We think we have finally determined the course of our trip. After getting to Dubai, we were convinced that we were traveled out, that we were headed home ASAP. After resting up for a few days, we thought we would continue as planned; even emailed Jan and Pete Janda to finalize our visit with them in Bangladesh. After dinner one night last week we sat down to rehash all we have done and seen. We found that everything kind of mashed together and we had difficulty differentiating where we had seen and did what. That's when we decided that we needed to save the rest of our tour for another time. We will be going home on December 8, after a couple weeks in Thailand.
We are currently at a beautiful resort in Patong Beach on Phuket Island. The water is warm- we swim every day. The weather is hot and muggy- we sweat every day. A hour of the best massage you can ever think of costs about $7.00- we get massages every day. Dear Bluecross, you currently have a max on massages per year- here's my proposal: at $7 an hour, we could get one massage every day for about fifty bucks a week; less than we pay for one hour at home. Can you change my policy to a max of one massage per day? Thank you!
We accidentally arrived here two days before the Festival of Lights. On the full moon night in November, the Thai people launch candles set in ornate floral wreathes onto the water- a river, lake or sea. Locally, they also lauch small hot air balloons with fires in them. They are made of white kitchen-garbage bags with a small frame inside that holds the opening in a circle with three spokes which hold a cup for burning material. The bag is inverted and one person holds it open as another lights the fire. As the balloon's air heats, it gradually lifts off. There are hundreds of them in the air, each giving off a soft red light until it burns out. (Dave, I thought of your ballon project that was so successful until the airport shut it down!)
The night was a fiesta! Street vendors selling great local foods. Group making the floral wreathes to sell; others with balloons for sale. We noticed that a lot of the foods-grilled corn and tropical fruits- are just like Mexico. Families were out together having wonderful parties on the beach. Local school bands and choirs performed. The party lasted well into the morning.
Well, we've got to head into town now; it's nearly time for a massage. See you soon.
Happy travels,
D&G
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Random Thoughts From Dubai
The weather has been fantastic- mid to high 80s since we've been here. Going out at night without a jacket is nice. The last couple days have been foggy in the morning. I still don't know how those ladies can handle it in those black abayas during the day time.
All of the people love their ruler. Unlike some other countries where the leader's picture is everywhere because of policy, these people have Sheikh Mohammed's picture (and Sheikh Rashid's, his late father) on the back windows of their cars, in their homes, even on T-shirts. Both have led their people out of poverty to wealth in the last 50 years. Where other's power and wealth have led to corruption and terror, these guys chose to share their power and new-found oil wealth to improve the people's lives.
Sheikh Mohammed drives his own SUV around town. When he stops at traffic lights, people come out to his car to greet and honor him. He visited Jen & Bruce's school recently for a huge education convention involving leaders of all the Muslim countries. A huge retinue was waiting for him- he pulled into the parking lot, parked his car, hopped out and joined the group.
The Sheikh's license plate is A1, which makes it easier to pick out his white SUV from all the others. The license plates are kind of interesting. The first plates were issued to the emirates with the most important people getting the lowest numbers. You own your plate for life and it apparently is part of your estate. You can sell or gift your plate to someone else. Low numbered plates have sold for a million bucks. Gail just showed me an article about a recent charity auction in which 87 license plates, including 3 2-digit plates, got 28.8 million durham ($7,900,000), the lowest number selling for $770,000.
Yesterday, we walked to the museum, had lunch along the creek side, did some shopping and went for a boat ride. The museum was much more interesting than we expected, with archaeological evidence of civilization in this area going back to 3,ooo BC. There are great, life size dioramas of life in Dubai in the olden days (before wealth), Bedouin life in the desert and the pearl divers. The dioramas of shops include videos in the background of craftspeople making the items offered in the shop. You actually walk among the displays, which causes some real violations of the "Please don't touch the exhibits" signs as tourists clamber to have photos taken with their arms around camel's necks and standing arm-in-arm with Bedouins making their camps. All we could do was shake our heads in dismay at the lady who tried to climb on the camel for that one great shot.
We spent the rest of the day on the creek, really a 15 mile channel that started life as a shallow inlet. It was dredged in the 1950s to help increase trade. It has since been lengthened to make more waterfront inland. It now extends to the Burj Dubai (world's tallest building) to form the lake surrounding the Burj Dubai and the waterfront for the new Marina Commercial Center.
Lunch was a treat for all the senses. The creek-side restaurant bustled with customers from around the world,some in native dress. Birds circled, swooped and screamed overhead, hundreds of boats maneuvered out of one another's ways on the creek and thousands of little fish swam just under the surface, jumping out of the water to make mass escapes from unseen predators, leaving a silvery, splashy meteor's trail on the water - it really was there, you know you saw it, but it happened so quickly and it's gone.
We took a short ride across the creek aboard an abra, a small, open motor taxi that holds about 20 people. On the north side, the trade wharf is filled with tons of trade goods from macaroni to tires to tank trucks which are being loaded on dhows for trade around the middle east. The activity is non-stop as dhows arrive, off-load, on-load and get under way. The crewmen don't have entry rights, so they live aboard the dhows dockside for three or four days until they get under way again. The dhows tie up five and six abreast, hundreds of them along the wharf.
We spent time on our boat ride photographing all the different shapes of buildings along the creek. The sun was setting as we landed and took a short walk through the silk sukh, dealing on some items Gail needed, then headed for home and a relaxed evening.
Happy travels,
Dan & Gail
All of the people love their ruler. Unlike some other countries where the leader's picture is everywhere because of policy, these people have Sheikh Mohammed's picture (and Sheikh Rashid's, his late father) on the back windows of their cars, in their homes, even on T-shirts. Both have led their people out of poverty to wealth in the last 50 years. Where other's power and wealth have led to corruption and terror, these guys chose to share their power and new-found oil wealth to improve the people's lives.
Sheikh Mohammed drives his own SUV around town. When he stops at traffic lights, people come out to his car to greet and honor him. He visited Jen & Bruce's school recently for a huge education convention involving leaders of all the Muslim countries. A huge retinue was waiting for him- he pulled into the parking lot, parked his car, hopped out and joined the group.
The Sheikh's license plate is A1, which makes it easier to pick out his white SUV from all the others. The license plates are kind of interesting. The first plates were issued to the emirates with the most important people getting the lowest numbers. You own your plate for life and it apparently is part of your estate. You can sell or gift your plate to someone else. Low numbered plates have sold for a million bucks. Gail just showed me an article about a recent charity auction in which 87 license plates, including 3 2-digit plates, got 28.8 million durham ($7,900,000), the lowest number selling for $770,000.
Yesterday, we walked to the museum, had lunch along the creek side, did some shopping and went for a boat ride. The museum was much more interesting than we expected, with archaeological evidence of civilization in this area going back to 3,ooo BC. There are great, life size dioramas of life in Dubai in the olden days (before wealth), Bedouin life in the desert and the pearl divers. The dioramas of shops include videos in the background of craftspeople making the items offered in the shop. You actually walk among the displays, which causes some real violations of the "Please don't touch the exhibits" signs as tourists clamber to have photos taken with their arms around camel's necks and standing arm-in-arm with Bedouins making their camps. All we could do was shake our heads in dismay at the lady who tried to climb on the camel for that one great shot.
We spent the rest of the day on the creek, really a 15 mile channel that started life as a shallow inlet. It was dredged in the 1950s to help increase trade. It has since been lengthened to make more waterfront inland. It now extends to the Burj Dubai (world's tallest building) to form the lake surrounding the Burj Dubai and the waterfront for the new Marina Commercial Center.
Lunch was a treat for all the senses. The creek-side restaurant bustled with customers from around the world,some in native dress. Birds circled, swooped and screamed overhead, hundreds of boats maneuvered out of one another's ways on the creek and thousands of little fish swam just under the surface, jumping out of the water to make mass escapes from unseen predators, leaving a silvery, splashy meteor's trail on the water - it really was there, you know you saw it, but it happened so quickly and it's gone.
We took a short ride across the creek aboard an abra, a small, open motor taxi that holds about 20 people. On the north side, the trade wharf is filled with tons of trade goods from macaroni to tires to tank trucks which are being loaded on dhows for trade around the middle east. The activity is non-stop as dhows arrive, off-load, on-load and get under way. The crewmen don't have entry rights, so they live aboard the dhows dockside for three or four days until they get under way again. The dhows tie up five and six abreast, hundreds of them along the wharf.
We spent time on our boat ride photographing all the different shapes of buildings along the creek. The sun was setting as we landed and took a short walk through the silk sukh, dealing on some items Gail needed, then headed for home and a relaxed evening.
Happy travels,
Dan & Gail
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Fantasyla...no, Disneywor.....no, Las Vegas without casi...no...Boy is this place Hard to Describe!
Being in Dubai is easy. Explaining Dubai is difficult. Let's see if I can even explain my confusion.
We've taken the BIG BUS tours in many major cities, the narrator indicating points of interest, museums and historically significant places, giving dates and names. The Dubai BIG BUS tours from mall to mall, indicating which rank each is in "the largest in the world" category, giving names of designer stores and opening times. Along the way, the narration is of each building that is the largest, tallest, most square footage under one roof, largest indoor span, highest indoor fountain, greatest water flow in a fountain, highest indoor ski hill, most designer stores under one roof..... After each is presented, the notice is given that this information is only temporarily true because the (name goes here) will be completed in 2008 (or 2009 or 2010) which will eclipse all other buildings of it's type in the world.
To be fair, we did pass the Dubai Museum, which is supposed to be quite nice, and the Sheikh Saeed Al Maktoum's House, dating from 1896, with live portrayals of life before wealth. There is not much old stuff here because the Emirates suddenly had the money to tear down the old and build new. In Europe we found that the wonderful old cities were usually the result of a community going broke and never recovering enough to modernize. It's understandable, if you had lived you life in 120 degrees in a tent, palm-frond or coral-rock walled home with no insulation, you would jump at the chance to tear it down and put up the latest style with unlimited A/C if you could afford it.
We are staying with our Daughter, Jennifer, and Son-In-Law, Bruce, at their apartment in downtown Dubai. It is a large city, 1.2 million, with traffic problems and growing like mad. There is something under construction everywhere you look. We had read that 20% of the world's construction cranes are in Dubai-I just counted 49 from Jen and Bruce's balcony and the sun is in my eye's looking west, so I may have missed a few. Every day the street system changes as new construction gets under way and they are putting in a subway system, so miles of streets are rerouted for that. Even the newest GoogleEarth pictures are out of date.
Now some good stuff. Entry to Dubai was the easiest of any place we've been. You don't need a visa and customs involved "Welcome to Dubai!" Everyone speaks English and all road signs are in English and Arabic. The city is very clean. The taxis are very new and clean. All drivers know where they are going-which is amazing for two very strange reasons. One is the streets are not known by their names. The Emirates have a custom of putting like businesses together, so you have an area where all the banks or all the computer stores or all the car dealerships are side by side and the street becomes known as Bank Street, Computer Street or Car Dealer Street. For instance, the street I'm looking at right now is really "Sheikh Kalifa Bin Zayed Street, but because the World Trade Center is located on it a few miles away, it is known as "Trade Center Street."
The even stranger reason is-THERE IS NO ADDRESS SYSTEM IN DUBAI! The reason still hasn't been explained fully; it has to do with such fast growth and there never having to be a system when the town was small and everyone knew each other. To get around you have to know landmarks. For example, when returning to our apartment, we tell the taxi driver, in stages, depending on how much he already knows: The Centrepoint Apartments (almost all drivers know it)-off Trade Center Road (it's on Kuwait Street, but no one knows that name)-by the new Spinney's (a fairly big food store nearby, but you have to say the "new" Spinney's because there are others)-near Bur Juman (a very upscale mall which everyone knows)-in Al Mankhool (our neighborhood). We haven't gotten lost yet!
We'll continue this later. We've got to get ready for our dinner cruise tonight. Happy travels!
Dan & Gail
We've taken the BIG BUS tours in many major cities, the narrator indicating points of interest, museums and historically significant places, giving dates and names. The Dubai BIG BUS tours from mall to mall, indicating which rank each is in "the largest in the world" category, giving names of designer stores and opening times. Along the way, the narration is of each building that is the largest, tallest, most square footage under one roof, largest indoor span, highest indoor fountain, greatest water flow in a fountain, highest indoor ski hill, most designer stores under one roof..... After each is presented, the notice is given that this information is only temporarily true because the (name goes here) will be completed in 2008 (or 2009 or 2010) which will eclipse all other buildings of it's type in the world.
To be fair, we did pass the Dubai Museum, which is supposed to be quite nice, and the Sheikh Saeed Al Maktoum's House, dating from 1896, with live portrayals of life before wealth. There is not much old stuff here because the Emirates suddenly had the money to tear down the old and build new. In Europe we found that the wonderful old cities were usually the result of a community going broke and never recovering enough to modernize. It's understandable, if you had lived you life in 120 degrees in a tent, palm-frond or coral-rock walled home with no insulation, you would jump at the chance to tear it down and put up the latest style with unlimited A/C if you could afford it.
We are staying with our Daughter, Jennifer, and Son-In-Law, Bruce, at their apartment in downtown Dubai. It is a large city, 1.2 million, with traffic problems and growing like mad. There is something under construction everywhere you look. We had read that 20% of the world's construction cranes are in Dubai-I just counted 49 from Jen and Bruce's balcony and the sun is in my eye's looking west, so I may have missed a few. Every day the street system changes as new construction gets under way and they are putting in a subway system, so miles of streets are rerouted for that. Even the newest GoogleEarth pictures are out of date.
Now some good stuff. Entry to Dubai was the easiest of any place we've been. You don't need a visa and customs involved "Welcome to Dubai!" Everyone speaks English and all road signs are in English and Arabic. The city is very clean. The taxis are very new and clean. All drivers know where they are going-which is amazing for two very strange reasons. One is the streets are not known by their names. The Emirates have a custom of putting like businesses together, so you have an area where all the banks or all the computer stores or all the car dealerships are side by side and the street becomes known as Bank Street, Computer Street or Car Dealer Street. For instance, the street I'm looking at right now is really "Sheikh Kalifa Bin Zayed Street, but because the World Trade Center is located on it a few miles away, it is known as "Trade Center Street."
The even stranger reason is-THERE IS NO ADDRESS SYSTEM IN DUBAI! The reason still hasn't been explained fully; it has to do with such fast growth and there never having to be a system when the town was small and everyone knew each other. To get around you have to know landmarks. For example, when returning to our apartment, we tell the taxi driver, in stages, depending on how much he already knows: The Centrepoint Apartments (almost all drivers know it)-off Trade Center Road (it's on Kuwait Street, but no one knows that name)-by the new Spinney's (a fairly big food store nearby, but you have to say the "new" Spinney's because there are others)-near Bur Juman (a very upscale mall which everyone knows)-in Al Mankhool (our neighborhood). We haven't gotten lost yet!
We'll continue this later. We've got to get ready for our dinner cruise tonight. Happy travels!
Dan & Gail
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