Newsletter 11 - Part One - Trip to Dubai

Fri, 9 Sep 2005

Newsletter 11 - Part One

Hi Everyone,

Newsletter 11 is in two parts and this is the first.  It's about the day I made my first trip to Dubai.  I

tried attaching a photo of me taken while there but it was taking forever to load and I don't know if it will

load at all.  I'll try sending it separately and see it that works.

I hope you like this issue and, if you would like me to write about anything in particular, let me know and

I'll try to include it in a future issue.  So far, I've written enough for about 27, though, so you might

have to wait a while.

I did go to a wedding this week and have written about it.  You'll read it in about #27.

Enjoy!

15 July 2005 – Friday - TRIP TO DUBAI, PART ONE (Photo of Me)

The trip to Dubai yesterday was great but my day started before the bus trip began. I’d decided to subscribe to dial-up Internet access –available only through the national monopoly telephone company - so I left the house just after 8:00 AM to go to the nearest telephone company office which is around the corner and over a bridge from my flat. Close enough to walk but in this heat not wise so I took a taxi (2.5 dh). The building architecture is very modernistic and completely Arabian in style. The terraced stairway leading up to the entrance surrounds two sides of the building and incorporates a fountain with a square surround. Inside, the tiled lobby is spacious and semicircular, with a guard station nearest the door where attendants can direct the unknowing but no one was there when I arrived. Behind that are escalators going up and coming down and in the back area, beyond and behind the free-standing escalators, are counters with windows where various services are offered (to the left are cashiers for taking payments, to the right a sales area and service counters, each side having wonderful seating in the form of deep, wide comfortable armchairs in rows but with occasional gaps so that they are grouped in twos or threes with an occasional single chair. I didn’t know where to go for my purpose, inquired at a window and was directed upstairs.

At the top of the escalator I found myself on a semi-circular balcony and straight ahead was the receptionist, a dishdasha-attired young Arab man standing next to a short counter on his right. On his left was a device shaped like an upright rectangular pillar about midriff height to me that had listed on its top surface available services. Beside each service was a place/button to press. I explained my purpose and he handed me an application form for Internet access, reached over to the rectangular device and pressed one of the selections, and a ticket having a number on it emerged from a narrow slot in the side. He gave me the ticket and directed me to the Ladies Sales Office. It was located along the balcony to my right, beyond the regular Sales Office and definitely divided from it, and through a lovely entrance. I went through it into an area where three young Abaya-clad “girls” were sitting behind a low counter. Two chairs were in front of, and across the counter from, each worker. (The two chairs face each other so that when the customer sits in it, she is facing the other chair and is at right angles to the worker. This setup is true everywhere in the UAE; even in offices at the university there are two chairs across the desk that face each other and when you sit in one in someone’s office, you have to look sideways at the person behind the desk.)

One worker was available so I walked up to the counter in front of her and was invited to sit down and fill out the form. Then she began waiting on me. It turned out to be quite an involved process. I had had to bring a photocopy of my passport to give them (this is the third one they’ve received from me; I’ve submitted one each when I applied for mobile phone service, applied for a land line, and now this one – I now know that I could have saved paper by signing up for all three at the same time!) Once that was taken care of and I had been given a CD with which to install the dial-up software and a card giving my account number and my user name and a password that will be visible when I scratch off the disguising overcoat. Then I asked about the “free Calling Card” they offer to land-line customers. As it was explained to me, it will allow telephone access anywhere in the world that will be billed to my land line account (and be billed as if it had been made from my land line!). I decided that it would be good to have and said I’d like one. She directed me to return to the receptionist to get an application form, which I did, then returned, filled it out and was given a sealed envelope containing the card and the secret number that would activate the service. I also picked up a flyer about their website where I can recharge and renew minutes on my mobile phone, pay phone bills online, subscribe to additional services, etc.

Then I went down the escalator, went to the cashier area, took a number from a device like the one at the receptionist station upstairs and waited my turn. Since it was early morning hours on a Thursday (weekend day), only a few cashiers were working and there was no ladies line. When it was my turn, I presented and paid my first ever telephone bill here – 2 dh (about 54 cents). I’m sure that was because it was for my land line only, I had only had it a couple of weeks, hadn’t had a telephone until a few days before the bill was printed and had only made one or two phone calls; it will never be that low again! Then I walked over to a table beside the down escalator where there were telephone books piled high. Barbara had asked me to pick up a phone book for her the next time I went there. However! There were copies of books with yellow pages only, a large and heavy book of white pages featuring mobile phone numbers and another with white pages having regular phone numbers. Some of them were in Arabic so I had to be careful to take the English ones. I got one of each for her and one of each for me. Fortunately I’d taken a good sized tote bag with me! Carrying those heavy things, I nearly staggered out of the building, down the stairs past the fountain and out to the road to catch a taxi. By the time I got home I was soaking wet from the extreme heat and the weight of all those phone books – not to mention the weight of my purse which contains numerous things I find it necessary to carry here that I never carried at home.

After drinking a lot of water, cooling off and changing what I was wearing, I headed back out to the main street and caught a taxi for the bank. I’d planned to get money for the shopping trip from the ATM outside the bank but realized I didn’t want to stand outside in the heat long enough to do that so I went inside the bank to make my withdrawal. It was still early enough that I didn’t have to wait long and I was soon on my way to get another taxi, to go to the bus station. The buses to Dubai are minibuses whereas the ones to Abu Dhabi are the size of a regular US city bus or Greyhound bus. One purchases a ticket to Dubai for 20 dh at a window in a small white building beside the minibus parking area. I got there before Rebecca and didn’t want to stand in the heat waiting for her so I bought my ticket and boarded the bus, taking a seat on the aisle in the row behind the driver. As with the Abu Dhabi bus, this row was marked “ladies only.” Across from my seat was the bus door. The rows on the other side of the aisle had only one seat each whereas those on my side were bench seats for two.

Just before Rebecca arrived, a woman wearing an abaya and a man wearing a dishdasha purchased tickets, boarded the bus and sat down together in the row behind me. Not long afterwards, the driver came aboard to check the seating arrangements and started ordering some people to move to another seat and was fussing at someone not far behind me. I chose not to turn around to look because most of the passengers were men and it isn’t a good idea here for women to do anything that could be interpreted as showing too much interest in men they are not related to, so I just listened. Although they were speaking Arabic, I heard the English word “family” a couple of times. I think the driver was getting men out of the “ladies only” seats and was trying to get the man behind me to move out of the ladies’ row and the man was giving the “ladies and families” reason for staying. The custom here is that the front few rows are for ladies and families only.

Rebecca arrived while this was going on. She was wearing slacks and a floppy unisex sun hat. She came aboard and was moving past me on the row to sit by the window when the driver, whom I could see in the aisle with my peripheral vision but whom Rebecca couldn’t see because her back was toward him, started talking in Arabic and gesturing for Rebecca to get out of the row. I think he could see only the hat and her slacks and thought she was a male! Not understanding Arabic, she just calmly sat down, took off her hat, turned to face me and started talking. The driver, probably seeing her long hair and her definitely feminine blouse, must have realized she was a lady and stopped. Rebecca was greatly amused when I told her what I thought had just happened. For me, personally, I am glad that the bus drivers are so meticulous about enforcing the “ladies and families only” rule on the buses. It eliminates the awful seat hogging (sometimes taking up both seats in a row) by young males that has always happened when I’ve taken Greyhound or similar bus trips in the states.

Rebecca told me that the bus was equipped with seats that included an extra seat that folded out to make room for more passengers if the regular seats filled up. I thought she meant that the rows with only one seat had an extra seat attached somehow but found out differently later when the bus went around a curve a bit fast and the nice arm rest I’d been using started to swing away from me toward the aisle. I looked at the armrest more closely and realized it was in two parts that could fold out to become the seat and seatback for another passenger to sit on. Rebecca told me of an experience she’d had on a previous trip to Dubai when she was travelling alone. Among the women riders that day were a mother and her young daughter and apparently an odd number of women in all. The driver, trying to make as much room as possible for the numerous male riders without having any one of them sit by a lady, tried to separate the mother and daughter (although it will not do to have an Emirati woman sit by an unrelated male, it apparently isn’t a problem for an unrelated male to sit by a young girl). The mother objected to this arrangement, however, and finally in desperation the driver asked Rebecca, who is Chinese, if she would mind sitting beside a man. She said no, but she didn’t know how it could be done since both seats in her row were filled and she was in the aisle seat. The driver adjusted her armrest and – behold – a seat for the extra man.

Just after 1:30 our bus got underway. As we were heading out of Al Ain, Rebecca mentioned that we would be going somewhere near the camel race track and we might be able to see some camels. We got talking and forgot to look but at one point I lifted the curtain on the window beside Rebecca and there, off the road in the desert, was what looked like a camp with an open tent-like covering with people under it; nearby in a small enclosure shaded by date palm trees were several camels lying down. So I’ve seen camels for the second time!

As we drove through the desert, I noticed differing colors of sand in the various areas we passed. Near the center of Al Ain and just outside, it is “sand” colored, a kind of beige. Further along, it was a definite pink, then on the other side of the road later I saw orange, and the last one I noticed was on our side of the road and it was a paler pink that the one I’d seen earlier. I noticed, and Rebecca also commented, on the fact that when we went from Abu Dhabi Emirate, in which we live, into Dubai Emirate, the landscaping on the freeway changes noticeably. Abu Dhabi puts more emphasis on the “greening” of the desert, planting lush vegetation in the medians and in strips along each side of the freeway as described earlier about my trip to Abu Dhabi. There is less emphasis on that in Dubai Emirate although there are plantings, just not as many and not as crisply landscaped. So we saw a lot more desert on this trip and that is why I was able to observe the colors of sand as we went.

Upon our arrival in Dubai, we caught a taxi for our first destination, the Souq at Madinat Jumeirah. Madinat Jumeirah is “a breathtaking Arabian resort” featuring numerous ethnic food restaurants and shops the like of which I have never seen before. The souq (market or bazaar) is located between two hotel complexes of the most lavish architectural styles I’ve seen and there is a manmade canal that traverses the length of the entire complex. It is possible to travel by traditional boat along this waterway to get from one part of the complex to another. Although we did walk outside briefly and down the steps to view the waterway, the heat – and humidity, thanks to the nearby Arabian/Persian Gulf - was so overpowering that my glasses immediately fogged up and we felt wilted. Rebecca took a picture of me with part of the waterway and the complex in the background with her digital camera. If it turns out, I’ll email it when I send this issue of my Newsletter.

During the lengthy trip to the souq, while the taxi was racking up its fare (taxis are much more expensive here than in Al Ain!), I got a good view of innumerable extremely tall and modern buildings, the offices of a wide variety of businesses from all over the world, the huge apartment complexes, bridges and water that make up this dynamic business center. The waterways here include the Creek, now artificially enhanced, that runs between the mainland and a number of offshore islands – as I understand it – and of course, the Gulf is a little further out. As we drew nearer to our destination, I suddenly saw my daughter Gina’s favourite, the “sailboat hotel” (official name, Burj al Arab), which is located on its own special manmade island and is shaped like the long, high sail of the traditional Arabian sailing vessel, the dhow. It’s quite a sight. I observed it closely so I could tell Gina all about it. To my surprise, it turned out that the “sailboat hotel” was very near our destination and in fact, I could see it clearly and close at hand while we had lunch at a coffee shop in the souq shortly after we arrived there.

Rebecca was a little unsure of exactly where in the sprawling complex the souq was located, so the driver first went to the entrance of one of the hotels. The drive to the entrance was a sight to behold! Gold-painted statues of Arabian horses, at least two dozen of them, were placed around a central landscaped area dividing the entrance and exit drives of the hotel. They were in every possible standing pose a horse could assume: looking straight ahead, pawing the ground, prancing, rearing, grazing, galloping, trotting, you name it. They were impressive and I wished I could have taken a picture of it to send to my sister-in-law Betsy, who not only owns horses but also once managed a horse farm. Once the situation was sorted out and we arrived at the right place, for the mere price of either 80 or 90 dh ($20-25!), Rebecca and I walked into a building whose inside looked like a marketplace made up of pieces from many lands and cultures. Its main architectural features were massive and made of wood – pillars, colonnades, balconies, arched woodwork overhead, between shops, integrated into shops, everywhere. It was an amazing sight and would be worth a trip there just to look at the various architectural styles, the woodworking, the carving, the themes, etc.

Within this complex were shops so fascinating that we ended up lingering in them for more than three hours. But first, we made a pit shop and then headed for food. My big treat of the day was the fruit juice I had here – lemon!!! I love lemons and prefer eating them with salt. This juice was made of freshly squeezed lemons. Period. Nothing added. It was served to me with a small (about 3-inchs high) glass pitcher of sugar syrup to add to sweeten it to taste – I first met these little pitchers when I had kiwi juice in Abu Dhabi. Believe me, I added no syrup to this lemon juice, although I did add some salt. It was divine! For lunch I had a great salad – chicken and grilled mushroom which had a slew of grilled mushrooms on it, not the little dabs they use in salads in America; they covered the entire top of the salad, with the chicken lurking underneath. It was a joy to eat.

--CONTINUED IN PART TWO--