Delirious in Dubai
I am officially in love!
Dubai is everything I imagined and more. It's new and shiney with building projects everywhere you look, and yet its full of the mysticsm and tradition of an Arabic country.
Our hotel sits just over the entrance to the gold souk (market) and we haven't tired of watching the mysterious black cloaked ladies or regal men in their white robes and 'teatowel' headwear wafting by. We feel like we're looking down into the set of a foreign movie.
When the prayer call is broadcast (5 times each day) its the most haunting sound that seems to echo endlessly around the streets - there's nearly a mosque on every corner.
Petra is fascinated by the whole religion topic (we still have Baby Jesus travelling with us) she watched and copied people in the temples and wats in Asia, she has been busy making her doll a prayer mat here and she knows that the arrow on our hotel walls point to mecca. She even made herself a paper loud hailer which I was horrified to see her hanging over the balcony with one day yelling 'prayer time' at the passing popluation below. Thank goodness no-one seemed to notice or take offence.
It took us a few days here to find our feet. The heat is staggering, even the 10 weeks in Asia didn't prepare us for this - it was 47 degress yesterday, and still 39 degrees at 9 pm. We can only cope with 10 mins max outside walking before lurching to some air conditioned shopping mall to recover (we've been to six different malls to date). A day trip to the beach was disastrous as there was nowhere to hide from the heat and even the sea wasn't cool enough to provide relief.
Budgetwise we're not doing too well. We doubled our daily Asian allowance to 200 USD but even that is barely covering the basics. A quite nice hotel room in Asia was costing $35 - $40 and meals easily came in under $10. Here our hotel alone is $100 USD and that's only a 2 star.
The price of clothing etc here is on a par to NZ, so we're really glad that we did the bulk of our shopping in Bangkok. We left Auckland with 28 kgs of luggage, and left Bangkok with a whopping 65 kgs - even then we had posted a 6.5 kg parcel to London from Vietnam of surplus items. We have splashed out here though both making purchases at the gold souk, and allowing the children to choose some new toys each.
We made a lot of effort in Asia trying to look like real backpackers and now we're desperately trying not to look like them at all. The women here are really glamorous (even the cloaked ones have heavily made up eyes) with striking features and some of the men are just gorgeous! I've dug my makeup kit up from the bottom of our pack (my one luxury item?!?) and we've ditched the last of our dusty worn out clothes. At least our English family won't disown us at Heathrow airport now when we arrive :-)
Unfortunately our laptop has given up on us. After Mark carefully transporting it with us every single day of our journey so far it now refuses to even boot up. Luckily we had a feeling things weren't right with it and managed to burn all our photos onto disc just minutes before it failed. Here's hoping that international warranties really are international.
I also made the mistake of leaving my cellphone in the back seat of a taxi. It wouldn't have been the end of the world if we hadn't used it as the contact number on Mark's cv (he has applied for 7 seven jobs and registereed with half dozen agencies). Luckily, the taxi driver answered my phone when we called it and with the help of bewildered bystanders to interpret we arranged a drop off. We're still counting lucky stars that we have the phone back.
We spent a day at Wild Wadi the famous water park here. It was very expensive but soooo worth it. The park is amazing and very well planned as you can come straight off one ride and start the next without even getting off your blow up tube. It was odd to see a number of women swimming fully dressed in normal clothes and others in full black robe get up. Most of the rides propel you up to the top of a slide with hugh jets of water, and the signs warning that the ride may remove swim wear are not joking. At times I wasn't sure what I should be holding onto my tube, my togs or Petra. And I'm not certain if the lone Arab man at the bottom of the Jumeriah Scariah slide was disappointed or relieved that I sorted out my wedgey before emerging from the water :-)
Tonight is our last night here and we are taking an evening safari which involves a trip out to the desert, a camel ride, some belly dancing and traditional food. Shoud be fun!! We head off to England in the morning and are really looking forward to some cooler weather, the kids practically cheered when we saw on the BBC World weather report that its raining in London :-)
Camel riding in the Dubai desert
Mark and the children on Safari
Plans from here are a bit loose at the mo, we have family to visit in London, Leceister, Bristol and Waterford, Ireland. Then we need to sort out where we would like to settle if nothing comes of the job applications in Dubai. Hopefully we'll have some concrete plans before the school year starts in September.
Thanks to everyone who has given feedback about the blog its great to know that people are interested in our adventures - and that maybe my ramblings aren't boring afterall :-)
I also tried unsuccessfully to load some photos back in Bangkok - so will try again from the UK.
Bye for now
Hayls
x
Dubai is everything I imagined and more. It's new and shiney with building projects everywhere you look, and yet its full of the mysticsm and tradition of an Arabic country.
Our hotel sits just over the entrance to the gold souk (market) and we haven't tired of watching the mysterious black cloaked ladies or regal men in their white robes and 'teatowel' headwear wafting by. We feel like we're looking down into the set of a foreign movie.
When the prayer call is broadcast (5 times each day) its the most haunting sound that seems to echo endlessly around the streets - there's nearly a mosque on every corner.
Petra is fascinated by the whole religion topic (we still have Baby Jesus travelling with us) she watched and copied people in the temples and wats in Asia, she has been busy making her doll a prayer mat here and she knows that the arrow on our hotel walls point to mecca. She even made herself a paper loud hailer which I was horrified to see her hanging over the balcony with one day yelling 'prayer time' at the passing popluation below. Thank goodness no-one seemed to notice or take offence.
It took us a few days here to find our feet. The heat is staggering, even the 10 weeks in Asia didn't prepare us for this - it was 47 degress yesterday, and still 39 degrees at 9 pm. We can only cope with 10 mins max outside walking before lurching to some air conditioned shopping mall to recover (we've been to six different malls to date). A day trip to the beach was disastrous as there was nowhere to hide from the heat and even the sea wasn't cool enough to provide relief.
Budgetwise we're not doing too well. We doubled our daily Asian allowance to 200 USD but even that is barely covering the basics. A quite nice hotel room in Asia was costing $35 - $40 and meals easily came in under $10. Here our hotel alone is $100 USD and that's only a 2 star.
The price of clothing etc here is on a par to NZ, so we're really glad that we did the bulk of our shopping in Bangkok. We left Auckland with 28 kgs of luggage, and left Bangkok with a whopping 65 kgs - even then we had posted a 6.5 kg parcel to London from Vietnam of surplus items. We have splashed out here though both making purchases at the gold souk, and allowing the children to choose some new toys each.
We made a lot of effort in Asia trying to look like real backpackers and now we're desperately trying not to look like them at all. The women here are really glamorous (even the cloaked ones have heavily made up eyes) with striking features and some of the men are just gorgeous! I've dug my makeup kit up from the bottom of our pack (my one luxury item?!?) and we've ditched the last of our dusty worn out clothes. At least our English family won't disown us at Heathrow airport now when we arrive :-)Unfortunately our laptop has given up on us. After Mark carefully transporting it with us every single day of our journey so far it now refuses to even boot up. Luckily we had a feeling things weren't right with it and managed to burn all our photos onto disc just minutes before it failed. Here's hoping that international warranties really are international.
I also made the mistake of leaving my cellphone in the back seat of a taxi. It wouldn't have been the end of the world if we hadn't used it as the contact number on Mark's cv (he has applied for 7 seven jobs and registereed with half dozen agencies). Luckily, the taxi driver answered my phone when we called it and with the help of bewildered bystanders to interpret we arranged a drop off. We're still counting lucky stars that we have the phone back.
We spent a day at Wild Wadi the famous water park here. It was very expensive but soooo worth it. The park is amazing and very well planned as you can come straight off one ride and start the next without even getting off your blow up tube. It was odd to see a number of women swimming fully dressed in normal clothes and others in full black robe get up. Most of the rides propel you up to the top of a slide with hugh jets of water, and the signs warning that the ride may remove swim wear are not joking. At times I wasn't sure what I should be holding onto my tube, my togs or Petra. And I'm not certain if the lone Arab man at the bottom of the Jumeriah Scariah slide was disappointed or relieved that I sorted out my wedgey before emerging from the water :-)
Tonight is our last night here and we are taking an evening safari which involves a trip out to the desert, a camel ride, some belly dancing and traditional food. Shoud be fun!! We head off to England in the morning and are really looking forward to some cooler weather, the kids practically cheered when we saw on the BBC World weather report that its raining in London :-)
Camel riding in the Dubai desert
Mark and the children on Safari
Plans from here are a bit loose at the mo, we have family to visit in London, Leceister, Bristol and Waterford, Ireland. Then we need to sort out where we would like to settle if nothing comes of the job applications in Dubai. Hopefully we'll have some concrete plans before the school year starts in September.
Thanks to everyone who has given feedback about the blog its great to know that people are interested in our adventures - and that maybe my ramblings aren't boring afterall :-)
I also tried unsuccessfully to load some photos back in Bangkok - so will try again from the UK.
Bye for now
Hayls
x
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Sarah Akroyd and family
smakroyd@yahoo.com