2 posts tagged “dubai”
Today we got up early and got to the hotel restaurant at around 9:00am for our buffet breakfast. The jet lag was catching up on me and I just felt a bit slow. Luckily, there is nothing fresh bread and a few cups of extremely good coffee can't fix.
The first stop of the day is to visit yet another huge shopping mall called Ibn Battuta Mall. Ibn Battuta was a famous traveller in the Arabic world and he visited many countries even before the air travel era. This shopping mall is divided into six sections and each section has its own theme: China, India, Persia, Egypt, Tunisia and Andalusia, representing the major countries Ibn visited. It's so big we spent hours in it and still couldn't see everything in it. All I can say is that our luggages got a lot heavier after this visit.
You haven't really visited Dubai if you haven't seen the world famous Burj Al Arab hotel. We saw a brochure about a tour of Burj Al Arab in our hotel and we thought "Who needs a tour guide in a hotel? We could just check it out ourself and save money." So we took a cab and head straight to Burj Al Arab. The first thing the cab driver asked us was if we were staying there. We said no but we were going to have afternoon tea in one of its restaurants (we knew that you can't get in there unless you are prepared to spend some money and the cheapest way to do it is to get a cup of coffee). Burj Al Arab is built on an artificial island that is 280 meters out from the beach and is connected to the mainland with a private bridge. We made to the bridge on the mainland side and was stopped by a big, military-grade gate and a big, mean-looking security guard (seriously, he was the biggest man I saw in Dubai). He politely asked if we were guests in the hotel. We said no but we want to have afternoon tea in the hotel. Instead of letting us through, the guard told us that we would be welcomed to the hotel AFTER we make a reservation with the restaurant. He then turned to our driver and told him to make a an u-turn in a rather harsh tone.
Our driver wasn't very happy with that and reminded us that he did ask us if we were guests of the hotel. Well, his english wasn't very good and I didn't really understand what he was asking. BTW, we are just tourists and tourists do stupid things. He then explained to us that it could cost us thousand of dollars just to eat there. Anyway, our good driver took us to a good photo spot so that we could take some pictures with Burj Al Arab in the background.
At night we went to a desert safari tour. A 4WD picked us up from our hotel and drove us to the desert. The first thing we did is to go for an Arabian roller coaster ride known as dune bashing (desert driving) that would bring shriek and laugh with excitement as the car goes up and down the dunes. Well, 5 minutes into the bashing, our 4WD got stuck on top of a sand dune (imagine a 4WD balances on top of a pyramid without wheel touching any surface) and need to wait for another 4WD to rescue us. As we continued with our bashing, the driver turned on the radio and I thought he just wanted some music. It turned out he was waiting for the evening prayer on the radio. He started to eat an apple with one hand and still driving like crazy in the desert with another as soon as he heard the prayer on the radio. We made a brief stop in the middle of the desert to let some members in the tour to make some hilarious attempts on sandboarding (sliding down a sand dune with a snowboard). The sky was already completely dark when we drove back to our desert camp and it is scary to be in the desert at night. You could easily get disoriented and you could hit an unclimbable sand dune without knowing until it is too late. We eventually got out of the desert by following the track left by other 4WDs.
We went to the desert camp and did some camel ride there. Since May and I already tried this in China and we weren't too excited about this (the long-furred camel in China was much more comfortable to ride). We later played dress-up with the traditional Arabian clothes. We even tried apple-flavored Hookah. Was it good? Let's just say that I am not going to be hooked by this thing anytime soon. The tour ended with a BBQ dinner under the stars in the middle of the desert.
We got back to the hotel at about 10pm and it was obviously too early to go to bed, we ventured out of the hotel and looked for a supermarket the hotel staff told us about earlier. We found the supermarket and this place sells things from absolutely every country: Australian steak, Japanese seafood, American frozen food, Indian curry....the list goes on and on. Its instant noodle section has so many types of instant noodles, you will have to go to Japan if you want to see more variety. I think this supermarket is purposely opened for foreigners who miss their own home food.
Time to go to bed and get ready to fly out to London tomorrow.
Our Emirate flight arrived Dubai International Airport this morning at 5:30am. The flight was good even thought I could hardly sleep due to the lack of leg room. This is the first time we flew with Emirate and we must say that we are very impressed by their service. Once you tried their interactive in-flight entertainment system, you will know what I mean.
We got to Al Murooj Rotana Hotel by the airport-transfer car, it wasn't a limo, but at least it was a spacious and comfortable car. Compare to what we will have to do when we arrive London (get to hotel all by bus and underground), this is easy ride. Since we are members of the exclusive Rotana Club (it just means we paid more), we didn't have to queue up and check in at the lobby. We went straight to 14-floor club lounge to enjoy the view there and let the staff handle the paper work for us. While the staff getting our rooms ready, we went to the restaurant to enjoy our 5-star buffet breakfast. It was much better than the average continental breakfast. There were more than 20 choices just on dry fruits and nuts. A chef was there to make waffle and egg in any style we want. The trip is starting well.
Next stop is one of the biggest shopping mall in Dubai, Mall of the Emirates. It isn't only big (6.5 million sq ft), it even has an indoor ski slope inside. The slope was closed when we were there (we were too early), we may go back there later). After spending a couple a hours in MOE, we took a taxi to go to Souk Madinat Jumeirah, an arabian themed shopping mall. It was a bit quiet but still enjoyable.
Everyone got hungry at around the local lunch time (it is amazing how fast we adopt the new time zone). Most restaurants in the shopping mall were closed due to Ramadan. Only restaurants that mainly serve foreigners remains open in the afternoon. We dragged our hungry bodies into a resort called Al Qasr. We had on idea how big and beautiful this hotel was when we got in through on of its back entries. Its impressive palace-like architecture was like straight out of Hollywood movie sets. This resort is so big you need to take a water taxi to go from your room to one of its restaurants for dinner. I think this resort was featured in one of the TVB travel shows. We had buffet lunch (yes, second buffet today, wondering what we should have for dinner) in the Arboretum restaurant in the resort. The food was mainly arabian and was delicious. As we left the resort through the front gate this time, we finally realise how big, impressive and secure this place is, we had to get through two boom gates with security guard just to left the complex. Don't know why we could get in so easily earlier.
We then went to the Gold Souk and Spice Souk. The Gold Souk is really a street full of gold and jewellery shops. The gold price of the day is displayed on a giant LCD screen so no one gets ribbed off. I have never seen so much gold in one place. You have to see those thick golden belt and wearable vest made from gold to believe it. Another interesting thing about the Gold Souk is the presence of police. There are police cars everywhere and they patrol the street all the time. I am not exaggerating when I say we had one police car drove pass us every 5 minutes.
We took a primitive wooden sampan (yeah, we were fearless) with the local to cross the river and got to a Carrefour super-big supermarket. By now, I was so thirsty. Remeber this is Ramadan and we are not allowed to eat or drink in public until after sunset. We got to the supermarket and 5:55pm and when the rest of the group went inside the supermarket to do some shopping, I couldn't fight the thirst anymore and went to a pizza shop to buy a bottle of water. As the owner took the money from me, he told me that I wasn't allowed to drink it yet, not until 6:15pm. I gave the water back to him and just sit outside the shop and wait for what must have been the longest 20 minutes in my life. Right at 6:15pm, we heard the prayer from loudspeakers around the city and that's the signal that we could start eating and drinking. I finished half the bottle of water in less than 15 seconds. Water had never tasted so good.
We went back to the Club Rotana lounge in our hotel and enjoy the free pre-dinner cocktail and finger food. We had so much we didn't need to have dinner anymore. We finally wrapped up the day by having moon cake (today is the Mid-Autumn Festival) in the patio of Andy's room (did I mention that our rooms have patio?). By now, I haven't slept for almost 2 days and can't wait to hit the bed.
The trip started well.
