There’s not much to tell about Dubai…

I went there for a day…

My flight from New Zealand went from Auckland to Australia to Doha, Qatar to Dubai…

I arrived in Dubai around 10am, and my next flight wasn’t until around midnight… so I had all day to wander around…

Oh, ya, and by the way, Qatar, UAE… it really IS straight up desert… In my view from the sky, it reminded me of that one place in Star Wars that’s really deserty.

So, anyway, I found a coupon for a boat tour in a map I found, so I took a taxi to the city, wandered around a bit, and then hopped on the boat.

The boat tour was pretty nice. I met several Americans who work for a private airline and had a few days in Dubai… They were nice, and I hadn’t seen Americans the entire trip so far… but Americans can also be quite obnoxious to travel with… We have this air about us sometimes, and these people had that air… Speaking loudly. Laughing obnoxiously. Talking about other countries as if they knew everything about them and everything about how we are better. The particular guy I was talking to (and enjoyed talking to for the most part –> until we started talking about Russia)… We were listing countries we’ve visited. He said he’d never been to Russia. I said I’d studied there for a while… Somehow he started ‘diagnosing’ the problems of Russia and complaining of the corruption of which he’d heard. It’s true Russia has a lot of corruption. But if you want to talk so negatively about another place, you can do it in the privacy of your own dinner table, perhaps with the in-laws, or perhaps with a beer and the boys; however, you don’t speak so blatantly derogatorily of another culture WHICH YOU ACTUALLY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT when you’re 1. in another country. 2. on a tourist boat surrounded by other peoples and cultures 3. Russian speakers are sitting in the seats behind you.

I just assured him that Russia is often misunderstood by the west, though there are many very legitimate problems, and that there are quite many wonders there to be relished, and that the culture is something you have to grow to understand before you can fairly judge it… eventually he shut up.

Oh, and they were also making crude jokes — one lady (they were all in their 40s or older by the way) made a very loud joke relating the minaret of a mosque to a penis. I was embarrassed to even be sitting near them at that point. How incredibly disrespectful. Again, this is not your own country. And you’ve successfully insulted someone’s religion in a quite vulgar way. If you want to be an ignorant jerk, please stay in your hotel room…

And then we wonder why the rest of the world hates us…

Anyway, here’s some pictures from the boat ride.

 I had assumed that you could get around easily by foot and public transport like most other places in the world. But I was terribly wrong… Apparently you need a car in Dubai. And also, my luck, the metro was closed — apparently Friday is sort of the weekend over there, so they close some stuff… a LOT of stores were closed as well..

I walked for at least 45 minutes before I found lunch…

The restaurant I had stumbled across served camel burgers. Awesome. It was actually quite good. And then, they also served me a fresh squeezed lemon mint juice.

After lunch, I walked a bit more… I wanted to make it to the beach so I could walk along the coast and eventually see the cool Burj Al Arab hotel and perhaps watch the coming sunset with that in view…

But my feet were tired, and it was way farther than it looked on the map…

I think I was close, but I started noticing I was not only the only white person, but also the only female at this point. I felt completely safe in Dubai. Even at this point, I didn’t feel threatened in any way. But, just for common sense’s sake, I figured that me, alone, white, female, long and lighter-than-local-color hair, and “weak looking” (at least according to a previous student’s parent – i won’t get started on that story), without anyone in the world knowing where I was at that moment…. probably wasn’t the greatest idea.

And also my feet were killing me.

So, I bitterly hunted down a cab. I had been so close. So close, yet at the same time, so far. And I just headed back to the airport, even though I still had another 5 hours or so until my flight.

Oh, and also… in Dubai, they have women only cabs. Women aren’t required to take them. But I don’t think men can take them. They cost more anyway…

From the airport, I got in the taxi line, and they said, “Just you? Ok, you should go women’s cab” and pointed toward the woman and her cab…

At first, I felt all feministic about it, like “I can take a man’s cab if I want to”. But, in complete honesty, it was quite nice. I didn’t feel awkward making conversation with my cab driver… she was from Sri Lanka. And I would imagine this system cuts down on creepers a great deal. So that’s nice. 🙂

So, there you have it. Dubai. Very commercial. Very hot. Very necessary to get around by car or taxi.