Day 3 - Dervish in the Desert

The Air Canada saga continued when I woke up at 6am and attempted to get the website, the app or the customer service line to work.  These attempts remained unsuccessful.  We did eventually get a person to pick up at the Dubai Air Canada office who told us that they only way to get seats would be to go to the airport and speak to someone at the ticket counter. The frustrations from the day before bubbled up again and the morning was taking a turn for the worse.  We were still trying to figure out how to fit in the evening desert safari and a much shortened visit to Atlantis where we could focus on only the craziest water slides (yes, I know, first world problems).  Given the airline drama and the distance to and from Atlantis, we gave up on the idea of fitting it all in and decided to go with the safari, freeing up the morning for us to deal with our flight.

Desperate to get seats, and now having a few hours to kill, we made the decision to cab to the airport (only about 10-15 minutes away) and book our seats directly with Air Canada as instructed.  You may ask why the total desperation with getting seats assigned… as a reminder, this particular leg of our journey was a single 14.5 hour leg.  In coach.  The thought of middle seats or not sitting together or being at the back of the plane had me in a cold sweat.  Yes, we should have paid a few hundred dollars to confirm seats weeks earlier, but again, we've never had issues in the past and again, I hate wasting money.

We arrived at the airport and after a fruitless search for Air Canada’s ticket counter, we were informed that they do not actually show up until 3 hours prior to flight, so we were about 12 hours too early.  With renewed frustration, we left the airport and went to the taxi stand trying yet again to salvage the day.

We had been warned about luxury taxis in Dubai.  The luxury taxis cost about 5x what a normal taxi cost and we were told to avoid them – we are talking BMWs, not Lamborghinis - not that exciting.  So we stood in the general taxi line and the taxi guy pointed us to an open car - a BMW that did not appear to have a normal meter.  Not to be taken as a fool, I  got out and walked to the taxi guy and told him we wanted a regular taxi with a meter.  He assured me we were in a metered taxi and told us to get back in.  So we did.

Of course the meter started at 5x the normal start charge and it was running at a much faster rate because, as I knew, we were in a luxury taxi.  This wouldn't have been a big deal if we had just driven the 10 minutes to our desired destination.  But we ended up with the one person in Dubai who did not understand English (or chose not to) and had no idea how to get where we wanted to go - the Ras Al Khor Wildlife Sanctuary.  We drove around the airport, on various highways, and through a huge industrial park, because apparently Ras Al Khor is also the hub of all import and export of fruit through Dubai and contains row after row of massive storage warehouses, and for whatever reason, our driver thought that is where two American tourists would want to hang out for the afternoon.  We did pass an exotic car auction lot which was kind  of cool - hundreds of cars on a dirt lot - in the quick view we had, we saw Ferraris, Porsches and a Duesenberg.

Finally, Damon had to pull up directions to the sanctuary on his phone while the driver followed along.  Our 10-minute ride took 40+ minutes and don't get me started on the surcharges.  Bring on more frustration.  In addition to not being super spontaneous, I hate wasting money.  This ride nearly killed me.

The wildlife reserve's main draw is flamingos.  I expected the reserve to be a park that we could walk around on paths and watch flamingos.  In reality, we were dropped off on the side of a busy road.  There was a small guard hut with one guard, and then an enclosed path about 100 yards long that led to an enclosed viewing blind with slits for viewing a flock of flamingos. 

Admittedly, the flamingo viewing was spectacular and we watched a hoard of hundreds of birds feed in unison squawking the whole time, but after about 15 minutes, we had pretty much seen all there was to see.  I later found out that there are actually three viewing blinds, but we didn't have a car and had no clue they were there. 

We walked back to the busy road with really no idea on how to get back to our hotel.  I had read that there was a bus, but we didn’t see any signs or any people who spoke English.  More frustration.  We finally hailed a taxi on the side of the road (of course it was another luxury) but this time we negotiated the rate ahead of time.  We were in no position to be picky since we had to be back at the hotel for our safari pick-up.  Didn’t want to miss that one again!

Flamingos swarming the food truck.

So as not to ruin the rest of the day, I decided that a comfort lunch was in order, which consisted of waffles for Damon and pizza for me.  With our sugar/fat mood elevators in place, we showered, packed up, checked out of the hotel, and waited for our safari pick-up.  We had the same concierge as the day before during our failed safari attempt, and he was familiar with our plight. He was very accommodating when I asked him to call the tour company to confirm pick up time, and when they were two minutes late, he kept calling until they picked us up (Hyatt rocks).

We squeezed into the third row of a Land Cruiser and took off. Our fellow guests were two couples – one from Germany and the other from Croatia.  I found it interesting that the only way they could communicate was in broken English.  We really take for granted that everyone will speak English when we travel.  One day I’d like to try a place where neither English or Spanish (we can get by) are spoken and we have to figure out how to communicate without words.  The thought of Damon trying to convey a thought with no words whatsoever would be endlessly entertaining.  Although he would probably just say Si and Gracias to everyone (yes, he did that by accident when we got to Dubai).  

We had a 45-minute drive to the desert – our first stop was a playground of sorts.  There are a bunch of desert safari tour companies and they each stop at the playground where guests are offered the option to rent dune buggies or ATVs and are let loose in a large fenced off area of the desert.  There is also a healthy supply of souvenirs for purchase.  Damon and I (who are we kidding, it was Damon) opted to rent the dune buggy.

Before handing us the keys, we sat through an intense training video where all necessary safety precautions were discussed and helmets were fitted and passed out.  Ha, no there wasn’t.  They walked us over to the dune buggy, handed us the keys, and said – be back in 20-30 minutes.  No helmets, no instructions, no nothing.  Damon cautiously felt out the dune buggy and slowly acclimated to our surroundings.  No he didn’t.  He took two seconds to get the lay of the land and then took off like a bat out of hell.  We were flying blindly over sand dunes in no time flat.

Now to give you some idea of what was going on here – the area was relatively large – maybe a few acres, although I have no idea what an acre looks like.  There were several fenced off areas, so not everyone was in the same area.  Our area easily had 50+ individual ATVs and a few dune buggies presumably with the same level of experience and safety training as us.  There are no set routes and no paths and there are sand dunes tall enough that you cannot see over them.  We had roll bars that I hung onto for dear life, and that is how I spent the next 15 minutes.

Damon gave up the driver spot to me because he convinced me that I would regret it if I didn't drive, so I had a chance to rev it up to about 20 miles per hour and putter around the outskirts of our area and out of harms way.  Actually, after a few minutes, I may have picked up some speed and flew over a few dunes until Damon started freaking out when I hit a dune sideways. 

Eventually my risk averse nature took over and I handed the wheel back to Damon.  When Damon, at full speed yelled “YEE HA - RIDE IT LIKE YOU RENTED IT” followed by “DONUTS IN THE DESERT” while spinning in sand circles, I got out of the buggy, and let him release more testosterone while I took videos.

Post playground, we piled back in the Land Cruisers (our guide had graciously asked one of the shorter couples to take the third row so Damon wasn’t bumping his head), and we drove into the desert.  We waited for our caravan of about 6-7 Land Cruisers to aggregate for safety reasons, and then we began our “dune bashing” adventure.  What is dune bashing?  Imagine driving (a professional driver) full speed over and around massive sand dunes, skidding over the tops, and sliding down them at a 45-degree angle while the tires are spitting up sand everywhere.  On one hand, it was crazy fun – I was in the middle hanging onto roll bars again having the time of my life.  The woman next to me would just let out a sad little "ooohhhhh" sounding groan every now and then while trying not to throw up.  She was clearly not enjoying herself.  Damon had a window seat and would just start randomly yelling “no no no” whenever it looked like his side was going to roll.  A little nauseating, but ultimate a rollicking good time.

Hard to get a decent shot, but this was sort of what it looked like

We stopped on the top of a taller dune to watch the sun set.  The tour company provided snowboards so we could sand-surf down the dunes

however, with the height of the dunes and the inherent wipe-out danger, plus the fact that the boards basically had no functioning bindings, they recommended (insisted) that we sit and slide down the dunes.  We are totally fake surfing in the pictures.

As per usual, Damon had a perfect run down the dune.  Mine, not so much as I completely wiped out and rolled head over heals down most of the dune.  Oh, the places I found sand later that night.  It was surprisingly difficult to walk back up the dune – the sand is so fine that it just kept slipping as I tried to walk up so I made almost no progress.  I did eventually crawl my way back up.

Our next activity was the sunset photo shoot.  Our guide, having done this at least one (or a million) times before, ordered us around into different romantic sunset poses. We gazed at the sun, we pointed at the sun, we held hands, we stood, we sat, we jumped, and for the grand finale we made a romantic hand heart surrounding the sun.  As Damon pointed out, I seem to be incapable of forming a heart as my hand heart is actually a “C”, thus confirming that I do not, in fact, have a single romantic bone in my body.

Once the sun went down, we drove to a camp for dinner and a show.  The camp had a bunch of activities that we could partake in, but we are sort of lame so we did not partake in any.  We could take pictures in traditional Arabic dress, but how many people wore those clothes before us and how often were they washed?  We could smoke the Shisha pipes but I’ve never done that, didn’t know how it would affect me, and we were heading to a 14.5 hour flight.  Nope.  We could get henna tattoos, although thinking about work meetings killed that idea since I wasn’t sure how long they would last.  We could ride camels, but they looked so sad that we couldn’t do it.

We sat down to watch the show before dinner that consisted of several types of traditional Arabic dance starting with a whirling dervish. Yes, that is an actual thing – I looked it up.  A whirling dervish is hard to describe and hard to picture, but I’ll give it a go unless I can figure out how to load up a video.  Imagine a man in a tight suit made of hot pink material with silver stripes.  Over the pants, he wore a huge, thick, colorful, multi-layered set of skirts and I think a jacket or vest.  He also had a hat on that he took off and separated into rings that he made designs with while he twirled.  The music started and he started twirling.  Dude did not stop twirling.  I'm not sure what the differences is between twirling and whirling or spinning, but he did that for the entire act, which lasted about 10 minutes.  I later read that they can spin for 2 hours straight with 30-40 rotations per minute.  I want that guy at our next bat spin competition at the Memorial Day picnic. 

During the act and while he was spinning, the dervish started taking off layers.  Each layer would be twirled before it was ceremoniously removed and flung off stage.  About halfway through the act, he went all Elvis and pushed some buttons and his whole outfit lit up.  I’m talking full on Christmas lights on the whole she-bang.  And still he twirled.  Before his skirts came off, he twirled them above his head and they separated into a sort of mushroom (all lit up).  And then he finished in his hot pink and silver under garments.  All in all, a highlight of the night.

The second act was a young guy who twirled (whirled?) fire batons.  It is completely mesmerizing to watch fire twirlers and he was really good.  For the final pre-dinner act, both guys got back on stage.  The dervish put on a crazy death mask and a new skirt.  A song with the lyrics “dance with the devil” started and the fire guy lit the dervish's skirt on fire and the twirling started.  It was crazy cool – the skirt was totally on fire while the dervish twirled, and the fire guy started drinking lighter fluid and blowing huge fire bombs out of his mouth.  Pretty awesome.  We took a break for a big buffet dinner and then the final act, a belly dancer who did a few songs.  She did a lot of twerking and a lot of hair flipping.  I’ll take the twirlers and the fire dudes all day long.  Damon may agree to disagree as he was totally mesmerized by the belly dancer.

After the show, we headed back to the cars.  Our group took a while to re-assemble, which started to freak me out a bit, because we had a deadline of 9:30pm to be back at the hotel to ensure we could get to the airport to make our flight.  And oh yeah, we still didn’t have seats.

We got back to the hotel by 9:30 in excellent spirits – thrilled that we ended the trip on a high note after a series of unfortunate events.  We got to the airport by 10pm, went right to the Air Canada counter, which had magically appeared, presumably at 9pm, and went to get our seats.  There seemed to be some confusion around our boarding passes, but eventually they were printed out.  We thought we got okay seats – somewhere in the middle of the plane and we had one aisle and one middle together.  And we were, much to our delight, upgraded to business class for the Toronto to Chicago leg of our flight.

And, then it went to hell again.  Going through security, I was forced to take off my watch at the last minute.  I threw it into my bin and walked through the metal detector.  I beeped, walked through again, beeped again, and was forced to undergo a pat down search, which they do in a curtained area.  Now I travel constantly.  My watch has never once set off a metal detector and I was not wearing one speck of metal on my body.  Yet somehow, I beeped twice and was forced out of line to be searched.  Security wouldn’t let me collect my belongings, so I yelled to Damon to get my stuff as I was escorted to a curtained room to be patted down.  It took less than a minute, but when I got out, I realized Damon hadn’t grabbed my watch.  I tried to stop the security line so I could go through the bins but the guy yelled at me and wouldn’t help me.  By the time I got anyone to listen, my watch was long gone.  They really couldn’t have cared less.  I immediately regressed back into frustrated mode, and may or may not have loudly professed my desire to never step foot in mother-bleeping Dubai again. 

Watchless, we got on the plane and realized we were in the mid-plane toilet row.  We had an aisle and a middle and I grudgingly agreed to take the middle where I spent the next 14 hours wrestling the man next to me for the limited arm rest surface area and physically pushing his man-spreading legs out of my area on multiple occasions.  It was brutal.  I think I still have bruises on my arm from the elbow wars.  I did jab him at one point when he had his arm covering the entire arm rest and yell “NO, YOU DO NOT GET THE ARM REST”  I think that culturally, he was not used to a woman yelling at him and eventually he backed off.  Hell hath no fury like a tired frustrated frequent flyer in a middle seat with no arm rest.  Oh, and the guy in front of me was the only one in full recline for 14 solid hours.

We arrived in Toronto and made it through customs quickly.  There was an earlier flight option on Air Canada, but, you know, it was freaking Air Canada and they wouldn't change our tickets - they said United had to do it.  United was about a 6-mile walk to the opposite end of the terminal and through some construction tunnels - we may have actually been in the US by the time we got to the United gates.  We didn't think we'd be able to find an agent, change the tickets, and get back in time so we stuck with our original flight.

Our flight finally started boarding – only 1.5 hours til we get home!  But the evil dark side (AKA Air Canada) was not through with us.  As we handed our business class boarding passes to the gate agent and tried to get on the plane, we were told that we had been canceled off the flight.  They kept saying we did it and we are like – when?  We’ve been on a plane for 14.5 hours.  How and when did we decide to cancel our only way home?  Ultimately, we got on the flight, but of course they had given away our business class seats to someone else.  Freaking Air Canada.  I have since written them a very strongly worded email expressing my lack of love for their airline. 

And finally, we were home.  Actually, I was home – Damon went right to work all overnight on a plane smelly, but that is his story.  I was greeted by Thorkey and and all was right with the world again.

When people ask me how this trip was, it is hard to answer.  The best I can say is that the good stuff was totally awesome.  I love that I married someone willing to take a crazy last minute goofy trip halfway across the world where we basically spent more time in the air than we did on the ground.  Visiting a different culture and a new city was great.  I’ve always wanted to see Dubai – the wealth and the crazy buildings and architecture.  But the bad was brutal.  In hindsight, I’m sure a lot of it was exacerbated by exhaustion and my inability to just go with the flow – a skill I’ll have to work on.  Would I recommend a visit?  Absolutely.  Just be flexible, hang onto your possessions, and do not get into a BMW no matter what the taxi guy tells you.

POSTSCRIPT:  I couldn't figure out where to put this last picture, but I have a weird obsession with toilets in other countries.  In Dubai, every toilet from luxury hotel to airport to mall to the equivalent of a public pit toilet all have what I have dubbed, the "booty hose".  I don't know why but I find it fascinating to see how other cultures do their business.  My favorite toilet picture, below, was taken at a public toilet in the Souk on our first day.  It was a hole in the ground and a hose.  Is the hose in lieu of a flusher?  Is the hose in lieu of toilet paper?  Is the hose a tool of defense in case someone walks in on you and you need to shoot them in the face?  I have no idea!  I always travel with toilet paper, so I used the hose to flush, although I kind of wish I had used it for defense... bucket list for another day.

Day 2 - The terrible, horrible, no good very bad day

Our big event today was an evening desert safari that didn’t start until 3pm, so we had the whole morning to relax.  We had breakfast, a workout and then Damon & I met up for an awesome couples’ massage.  Interestingly, culture dictated that we had to be with same sex masseurs, but there was no problem with each of us lying mostly naked under a blanket with the respective other sex masseur standing 3 feet away.  Post massage, we had a few hours to kill, so we hung out by the pool and had a quick lunch before showering and getting ready for our safari.

The safari people were supposed to pick us up at 3pm, and when they hadn't arrived by 3:15, I looked up our reservation to confirm.  And this is was the beginning of the downward spiral of our awesome boondoggle.  The reason this blog is so late to publish is because I wasn't going to write about the rest of our trip, but Damon convinced me that when we record our memories and experiences, they are not always perfect and we should remember everything – the good, the bad, the ugly.  So, what happened?

When I looked at our reservation to confirm details, we realized that I had accidentally booked the trip on the wrong day (yesterday) so we had, in fact completely missed the safari.  I called the tour company to see if we could get a taxi to meet them somewhere, and if not, could we re-book for the next day.  They said no.  I begged and pleaded with the woman on the phone and even the concierge got on the phone and tried to help, but they had our money and considered us no shows and they would not budge.  There would be no refund and they were unwilling to apply all/part of our payment if we chose to reschedule for the next day.  The were so inflexible that we could not justify re-booking with them and so $200 and all of our plans for the day flew out the window. 

In addition to kicking myself over the wasted money and the missed trip, I was frustrated that we had lost an entire day (remember, I am a non-spontaneous super planner).  Now we had to decide whether to re-book the safari or stick with our original plan to spend the day at the Atlantis water park, which we had really been looking forward to.  I completely understand that to anyone reading this, it sounds pretty lame - what is the big deal - we missed a tour.  It has been a few weeks since this all happened and as I sit here typing, I honestly can't understand why I was so upset.  In hindsight, I'm open to the possibility that in my jet-lagged over tired state, my reaction was disproportionate to the situation at hand, but at the time, the disappointment in ruining 1/3 of our trip was very real.  The whole situation was just infuriating to me, mostly because it was entirely my fault, and there was nothing I could do or say to get back our lost time.  Side note – my computer does not adjust time zones, so when I had booked our tickets in the previous morning for “tomorrow”, with the 10-hour time difference my computer was a day behind, thus my error in booking the wrong day.  

When you are tired and angry and frustrated, even a loving spouse cannot fix it.  And we started to fight and get annoyed with each other making the situation worse.  We had no idea how to spend the evening since most daytime activities were closed, so in an attempt to salvage the evening, we took a (non-luxury) taxi to an area called “The Marina” to have dinner – one of the items on my back-up activity list.

Our moods lifted when we got there.  It was a beautiful night and the Marina was quite pretty.  The architecture of the skyscrapers around the marina is extraordinary - each building is uniquely designed with detail that looks both old and new at the same time.

Most of the development in Dubai happened after 2000 making the skyline and most of the skyscrapers less than 15 years old and it is still growing.  There is construction everywhere.

Cranes on top of every building

Some cool looking buildings...

This was viewed from the Burj - there is a swimming pool up high between the two towers

Not sure what this was, but another "futuristic" looking building that will probably look ridiculous in 20 years

Another thing we noticed - the word "Emaar" is displayed on tens (maybe hundreds) of buildings around Dubai.  We googled it and learned that Emaar is one of the largest real estate developers in the UAE and is known for large scale projects, including the Burj.  Their name is prominently displayed on their buildings and you see those buildings everywhere.  

Emaar on four buildings - to the right (out of picture) there were at least 4-5 more

We took a short walk on the famous Jumeirah Beach where we walked by some camels - probably a normal occurrence...

Famous sail building in the far background, upper right. 

We walked around the Marina while the sun set and at one point heard loud music piped outdoors, which was a call to prayer for a beautiful Mosque that was also nestled in the skyscrapers in the Marina.  I didn't see anyone praying.

There were tons of restaurants on the water and we found a Mediterranean menu, feasted on hummus and way too much ridiculously delicious pita bread, kebabs, etc. before heading back to our hotel.

The emotional toll of the day (which I cannot accurately convey in writing) took a lot out of us and by 9pm, Damon was asleep.  I had finally gotten back to a normal mood, and then part two of the crap day started.  In case you think that a missed safari is all that went wrong, there is much more to come.  

We were flying home the following night on Air Canada (sucks).  Our flight was at 11:55pm. Air Canada (sucks) allows you to prepay for seats or wait until 24-hours prior to flight so you can select the exact same seats for no charge.  I kept an eye on the seats in the days leading up to our flight and the seats remained mostly open within a few days of travel, so we opted to take our chances as we have done on other international trips with no issues.  Despite being tired and a little drained, I stayed awake, so at 11:56pm, I was on the Air Canada (sucks) website for first crack at seat selection.  Unfortunately, the website chose not to cooperate.  In addition to trying to book on the website and the app, we spent an hour on hold on the phone with Air Canada (sucks) customer support trying to book seats, but no one ever answered.   We finally gave up totally frustrated and went to sleep. 

In case you didn't pick up on it I'm not a fan of Air Canada.  

Day 1 - Souks and Abras and Burj oh my

Monkeyhouse goes to Dubai

It all started back in September when, for Damon’s birthday, we decided that getting to 1K status (the highest possible achievable status) on United was within my reach, but it required one long haul trip to rack up at least 15,000 miles.  At the time, our choices (thanks to incredibly low pricing) were Hong Kong and Dubai.  Given the civil unrest in Hong Kong, we opted for Dubai and on a completely spontaneous whim, booked the trip as a fly out and back with a total of 24 hours in Dubai.

As I am a person who requires a significant amount of preparation and planning for any spontaneous activity, I had buyer’s remorse the next morning after realizing that there was more to attaining 1K status than just the miles, and we (I) chose to cancel the trip within the allowable 24-hour time frame.

Fast forward two months, and with a lot of planning and spreadsheets, I figured out how to get to 1K status AND we could take our completely spontaneous trip to Dubai for 3 full days, which we had decided was enough to see everything we wanted to see.  Let the spontaneous boondoggle commence.

The biggest downside to this trip, other than the fact that it was halfway around the world and we had less than 2 weeks to plan everything, was that we agreed to fly coach.  Somewhere in Damon’s mind, a spontaneous boondoggle must include some level of suffering, which in this case means 15-19 hours of flight time in Economy.  I am a firm believer in not suffering, but I lost this battle.  Also, given the last-minute nature of our booking, upgrading to business class wasn’t a viable option.  So, we planned our trip out with an 8 ½ hour flight to Frankfort, a 3 ½ hour layover, and a 6 ½ hour flight to Dubai – totally manageable since at least we had the bulkhead for the first leg, meaning no one was reclining in our laps.  The return would be one 14.5 hour leg (kill me now) from Dubai to Toronto with a 2-3 hour layover followed by and a little 1 hour puddle jumper from Toronto to Chicago.

The flight out was completely and thankfully uneventful.  We had a slight delay due to a malfunctioning ground indicator light that indicates (per the pilot) when we might be on the verge of hitting, say, a mountain.  So, I was fine with the delay – methinks not hitting a mountain is probably a good thing.  We both slept a few hours on the flight – Damon can sleep anywhere.  I popped a sleeping pill and downed a few mini bottles of wine to ensure maximum effectiveness, which gave me a solid 3-4 hours of on and off sleep in 10-minute increments.  I'm not a very good plane sleeper, drugged or not.  

Our layover was uneventful – we were able to hang out in a nice lounge in the airport and at least had wifi, comfy chairs, and unlimited coffee.  We boarded the second leg which was technically during all daytime hours, so while Damon watched YouTube videos to stay awake, I watched more downloaded Christmas movies (I have a serious and very unhealthy Hallmark addiction), read and napped.  Surprisingly not a bad trip at all.

We landed in Dubai around 11:15pm travel weary, but still functioning, and nothing left to do but get to our hotel and go to sleep.  Since we only had carry on bags, the airport was a breeze and we were in a taxi and at our hotel by midnight.  A few observations – I wasn’t sure what to expect when we got to Dubai, having never been in a Muslim country.  I read up on expectations and customs specific to women and decided I would have to defer to Damon to take control rather than charging forward as I typically do.  I’m not sure if I am hyper-sensitive, but when we went to get a taxi, I swear the men would not look me in the eye and only looked to Damon for instructions.  So it definitely came as a surprise that our taxi driver was female.  She was wearing a bright pink hijab, and she hoisted our luggage into the back with no help whatsoever.  In hindsight, maybe I imagined the look me in the eye slight?  Only time will tell. 

I am a devoted United flyer and Hyatt patron; ergo, we stayed at the Hyatt Regency in Dubai.  There are about 8 Hyatts in Dubai – they obviously have good taste - and we picked this one because it looked to be one of the nicest – at a mere $123 per night.  As a Hyatt loyalist, I was able to get us a complimentary suite upgrade, so despite our tired bedraggled appearance upon arriving after about 20 hours of travel, once they looked up our reservation, the awesome service started.  Our suite was huge with a living room, bedroom and 1 ½ bathrooms.  The toilet situation is… interesting.  I have yet to figure out what all of parts do.  There are more bowls and hoses than in a standard American bathroom.  Will definitely experiment with everything before the weekend is up.  The hotel left us a huge bowl of fruit and a plate of chocolate covered dates, so we had a little snack – it was lunchtime somewhere - and finally turned in by 12:30am.

My only picture thus far - the toilet, the booty hose, and I think the standing pee sink.  And note the tv screen in the vanity mirror so you can watch tv while doing your business.

Official Start of Day 1:

After a wonderful night of sleep, we embarked on our very well-planned non-spontaneous day.  With only three days in Dubai, I researched everything we could do with a few back-ups in case we got ahead of schedule – we were going to see and do it all in 72 hours!  We started with much needed showers and breakfast.  I had done a lot of reading on what females are allowed to wear and was still a little unclear on what was acceptable as many photos contradicted what I read.  So, I opted to play it mildly safe with cropped pants and a modest sleeveless top since it was expected to be about 80 degrees.  I was a little worried about bare shoulders, so I packed a light scarf to cover up just in case.

Stop number one was the old/original part of Dubai that was known for its Souks – a Souk is an Arab market.  We took a taxi – side note – taxis are surprisingly inexpensive, and when we were dropped off, the driver told us where we could get a return taxi and commented that we should be very careful about taking real taxis versus luxury taxis, because the luxury taxis are significantly more expensive.  The luxury taxis are basically BMW’s and other nice cars and are less obvious as official taxis.

Another side note – everyone speaks English, and most speak it quite well.  Another good surprise since my Arabic is a little rusty.  No, I don’t speak Arabic.  Although I did immediately learn the word for “thank you” and threw it out where ever I could.  My pronunciation must have been stellar as I got some surprised looks whenever I used it. Or maybe I was saying potato or something by accident.  My pneumonic for thank you “shukraan” was “shoe” and “Koran”, which helped a lot.

The Souk area was not too crowded (yet).  It was right on Dubai Creek, which is really more of a river, so there were boats of all shapes and sizes just stacked against the shore.  The old city consisted of a lot of narrow streets with tiny shops lining the streets.  The actual “Souk” was more like an indoor organized flea market.  

We started with the famous spice souk.  Not sure what to expect, we wandered into the very narrow passageway that was lined on both sides with spice vendors.  

Dozens of stores filled with mostly the same spice displays

Huge bags of spices lined the outside areas

We were not two steps into the Souk area when the aggressive in-your-face selling began.  We couldn’t take a step without someone shoving spices in our face and guiding us into their shop or asking us if we know what any/every smell was.  Honestly, it was a little overwhelming, but also pretty cool.  We went into one shop early on to get the lay of the land and received the full court press.  We smelled a bunch of different spices and marveled at the massive bags, bins and piles of everything you can imagine.  We finally begged off and said we would come back. 

We wandered into a larger “store” and spent a lot of time there – we got sucked into the pashmina area and I was shown about 50 different colors and fabrics of scarfs from camel hair to llama hair to goat hair, with all of the animal hair combos.  Ultimately, I was able to sneak away without buying anything – I had just bought my $20 pashmina on Amazon and probably didn’t need a $100 camel/goat/llama hair scarf that really looked exactly the same.  Then we went to the spice section of the store and were guilted into buying a lifetime supply of white pepper, cinnamon and cumin.  Luckily all spices we use.  One trick they like to play on unsuspecting tourists is the “smell this” game.  They show you a bunch of stuff and you smell it and guess what it is.  Then they tell you to close your eyes and you are still sniffing, and then the blow smoke from a burning menthol rock right up your nose.  To say that it clears your sinuses is an understatement.  I think my sinuses are cleared for the rest of my life.

We wandered around the enormous Souk area and in addition to the spice section, there were tons of other products from clothes to mattresses to household goods – each in a tiny little shop.  The other big Souk is the gold Souk, which we had to visit.  Luckily, having no desire whatsoever to purchase gold, I knew we would be safe.  The gold area was insane – you could literally buy anything made of gold from necklaces to clothes.  The windows were filled with gold dresses and massive jewelry pieces.  We never went into any stores, but just visually enjoyed. 

One of many many window displays covered in gold-wear

I had heard that one should stop for ice cream at an Arab market, so we found an ice cream vendor and I ordered.  Damon was aware of the “show” that was coming, but I was not.  The ice cream vendors play a game with cones and ice cream that is basically a fast hands thing where you never have any idea where your ice cream or where your cone is as it all keeps changing hands and locations.  It was fun, but given that there were at least three cones involved in my show, I wondered how many people had touched my cone prior to me getting there.  I still ate it.  Obviously.

Only 2 cones in this pic, but there was another one floating around somewhere

Enjoying our cones

Our ice cream break gave us the chance to plan out our big souvenir spice purchase.  We figured out exactly how much of everything we wanted, what types of spices, and what I think I would normally pay for it at home, and decided a total dollar value that we would spend.  We were ready to go negotiate!  We went back to our original guy and we were ready.  He didn’t stand a chance.  We negotiated hard and at the end we got a great price, plus 2 chocolate covered dates, some dried ginger and some dried mango just to sweeten the pot.  I’m sure we still paid 10x what they did, but when everyone walks away happy, I consider it a win.

Some interesting notes about the people watching in the Souk – while the vast majority of people are dressed in “western” clothes (maybe slightly more modest), there are definitely a number of men and women (more women) dressed in more traditional Muslim attire – meaning men are wearing the long white robes (“thawb”) with the occasional white head scarf (“keffiyeh”) and women are in the long black robes (“abaya”) and the head coverings (“hijab”).  If I got the names wrong, blame Google and Wikipedia.  I asked Damon a simple question – why do men wear white (cooler in the desert heat) and women wear black (sweltering in desert heat).  His response – “what do you think”.  The answer was obvious, but not one I wanted to say out loud.  It is clearly a way to force women into a more subservient role. 

I may rant about this again later, but while admittedly the females wearing the Abaya did not generally seem to be completely submissive, there were some face coverings really disturbed me.  Most women wore a simple hijab – usually black.  But their faces were uncovered.  And they often work make-up and jewelry.  There were some women who completely covered up where only their eyes showed – they might be covering with a scarf that tied around the back of their heads or the head covering itself included a face cover.  But the ones that really upset me where the ones where there was some type of face covering, but the emphasis was on covering the mouth, sometimes with what appeared to be a metal plate.  We saw a few of these in the Souk.  I have no pictures, but it was very disconcerting to me that women need to be symbolically silenced in public.

I cannot begin to pretend I know or understand the Muslim/Islamic culture.  And I have no idea what goes on behind closed doors.  I don’t know if women choose this, prefer it, tolerate it or hate it.  But as a completely uninhibited independent American woman, any culture that so obviously diminishes women and forces them into a subservient role, makes me very uncomfortable and very thankful to have won the genetic lottery.  I suppose when we start complaining about what goes on in our own country, we need to take step back and understand that we have it a helluva a lot better than other places.  Rant over.

Moving on.  To get back across the creek, we opted to take an Abra, which is a water taxi that costs about 25 cents per person for a 5-7 minute ride in a rickety old wooden boat from one dock to the other.  Totally worth it as we got to see both sides of the creek from the water.  

Abras

View up the river

We took a quick taxi ride back to our hotel to drop off our goodies and headed back out again immediately to stay on schedule. 

For the next part of our journey, and as one of our must do itinerary items, we opted to take the Metro to the downtown area.  The metro was a few blocks away to a super clean and modern station (our station had a fresh squeezed orange juice machine!), two stops on one line, a transfer to a second line, and maybe 7 stops on the second line.  

Everything is kind of futuristic looking - this is the metro station

Fresh train station OJ!

Fancy train station chandelier

The train was pulling into the station when we got there so we immediately hopped into the closest car.  We were sitting in the car and luckily Damon noticed some signs on the train wall indicating that we were in a women and children only car and there was a fine for men caught in the car.  

We missed the HUGE signs on the floor as you enter the train

About a $25 fine

The train, while containing separate cars, is really a long tube so it was very easy to move to another car.  The car we moved into was packed solid shoulder to shoulder with all men and maybe 4-5 total women in the car.  It felt very weird, but I didn’t want to separate from Damon, so I sucked it up and stayed.  One of those times I’m thankful for my height.

Eventually we got off at the Dubai Mall stop.  The Dubai Mall is notorious for being one of the largest indoor malls in the world, and we had also heard that it contained tons of designer stores.  We walked about a mile through air-conditioned walkways to finally get to the mall and it was huge.  I was a bit disappointed as I was expecting gold vending machines everywhere (rumor has it there is at least one in the building), but what we found was the Mall of America x10.  Up to five levels of stores and pretty much comprised of mostly American mall stores – Gap, Banana Republic, Victoria Secret – all the standard stuff.  There was a massive food court that had every type of fast food imaginable.  We had a quick lunch of Kebabs and Hummus – yes, it was in the food court, but offered an amazing people watching experience.  We didn't take many pictures because I read that you can't take pix of people without their permission.  Not wanting to risk it, we opted to just take it all in visually.

My favorite two stories – watching 3 women wearing abayas and hijabs while texting on their cell phones and ordering food from Johnny Rockets.  Watching a woman in her abaya and hijab struggling with all of her purchases – from the Gap.  Damon’s favorite story – in every mall in America, there is some car display – the new Mustang or maybe even a Tesla being showcased in a prime viewing location.  In the Dubai Mall, it was a Maserati.  You can see me in the background – clearly not impressed.

After the mall, we headed to the big event of the day – going up to the top of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest structure in the world.  

Hard to get in the entire structure in one picture.  148th is the very first shadow/bump on the left that you can barely see almost to the top of the building

The primary viewing platform is on floors 124 & 125.  We opted to pay a little (a lot) extra to get the VIP passes to the 148^th floor, which also included bypassing the line and getting on our own elevator.  While the public can technically get to the 155^th floor, it is only at set times and for an organized tea.  We wanted to see the sunset which did not match up with 155^th floor times.  Also, the 148^th floor has the highest outdoor viewing platform.  My only regret about not going to 155 is that apparently there is the highest sky-toilet in the world and when you sit on it, your view is floor to ceiling windows.  Google it.  

I have a fear of almost nothing, but going up to the 148^th floor of this building got my heart racing a bit.  Our group was escorted through the building and to our elevator.  One would think that shooting up an elevator at 33 feet per second would be a jolting experience – but in reality, the ride was so smooth, you didn’t even know you were moving.  The entire ride only took about a minute.  Think about 33 feet per second – that is about 3 floors a second.

We were greeted on the 148^th with tea and cookies and had an hour to wander around and take in the views.  The floor was relatively small – if you look at the Burj, the floors get smaller as you get higher.  It was really just one room with a few couches and chairs and a small gift shop, plus a small “outdoor” area dubbed the highest outdoor viewing platform in the world.  

Enjoying our tea

We could only score one chair so we had to swap

While it was technically outside, it was fully enclosed in glass with a thin strip of open air so you could feel the breeze.  Truth be told, I would not have wanted to be that high up in open air.  

Sitting on the floor trying to get an angle that provides some scale.  This is "outside"

We waited until dusk and watched the sunset with great views of the famous man-made world islands and the palm island, both of which we could see off in the distance.  One thing I was not expecting about Dubai was how spread out it is.  All the stuff that you see most frequently – the islands, the palm, the sail building, the Burj – all at least 10-15 miles away from each other.  The city itself is pretty narrow and follows the Persian Gulf and then the landscape changes quickly to desert once you start heading inland.

Hard to make out, but palm island is just under the sun and the world islands are to the right

After our time at the top, we rode the elevators down and enjoyed the famous fountain show where Arabic snake charming music was playing, and the water looked like giant gyrating snakes – very cool.

I believe the same people who created the Bellagio show in Las Vegas did this one.  The Burj is completely and spectacularly lit up at night with twinkling lights.  

Hard to see, but all of those lights were twinkling

We admired for a few minutes and then took the train back to our hotel where we had dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and then we went to the rooftop bar for a final drink while we enjoyed 360-degree views of the entire city. 

Rooftop view, mostly blocked by the giant phallus.  Burj is just behind and to the left.

Needless to say, we were exhausted.