Who's living in all these high rises?

This was a long day. It started out with an amazing breakfast buffet in the hotel. Since our desert safari was cancelled, we had time to enjoy a slower morning. The buffet was very eclectic and varied. With Dubai being an islamic state, there is no pork on offer, so instead of pork bacon, you get veal bacon. Instead of pork sausage, you get chicken sausage. Apparently, in supermarkets there are separate "pork rooms" where westerners can buy that stuff that are isolated from the "genpop" of the rest of the meats.

Fun fact: our room has an arrow on the ceiling that points to Mecca so Muslim guests know which direction to face when it's time to pray. In that same vein, our plane yesterday had a graphic that would pop up showing where Mecca was in relation to the plane's nose.

We hopped in a cab for a ride out to the "Madinat Jumeirah." Holy Crap! Dubai is huge; way bigger than I expected. Even more amazing than how big it is (and it seems to be all situated along one main highway that parallels the coast) is how new it is. Our cabbie allowed as how most of the city is less than 15 years old. They're building like crazy; and we're not talking about small buildings, either. These are 60+ story skyscrapers they're throwing up. I can't even count how many construction cranes there are. The architecture is stunning. Every architecture school in the world should have an extension office here and offer semester fellowships for students wanting to go into commercial building design. The emir has a very high opinion of himself because his face is plastered on posters all over. I wonder how many "takes" it took for him to get his paternal gaze just right?

Madinat Jumeirah is pretty cool. It's a modern take on the "souk" with a little Venice, Italy thrown in in the form of canals that work their way across the property. There are a couple very nice hotels here; tons of small shops (no department stores); loads of restaurants; and even more tourists. However, at its heart, this is really just a mall, and those are the same wherever in the world you are. I chuckled seeing the Cinnabon stand. In fact, on the drive out from our hotel, I even spotted an Olive Garden (no Carrabba's?). Angela and Michele found a place to get some Henna, so they thumbed through the books of designs and found some. I was amazed that the woman in the shop free-handed their tattoos. No stencils for her.

Our appointment for the Burj Khalifa was for 2:30, so we hopped in another cab for the Dubai Mall (the largest in the world, evidently). It was definitely huge, no doubt. But, just a mall, with a food court, a Gap, Pottery Barn, Chili's (yes, a Chili's, with a sign in Arabic), an ice rink the size of a hockey rink, movies, etc. We found the Burj Khalifa office, picked up our tickets, and I had a Fatburger while we waited for our appointed time.

It's so tall. We were barely half way to the top (at the 124th floor) and we towered over every other building in site. The elevator only took a minute to get to the 124th floor. The view was amazing, but a little restricted thanks to all of the dust hanging in the air. The observation deck is 360 degrees, with an outdoor section that looks back towards Dubai Creek and the "old town." There were so many people up there; so much noise; so much chaos with little kids running around and their parents chasing them. It wasn't long before I was ready to get out of there.

It was at this point that Michele hit the wall and decided to take a cab back to the hotel for the rest of the day, while Angela and I decided to get on the metro and head out to the "Palm" to try to get a view of the Burj al Arab looking back at the building from the sea. It was comical how far we had to walk to get to the metro station; at least a mile down this very long jetway like tunnel. Long story short, by the time we got to the monorail that would take us to the Palm from the Dubai marina, it was getting dark and our trip out there was completely wasted. I got a couple of the "stink eye" looks from Angela because she wanted to hit the "Deira" neighborhood for the gold and spice souks and it was already almost 7 and it was going to take at least 45 minutes to get there and we hadn't had dinner yet.

It was in the Deira neighborhood that we got to experience a little of the "real" Dubai. It was a little uncomfortable at times, I must say. We got a number of odd looks since there were hardly any women on the street besides Angela (at least until we got to the gold souk). We were struck by all of the "trading companies" in this neighborhood buying and selling all manner of goods from spices to plastic bowls to blank baseball hats (like you would buy and put your own logo on) to kitchen utensils to tee shirts. You name it and they were "trading" it.

It was on our walk to the gold souk that we heard our first call to prayer from the Muezzins. They blare it out from loudspeakers mounted to the minarets of the mosques so you can't miss it if you're outside. The gold souk was out of control. I can't even describe it. There were so many gold vendors it made the Ponte Vecchio look tiny. I was accosted numerous times by guys wanting to sell me knockoff watches and handbags and every 20 feet was a board with the spot price of gold.

We were starving. There were no restaurants or shawarma stands to be found (despite our guidebook's assurances that there would be plenty to choose from), so we found guy in one of these "trading companies" that told us to go down the street to a Persian restaurant. It was a hole in the wall, but those are usually the best places. This was no different. The food was amazing: saffron rice with chicken, beef, and matan (I think "mutton") kebobs. So much food we couldn't eat it all. More weird looks from the other patrons because Angela was the only woman in this 8 seat restaurant, but the staff were very friendly, and the dinner wound up costing about $25 all in.

So these trading companies get their goods to buy and sell from these wooden cargo boats/ships called dhows that ply the Arabian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean all the way to Malaysia and Thailand. These boats looked so rickety, I can't believe they survive the open ocean. We saw the main "dhow wharf" while waiting for a cab and there were at least 100 of these dhows tied up flotilla style.

Back in the hotel now. Michele didn't really do anything this afternoon, but she missed all the cool stuff in Deira. Her loss. We have two flights tomorrow to get to Arusha: from here to Dar es Salaam and from Dar to Kilimanjaro where we should be met by a Thomson rep to take us to the River Trees hotel. We didn't spend too much time in Dubai and I would have liked to have had another day to explore the Dubai Marina area or the Bur Dubai neighborhood across the Dubai Creek from Deira.

It's hard to put a label on Dubai. It's not a very old place, but the culture here is very old, bordering on ancient. You can see some of that in Deira. It's a huge city that's expanding at a breakneck pace. So fast that I can't imagine that all of these new buildings are even partially full. Like they're all being built on spec; and by the same development company.