DUBAI - The United Arab Emirates

Dubai was fantastic. Excellent, memorable, exotic, hot. I had a fabulous week there, although I was glad to get home to my lovely family who I missed deeply. (Erm, I can hear them all down stairs arguing! But yes, I guess I even missed that!)

I don't know where to start writing about it all. I could do a day by day account of where I went and what I did, but I think I will just talk about it randomly, as things come to me.

Well, Dubai is part of the United Arab Emirates, situated between Saudi Arabia and Oman, and across the water from Iran. The Persian Gulf is the sea along its shores. Only 20% of the residents of Dubai are Arabs, the other 80% are made up of ex-pats from all across the globe. The city really is still being built and is to some extent a massive building site. The main language spoken in Dubai is English although many languages can be heard. All the street signs and menu's etc are written in both English and Arabic, so it really is an easy place to tour around. I didn't have much idea at all of what to expect before I left.



My flight to Dubai went via Paris, from Dublin. The flight from Dublin to Paris took 1 1/2 hours, and then from Paris to Dubai was a further 7 hours. It is possible to get direct flights but these cost a lot more. I flew over night and arrived in Dubai at 8 am on Wednesday morning (3 hours ahead of UK time).

The weather was gorgeous for the entire week - not a single drop of rain, so no humidity. I didn't find it too hot the majority of the time. I think the temperature ranged from about 32 C up to 46C on one of the hotter days (when I actually did have to get a taxi to the villa and sleep off my headache!) Anyone thinking of travelling to Dubai, just remember, don't go in the summer when it gets to over 50C and even the locals don't venture outside!

I'm gonna just post some photos and write a bit about them rather than going through a day by day run down of what I did.... You can view all of my photos in my flickr account by clicking here. (there are 3 pages of photos so don't forget to click through the pages to see them all) Also, the photos posted below can be seen full size by clicking on them.



This is me at the entrance to the Irish Village! Since Dubai is so multi-cultural it is possible to eat any type of food from any country. We had a few nice meals here. I must have put on a stone in weight!








Talking of food, this is me with one of the waiters at the Meridian Hotel. They were having a South African evening and all of the waiting staff looked like something out of a Tarzan film! For the cost of about £20 we could eat and drink as much as we wanted. There was an African band playing, and authentic African food. I was lucky enough to sample crocodile steak, crocodile salad, stir fried ostrich and BBQ'd wart hog! Being a natural coward, I decided to pass on the big black worm salad (basically massive black marinated caterpillars - think of those witchety grubs on 'I'm a celebrity get me out of here', just black !!!!)



This photo was taken on the same evening at the African dinner. These two Arab men offered me some chewing gum as they were walking past! "For you" they said. So I said thanks and asked if I could take their photo. At this point I hadn't seen many people in authentic Arabic clothing and I wanted to show my kids what they looked like. So they said yes, and posed for me. Later that night to my horror and amusement they had called a cab and were expecting me to go somewhere with them!!! Well, I laughed my guts out. I had no idea that accepting chewing gum meant so much more to an Arab man that it does to a Caucasian woman. LOL! That night (Thursday night - the start of the weekend in Dubai) I was propositioned by no less than 8 men, including the 2 Arabs, 2 Jordanians, 2 Syrians and 2 Iraqis! Wow, so popular! One Jordanian dentist even offered very kindly to give me a thorough dental examination with his tongue!!! Well, I almost wet myself laughing and he was not impressed.

Here are my Dubai friends D & W who kindly took me out for that evening. I think they are trying to avoid my camera in this shot.

D is working in Dubai on business and has a lovely villa there with a swimming pool. During the day if I was home I had the place to myself, including the pool!

(Yes, that is me in the pool - jealous yet?)



I did so much while I was there, including the open top bus tour (mandatory tourist adventure for any city holiday!) One of the highlights was definitely the beaches. In particular Jameirah Beach Park.













This is Jameirah Beach Park from the air (no I didn't take this photo myself, lol)









I spent 2 full days on the beach, sitting under the shade of a palm tree. This was my view on day one, of another palm and the sea in the distance. The sky looks quite dull in this photo because I think it was full of sand!


















As I looked the the left or right of where I was sitting on the beach I could see palm trees and the odd little hut, plus a few sun bathers.
















OK, so it was quite tough to get photos of myself on the beach, but just to prove I was there here is a photo of me - the whitest legs in Dubai.


I must say that I really enjoyed those two days on the beach. Just lying there relaxing, with nothing to do - no dinner to make, or children to bath, or Cd's to sell. It was just heaven. I even managed to swim in the Persian Gulf a good few times, the water was lovely and warm. It was so clear that I could see blue jelly fish (no one seemed worried about them so I presumed they weren't poisonous!), star fish, and shoals of little fish swimming around in the shallow waters!


On one of his days off work D took me to some of the city's huge shopping malls. These malls are like nothing that I've ever seen in the UK. They are more like palaces. Because of the heat most of the shops are inside big air conditioned malls. Two of the malls we visited were out of this world. The first one (I forget its name) had different levels decorated as various countries (china, India, Tunisia etc). One of these area was lit and decorated to be permanently dusk - with twinkling stars in the ceiling, dim street lamps - it really felt like shopping at sunset! Here is a little photo of it (click to see larger)








Every area of that mall was decorated like a palace. I just had to take a photo of this starbucks cafe where we had a cup of coffee. Just look at the ceiling! I felt like I was inside the Taj Mahal or something! Have you ever seen a Starbucks like this one???? Everything in Dubai is the best in the world. Anything you could look at would be the tallest in the world, or the oldest, or the widest, narrowest, longest, shortest, in the world. Anything that they build has to be the best. You simply must click on this starbucks photo to see it full size. It blew my mind!

The second mall was called the Mall of the Emirates, and this one had an indoor ski slope with REAL snow! Honestly, I stood in my summer clothes in this huge mall looking through a huge glass window at people in ski clothes with hats and woolly scarves! The adults were skiing and the children were throwing snow balls and tobogganing. Only in Dubai!

D took this photo of me in the mall toystore. Even the toy store is larger than life. This truly has to be the biggest teddy bear on the planet! I was chuffed that 3 Arabs walked into my photo as well, to make it truly middle eastern.

Whilst shopping in one of these malls we found a shop selling the clothes that the local Arabic muslim people wear. A very helpful lady told me that they sell a lot of them to tourists and both D and I went a little crazy thinking that they would make good souvenirs. So I bought Dan a full Arab outfit (long white robe with red and white tea towel type head scarf!) and bought myself the muslim lady's Abaia! When we got back to the villa and I tried it on D almost wet himself laughing.

I do have a photo of Dan in his outfit but I don't yet has his consent to put it on the blog. Give me time though ;)

This is how the local muslim women dress when they leave the house. Whilst walking round the malls there would be many women dressed like this, and they were exactly the same as the western women. They did not walk three steps behind their husbands or anything like that. The muslim families out shopping in their beautiful traditional clothes were just like everyone else - friendly, polite, walking hand in hand with their children. In their own homes the women take these coverings off and wear jeans and a t-shirt like the rest of us.

The other day that I really enjoyed from my trip was the day that I travelled to the Old Souk and Gold Souk area's of Dubai. These areas consisted of hundreds of little streets filled with souks selling all sorts of wares. I spent hours walking around these streets (this was the hottest day when I ended up feeling quite ill). Every street I walked down the sellers would call "madam, madam, look what I have for you", or "Madam, shop here please". At the start I found it quite intimidating being there all alone, but I soon discovered that all the sellers were friendly and pleasant, and I quite enjoyed myself. It didn't take me long to realise that the price I was quoted at the start was not nearly the price that they would sell at. I looked at some postcards and asked "how much". "Two durhams each" was the reply. So I looked for a bit, then walked away and heard "but for you madam just one durham each", and then finally "but I will sell you 6 for five durhams". LOL. I had the best time shopping in some of the belly dance shops and came home with 12 new shimmy belts (6 for me and 6 for Mum).

This is the front of one of the belly dance souks in the old souk area (note the Arab costume on the left - which is identical to the one I bought Dan).

And here am I in the belly dance shop where I spent quite some time. I'm sporting a pink shimmy belt in this photo - on the other photo in flickr you can see all the belts out on the table. The man on the right who looks like he's from Albert Square insisted on undoing the knot in this belt with his teeth!!!

Here is a photo from one of the antique shops selling everything that your heart could desire.

This man is filling little bottles up with different coloured Arabian sands. Somehow he manages to draw camels in the sand and write the word 'Dubai'.

Well, I took many more photos but I can't possibly put them all on my blog. I had a great time - relaxing, exciting, adventurous, scary, fun. And at the end of it I was so glad to get home to my beautiful family. Dan, being his usual romantic self, was waiting for me at the airport (all dressed up) with a boquet of flowers. I, on the other hand, had developed a stinking cold on the flight home and looked like I'd been dragged a hedge backwards. I did so much more than I've written about here, but writing this so far has been like a project. Things will come back to me over the next few days and I may come back to write more about it. But all in all it was a great adventure, one that I will never forget, and I am extremely grateful to my friends in Dubai for putting me up, or putting up with me - THANKS GUYS. I had a lovely time and have many precious memories. And let me just say a HUGE thank you to Dan as well for making me go, and for keeping things ticking over here in my absence.