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