Much of my time spent in Dubai was filled with shopping and
meeting some old friends, relaxing out by the pool but I did manage to see a
few sights and experience some of the local attractions.
As mentioned previously I went atop the Burj Khalifa, the
tallest building, man-made structure and freestanding structure in the
world. I ascended to the 124th
of the 140 floors in the building which stood at about 830m tall. The elevator itself was considered the
fastest in the world moving at 10m per second.
The second thing I did was to sign up for the desert safari,
a tourist trap I’m sure but, being from Canada, the desert is fairly new thing
to me so I figured I should take it in anyways.
I guess I should be more understanding of the people who visit Canada or
Russia and being so happy to see snow for the first time.
I was on my own for this trip so I booked this 5 hour desert
safari hoping my natural people and social skills would allow me to meet a few
people along the way. There was a family
of four that were booked on the same tour as me. I realized very quickly when we got into the
truck that they did not speak much English so I was accepting the fact that we
weren’t going to have much conversation.
The ‘safari’ starts about 45 minutes out of town so we first
drive along the highway to a small town where we wait for all the other trucks
that will be in convoy with us. In this
area of the town the locals are expecting us and waiting to sell any and
everything to us. I wasn’t planning on
purchasing anything but one of the vendors was selling ‘keffiyehs’ which are
the male Arabic headdresses. They were
way overpriced but I went for it anyway and got him to take a photo as
well.
After this the mother of the family I was riding with came
over and talked to me despite her not knowing much english, asked me where I was
from and what my name was. She told me
they were from Iran and she was so excited to meet someone from Canada. Immediately she got her son to take a picture
of us. She was very blunt when she
looked around and said ‘David, you have no friends?’ no, no friends…travelling alone. She insisted that for the rest of the day I
was to join her and her family. She then
commented that she liked my keffiyeh and said I looked Palestinian.
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| Palestinian look |
While waiting for all the trucks to arrive we got the chance
to rent quad bikes to ride around the small sand dunes. After about 30 seconds of riding one of the
owners flagged me over and told me I had to
1)
Slow down
2)
Stop doing jumps over the dunes
3)
Stop doing donuts in the sand
A few minutes later I needed another reminder. I blame it on my time and influences in
Grande Prairie.
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| A view sitting on the Quad |
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| View from the front seat |
We had now started the 4x4 in the real dunes in a Ford
Expedition style truck and they took us up, down and around the desert trying
to get as close to tipping over as possible.
It was enjoyable but I think I would rather have done the driving
myself. The entertainment came from the
Iranian family who were all screaming behind me. The driver and I were enjoying this quite a
bit and it gave him a bit more incentive to do a few extra tricks in the sand. The mother of the family was often yelling up to me ‘Daviiiid,
Hoobie, Hoobie’ (phonetic spelling). I
had no idea what this meant for most of the ride and figured my best way to
respond was to say ‘Hoobie’ back to her.
At the end of the trip the son finally decided to tell me that Hoobie was
Farsi for ‘how are you?’ So for a few
hours we had been in an endless loop of us asking how the other was doing with
no real answer’.
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| Stuck truck |
At certain points on the trip we would stop for photos and
to see the sunset over the desert. The
sand was very soft and warm and really a nice setting to see the sun go
down. The mother took a few more pictures
of me and told me to do my Palestinian look for some of them. While we were standing in the sun she said ‘Canada,
cold?’ and did some shivering body language.
I said yes, it’s quite a bit cooler than this usually not taking the
time and effort to properly explain that the summers can be very warm. She then took concern and said ‘Daviiid, the
sun…your skin’ and gave me a very worried look.
To calm her down I had to show her my sunscreen and assure her that I
was well protected.
To finish off the safari we met at a camp in the desert to
dine on traditional (or so they said) Arabic food and took in a quick dancing
show with a female belly dancer and some other guy dancing with a costume that
lights up. The belly dancer was playing
to the crowd and trying to get people involved.
The Iranian mother was always pointing at me and telling the dancer to
pick me but thankfully she wasn’t biting up until a point when she got the
whole crowd to do some weird finger snapping that I’ve never seen before. Her hawk-like sight saw me struggling and
that’s when she pulled me on stage and got me to give my best belly dancing
routine. I had to lift my shirt do some stomach
convulsions and shake my hips. I’ve gone
29 years focusing on only moving my hips in the forward and backward direction,
the sideways movement is not a strength.
There were no pictures but my biggest fan, the mother, loved the
show.  |
| oh yeah, and there were camel rides. I prefer them to horses |
Next up, skydiving.
