Day 165 - Thursday, July 5
When looking at flights to Europe, I realized I could stop in Dubai for virtually the same price as going straight to Europe, so I ended up with 48 hours to check out Dubai. On the way to Dubai, I had a layover in Bombay (officially Mumbai). Do I get to count that as another country visited? I was definitely sad that I wasn't able to make it to India on this trip (or neighboring Nepal, both of which were part of the initial plan and among the places I was most looking forward to), but I have every intention of making it back at some point as everyone I've spoken to on this trip that has been to India has absolutely loved it.
In addition, I recently finished reading
Shantaram, which is a good book and quite popular amongst the backpacker crowd (though it could be a couple hundred pages shorter and still be just as good. As it happens, that is also my opinion of the
Game of Thrones series. I read all 4000+ pages of the first 5 books in that series before picking up
Shantaram. I think if I had it to do over again, I'd probably forgo the books and just watch the HBO series). Anyway, back to
Shantaram, it's a book about an Australian fugitive who ends up living in Bombay for a while and really paints a vivid picture of Bombay, which made me want to visit India even more. The book is set in the 80's and describes the poverty-ridden slums that surround the skyscrapers throughout the city. I was somewhat shocked to see (from my seat on the plane) that some 30 years later, the city still appears to be filled with ramshackle slums of the very sort described in the book.
I arrived in Dubai at about 9pm and then had to wait in line at immigration for about 2 hours as they did retinal scans on each incoming person. Really?! Retinal scans?! When I got there, I took the metro 3 stops to where my hotel was. As I got off the metro, I felt my back pocket for my passport and it wasn't there. That's weird; I thought I had put it there. So then I checked all my other pockets, and then the pocket of my bookbag that I sometimes put it in - none of those places either. Not good! At that point, I was beyond worried and started to have a little panic attack, mostly because I was supposed to be leaving UAE in less than 48 hours to meet up with my friend Meredith in Copenhagen, and a lost passport would really screw things up. So then I emptied everything out of my bag, checked all the pockets of my other bag, and was doing so in a rather frantic matter in the middle of the UAE metro as a few others stared at me. Finally I accepted the very unfortunate fact that I didn't have my passport. I guess it was only a matter of time before I lost it.
So I got back on the metro to head back to the airport hoping desperately that I could find it there by retracing my steps. As I walked up to the kiosk where I bought my metro ticket, I saw a booklet sitting on top. Whew, what a relief! When I got closer, however, I realized it wasn't my passport - only trash someone had cruelly left up there to tease me. That someone may or may not have been me. I asked the metro attendant if anyone had turned in a passport, and again no luck.
I headed back to the airport and retraced my steps back to the currency converter where I´d gotten a few UAE Dirhams for the metro, which I decided was where I had to have left it, but again, no passport there either. When I asked the guy at the desk if anyone had turned one in, he said that someone had found one on the floor and given it to the police. HALLELUJAH! The police officer had my passport and after a long process he finally handed it over. From the way he kept delaying, I thought maybe I was supposed to pay him a bribe or something but didn't want to offend him if that wasn't the case, so I just waited patiently. Luckily no retinal scan was needed to reclaim it.
Day 166 - Friday, July 6
The high temperature in Dubai on Friday was a nice cool 110 degrees F - and here I thought it was hot in SE asia with temps in the 90's. The weekend is observed on Friday and Saturday in most of the UAE; so between the heat and it being a weekend, the streets were virtually empty and many shops and such were closed. About the only place I found any people was at the air-conditioned
Dubai Mall (the largest in the world) and later, at the beach.
The mall is located next to the tallest building in the world (2,700+ ft) - the
Burj Khalifa, which is really an incredible sight:
Dubai is pretty spread out, and with the heat, walking wasn't much of an option, so I saw a lot of the city via public buses, but didn't get many pictures from the bus. I checked out the Palm, which is probably best appreciated from an aerial viewpoint:
And the
Burj Al Arab - a self-proclaimed 7-star hotel
And the Jumeirah Mosque, one of very many throughout the city
Then I checked out the sunset at the beach.
I think this picture of the beach with the skyline in the background gives a good perspective of just how crazy-tall the Burj Khalifa is:
After the beach, I headed back to the Dubai Mall, and caught the fountain show that rivals that of the Belaggio in Vegas:
Dubai actually reminded me a lot of Vegas with the insufferable heat that lasted well past midnight, and all the giant ostentatious buildings surrounded by desert. After the fountain show that ended a few minutes before 11, I went back into the mall to get some food, and I was overwhelmed by how crowded the giant mall was at 11pm at night.
Here's one of just a small portion the food court where people were fighting over places to sit as if they were the last tickle-me-elmo at a black friday sale (circa 1996).
Day 167 - Saturday, July 7
After spending Friday checking out "new" Dubai, Saturday I checked out "old" Dubai, including the Gold Souk:
The highlight of Saturday, was lunch. I was walking by a restaurant that seemed pretty busy (though apparently devoid of tourists), but I couldn't tell much from the name of the place, so I stopped and tried to figure out what kind of food they had and what the cost was. Before I could do so, I was beckoned in by a very friendly man who was hard to say no to. For the first time on my trip, I was provided with a menu that appeared to include English translations, yet I still couldn't make heads or tails of it.
The mutton and chicken biryani were about the only thing on the whole menu that I recognized. When I inquired, the guy started speaking in what I assume he thought was English, but about the only word I understood was "onion," and I wasn't even too sure about that. So I said, "yes, okay, the one with onion." A few minutes later, I was served the following:
And it...was...awesome. I think it was one of the "lamp" dishes, which as I suspected initially, was simply a misspelling of "lamb." It wasn't until I saw a business card as I leaving that I discovered that the restaurant served food from Yemen and the Gulf.
I wandered around a little bit more after lunch, and took a few photos across the "creek" that borders old Dubai.
That night I took a redeye through Bahrain to Copenhagen to meet up with Mere and start my adventures through Europe.
tiff was saying just the other week that you are always losing things. mere promises there is more to come in our next installments!
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