partial Abu Dhabi skyline from across the marina.

Then we went to the “wery famous” Marina Mall, and had probably my favorite meal of the trip. After months without beef, a BK Whopper does wonders for the psyche!

The Burger King was the best meal I had had in a month.

After the mall and another stop at a Heritage village, it was back to Dubai, where we had a tour of the Burj Khalifa (the big ass building). Another great experience as we were taken up to the 124^th floor to the viewing deck. We thought we were going to be able to go closer to the top, but we were only about 2/3 of the way up! After that we ate dinner from a patio where we could watch the water show that rivals the Bellagio. Since they don’t serve alcohol anywhere but hotels within the city, we had to entertain ourselves over Root Beer.

The Burj at night after our tour.

After that it was back to the hotel. Luckily I got to sleep in the master suite, because Casey had been haunted by a ghost the two previous nights, and didn’t want to risk a third night.

Sunday

No time for fun on Sunday. I awoke having not seen or heard or felt or smelled a ghost. (Shocking, right?) Then we were off to the state of the art airport, where we were able to enjoy a lovely McDonalds meal. I was so excited to get one more burger in before we headed back to India, that I actually forgot to order beef and went with chicken instead. Oops.

All in all, it was an amazing weekend, although I left feeling that we had just scratched the surface of what the country has to offer. It was definitely a little depressing getting on the plane back to Bangalore. I will for sure be making a return trip back. It’s amazing what you can do when you find a couple trillion dollars hidden under some sand dunes and are able to build a city from scratch.



Sad faces because we are leaving. (Another brain child of Casey)



What made it even better was the company. After living in the same city and working for the same company for years, I had to move 8000 miles away to meet and become friends with Chris and Casey.  Not sure how many times we sang the Zack Galafanakis hit song, “We’re the Three Best Friends that Anyone Can Have” from The Hangover, but it was a lot.

I’m sure you’ll be reading more about them in my adventures soon. But up next is a vacation to Nepal, as well as the Taj Mahal with visitors from Down Under!