As I readied to leave New York it was 40 degrees with expected snow flurries. I spent the day running last minute errands, had lunch with Sophia and hung out with Bos talking about my trip and his upcoming trip to Panama for Thanksgiving. I felt prepared to go and was much more relaxed about leaving. It probably helped that there would be several places that I’d be meeting up with friends along the way.
Well, this time I decided to forgo the “backpacking way” and use a taxi to get to the airport. My flight was at 10:30 at night so I wasn’t entirely keen on riding the subway to get there. My flights on Royal Jordanian Airlines would take me eleven and a half hours to Amman Jordan, where I’d switch flights and travel another two and a half or so to Dubai. I’d be leaving Tuesday night at 10:30 and arrive at 12:55 at night (Thursday morning). This meant I was basically going to not have a Wednesday November 19th!
Royal Jordanian is a very nice airline and their business class seats are enormous. I could lie my seat flat and still could walk around the seat next to me when it was flat there was so much room. As I sat down on the plane I wondered who my “plane buddy” would be on this flight. Sophia and I always tell one another about our plane buddies. Typically I’m not one to talk to someone sitting next to me but they always want to talk to me for some reason. This time my seat neighbor ended up being an interesting woman from Philadelphia. She works for Jones of New York (an apparel company) and is responsible for their corporate social responsibility. We had a great conversation given I wrote a lengthy paper in college about corporate social responsibility statements that at the time were a new phenomenon. She spends her time traveling to Jordan, Egypt and Asia to audit their factories and ensure that the labor practices are being maintained appropriately. We chatted for a few hours about the places she goes and where I was going and then I managed to fall asleep…for nearly eight and a half hours. What a luxury when on a plane.
Arriving in the Amman airport I was greeted by a large cockroach in the bathroom. Thankfully being from New York I have seen one or two cockroaches before so I wasn’t overly shocked by it. I was thinking it was pretty cool to be in Amman and wanted to at least go outside and see what it was like. Unfortunately they had us locked into a waiting area in which there was only a Starbucks and a Cinnabon. Guess America has managed to come to the Middle-East in more ways than one. I have to say that Jordan is now on my list of places to visit. They showed a tourism video on the plane and the history and beauty will likely draw me back here one day. Petra alone looks simply beautiful.
My flight arrived in Dubai on time at around one in the morning. Flying in reminded me of flying into a combination of Chicago and Las Vegas. We landed over the gulf, reminiscent of flying over lake Michigan into Chicago with enormous buildings and then total darkness of the water. The lights were bright and the city sizzled and sparkled like Las Vegas. Even at this hour I could see the lights of the cranes I’d heard were everywhere building the next major building for the skyline. The airport is the largest in the world and I was blown away by the size. I was also amazed at how many people there were at the airport at this time of night. It was efficient and I made my way through customs quite quickly and was ready to head to the hotel.
I strained my eyes to see things on the drive to the hotel since it was dark. I found I couldn’t stop smiling because I was in Dubai! This was going to be amazingly different than anything I’d seen to date. Arriving at the Hyatt Regency Deira I was already getting a taste of the seamless service that this city is known for. Everyone was incredibly helpful and focused on making me feel welcome. After some food (it really was dinner time in my mind with a nine hour difference) I got to sleep around 3:30 AM knowing that I’d wake up in the morning for Theresa to arrive from London. Theresa will be leaving London in a month or so and as such she is taking advantage of the opportunity to travel as much as possible. She and I had long talked about how interesting Dubai would be to visit so I was excited she’d be here to experience it for me.
I woke up at around 8:30 Thursday morning and got ready quickly since Theresa’s flight had likely just landed. As I looked out the window I could see the Persian Gulf on one side and the huge skyscrapers on the other. Theresa arrived and we quickly decided to go to the iconic symbol of modern Dubai, the Burj Al Arab. It is marketed as the only seven star hotel in the world (unfortunately for them there is no seven star system so it is pure marketing. It certainly lived up to it. As we go to the very guarded front of the massive building (ninety stories tall but only twenty seven stories given all of the rooms are several floors high) we were asked if we had reservations and told we couldn’t enter without one. Thankfully we were able to call in and get a reservation for drinks at the Junsui restaurant. It was a high end Japanese restaurant that appeared to be the only one in the hotel with availability. Once in we asked if we could get a lunch table at the Al Mahara restaurant. The Al Mahara is at the bottom of the hotel and is built around a 360 degree, 100,000 litre salt water tank filled with sharks and fish. Though we felt a bit bad eating the brothers, sisters and cousins of the fish swimming by us, the food was phenomenal. After a wonderful lunch we asked if we could go upstairs to the SkyView Bar that hung over the edge of the Persian Gulf with views in all directions. They got us a table and we were able to see the Palms, a man-made set of islands in the shape of a palm frond with houses all over it. We could see the World under construction, which is another set of man-made islands that form the shape of the entire world. We were told Rod Stewart had bought the UK island for tens of millions of dollars. From this vantage point we could also see the skyline of Dubai with one building going up that would be the tallest in the world. Behind this view was desert as far as the eye could see. Our welcome to Dubai at the Burj was amazing and expensive. Two glasses of champagne cost more than a nice dinner in New York City!!!
I was beginning to feel the effects of jetlag so we headed back to our hotel for a nap. After sleeping a bit we were energized to walk through the traditional downtown area called Deira. This area of Dubai houses the oldest souks (shopping markets) in the city. It had begun to get dark and we’d heard that nighttime was a great time to go through the souks. As we walked there from our hotel we noticed that Theresa was the only woman on the streets. It was almost entirely men wearing traditional national dress of the U.A.E. Once in the souks we saw more tourists and thankfully women so that Theresa wouldn’t feel completely out of place. Once we’d had a taste of the gold and spice souks we headed to the Dubai Creek area and jumped, literally, on a traditional abra, a boat that is effectively a water taxi. These boats are rickety and run out horrible diesel fuel but we loved every minute of it. It cost one dirham to get across the Creek and from there we entered more souks and walked along the creek looking for a restaurant. We wandered through the Bastakiya and area of shops founded originally by the Bastak traders from Iran in the early 1900s. Very different from the modern skyscrapers surrounding the area. We decided we might have better luck finding a restaurant across the Creek in the Dubai Creek complexes of hotels and modern stores. We took the boat back across but unfortunately found nothing there either. We headed back to our hotel and had a great dinner of traditional chicken shawarma by the pool.
Friday we got up early to go on a desert safari. The safari was arranged by my friend and colleague, Maribel, who was here for the NASDAQ/Dubai International Financial Exchange investor conference. The DIFX became a part owner in NASDAQ OMX a year or so ago and my old boss Jeff Singer was now their CEO. It was strange to think that my old company was actually having a conference here at the same time I was visiting. I wondered if I’d see two people that had long spent time grilling me on deals I’d worked on, Bob the CEO and Magnus the President, both of whom are in town for the event.
Because of this event Maribel and another colleague, Jenn Ok would be meeting Theresa and I at our hotel this morning to leave on desert safari. While I imagine this is one of the biggest tourist activities in Dubai it felt like we were about to embark on something totally unique and wild. It lived up to expectations…we rode out in a four-wheel drive with our guide and he hit the sand about half an hour outside of the city. From there it was a really wild ride up and down the dunes, sliding sideways down a dune, racing up and down them and a whole lot of screaming, yelling and hanging on for dear life. Then we stopped and got to pet some camels that were with their owner grazing on the sparse grasses of the desert. We noticed there were camels everywhere. They are actually very graceful looking animals and their silhouettes against the desert and horizon formed some very unique vistas.
After a few more wild ups and downs in the car we arrived at a small set of buildings for a ride on a camel. Theresa and I rode Champion and Maribel and Jenn rode on Sheila. They were friendly camels that clearly were comfortable with this little route with a tourist on their back. Ending the camel ride with a quick run made me wonder how in the world camel races got started since it was not very comfortable! They brought out ATVs for us to ride around once we’d disengaged our bodies from the camel humps. The guide led us through the dunes on the ATVs and Theresa and I both managed to get stuck on a huge dune pretty quickly. We kept going up and down through the desert that stretched for as far as the eye could see. We managed to make it through safely, though Theresa took a bit of a spill when going up the side of a dune and her ATV turned over. Bruised and battered she was still excited to pick herself up and keep going.
I couldn’t help thinking of my family in the deserts of California where we’ve had family homes for years. We’ve always been against the idea of ATVs tearing up the desert but boy it was fun and I decided to rationalize that there is a lot more desert here and very little vegetation so I didn’t feel we were destroying much. All in it was a totally unique experience with some great memories.
After our desert adventure the four of us headed back to the Monarch hotel, where Maribel and Jenn were staying for lunch. We had a great lunch and then everyone peeled off ready for a nap. I slept four several hours realizing that jet lag was catching up to me. After a relaxing afternoon at the hotel Theresa and I decided to head off to a souk at the Jumeira Madinat in the new part of Dubai. The souk proved to be a little more up our alley than the traditional Deira ones. This souk had lots of items for the tourist and lots of places for food and drink. We had dinner there at an outdoor restaurant and then headed home for the evening.
Saturday we woke up feeling more refreshed. The night before we’d asked the concierge the best way to see the sites since everything is very spread out. She recommended the Big Bus Tour. It is one of those double decker buses, open air on the top, that takes you from spot to spot around the city. We stopped back at the concierge to ask where the stop was that morning. We encountered a gentleman named Sam who had lived in Dubai years ago but was now living outside of Chicago. He told us some interesting history of Dubai and how it used to be somewhat of a pirate port. He joked that it was the port of Iran/Irag because they used to board all the boats coming down the Gulf from those countries and take their cargo. The port used to be littered with boats from those countries that had been seized by the pirates of the U.A.E. I asked what he was doing here and he told us that he was here often on business and that he would be leaving in a day or so for business in Saudi Arabia with the Bin Laden family. Now we really knew we were in the Middle East, and we didn’t ask what his business was.
Our first stop on the Big Bus was the Jumeirah Mosque. This is the biggest mosque in Dubai and had a tour most days at 10 AM for non-muslims. We learned a great deal about preparing oneself for worship in the mosque before we were even allowed in. Theresa was asked to wear a Jalabia (full length black cover dress) in order to enter the mosque. This was great for me because I was able to tease her and take some great pictures. Not great for her since it was really hot out! We entered the mosque, thankfully air-conditioned, and spent the next hour learning about the mosque and muslim religion. Our lecturer had lived much of his adult life in the US and Theresa was surprised to learn that she had grown up down the street from his in-laws in the Chicago area. A small world.
We hopped back on the bus and headed back to the Jumeirah Madinat souk. Theresa had made up her mind on a few purchases that she wanted to do from the night before. After some shopping and lunch along the canals we got back on the bus and went to the Palms. The Palms houses a new Atlantis resort that had opened while we were here ($25 million on fireworks). The Palms were a bit strange to me with housing reminiscent of tract housing in southern California covering it. The Atlantis was an imposing structure with a massive water park. Theresa and I thought it could be fun but after learning it was $70 and only open for another hour we decided on ice cream instead. The Atlantis was about as non muslim as it comes with people walking around in swimsuits and very crowded so we left pretty quickly. Hopping back on the bus again we made our way to the Mall of the Emirates because we had to see the place were you could ski in the middle of the desert. This mall, one of the largest I’d ever seen, housed a ski park with 6,000 tons of man-made snow. You literally could get on a chair lift and go down one of five ski runs, one of them a black diamond. It was wild to see and seeing people dressed in traditional Kandora (men’s full length shirts), Gutras (men’s head scarf) and women in Jalabias and Sheylas (head scarf). Once we’d seen it we got out of there pretty quickly because the mall was totally overwhelming. Arriving back at the hotel we noticed for the second night in a row that there was a Rolls Royce parked in front with the 39 license plate. We’d learned that these low numbers (preferably a single digit) on license plates went for hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars at auction. Thankfully the money raised was going to programs to help those less fortunate throughout the U.A.E.
Today we woke up and decided it would be a relaxing day. We headed off to Wild Wadi, a water park with enormous water slides. It is after all sunny and warm here, unlike home right now. We raced around on tubes and up and down slides (yes up on the “Master Blaster” which sends you up a slide). Then we headed off to Jumeirah Park Beach so we could swim in the Persian Gulf. After a quick swim we headed back to the hotel so we could pack up and check out of our room. We encountered one thing Dubai is known for…traffic. There is no public transport system in Dubai (though one is being built) and the traffic can be truly horrendous. After an hour in a taxi we arrived at the hotel and checked out. Now we are sitting by the pool until we leave for the airport and can see the skyline of cranes and skyscrapers. This city is an amazing dichotomy of old and new. Traditional clothes and beliefs mixed with western, minarets of the mosques were next to hundred story towers, Porsche SUVs were driving next to camels. The development has and continues to happen so quickly I wonder what the city will look like in the next ten years. If nothing else, Dubai is over the top.
Tonight Theresa heads back to London and I leave for Bangkok, Thailand. I will fly through Mumbai India and arrive in Bangkok at 10:45 in the morning where I will meet another friend, Katie, who is arriving there this evening.
