Dubai Weekend

In celebration of the Prophet's birthday, we got a long weekend. What better thing to do than run up to Dubai for a few days and explore around?

Now, the thing with the richest city in the world is that it's marketed as such. All you can ever find when you are researching Dubai hotels or Dubai sights or Dubai whatever is 7-star luxury accomodation and where to buy your newest Chanel bag.

You'll be happy to know that we managed to avoid the 7-star luxury and have ourselves a relatively affordable weekend without all that Chanel stuff.... well, affordable by Dubai standards anyway (it should be noted here that, apparently, the fashionistas of Europe have designated "Dubai" as an adjective denoting over-the-top flash... and I guess it sort of fits).

After numerous attempts to find something reasonable in the way of a hotel room, we finally copied our friends Grant and Dianne, and reserved a place in Deira, which is the old part of the city. We got to drive through the really posh parts -- past the Burj al Arab, and through Jumeirah. This is the part of Dubai that has given this place its reputation for lux lux lux. Crossing under the Dubai Creek, we found ourselves, literally, on the "wrong side of the tracks". Here, instead of glass and brass buildings, and monuments to glamour, we were deep in the hustle-bustle of what could have been New Delhi.

About 95% male, the population of Deira (or weekend visitors like us?) are mostly Indian, Pakistani, Afghani, and North African. All weekend, we marveled at how everyone (except us) seemed to be wearing some form of traditional dress, be it kurta pyjamas, colourful pangs or the famous Madras wrap (made me feel like I was back in Chennai anyway....). As it was a long weekend (2 days, not 3) for the UAE's huge migrant worker population, the streets were just packed.

Ty's stealth photography catches a quiet moment on the sidewalk just downstairs from our room

Deira and Bur Dubai straddle the Dubai Creek, which is a main thoroughfare for dhows taking tourists on cruises, or real live old wooden boats transporting cargo to Dar es Salaam and Iran. In case you were wondering why anything you've ever sent by cargo ship has ever gone awol or arrived smashed to smithereens, the boxes are jumbled all over the docks, where a fridge might find itself leaning upsidedown against a pile of matresses, or boxes of plates teeter on stacks of tires. The sidewalks themselves are crowded with people shopping in the souqs, dodging men with brightly painted handcarts.

And yet.... it was surprisingly clean. And safe.

Miles away from posh Dubai, edging our car forward through narrow alleyways where pedestrians took turns jumping in front of us, our first task was to find our hotel. Circling through the curving streets, we couldn't believe just how lucky we were to have found ourselves in such a place.

Now, $100 will generally get you a halfway decent hotel room in most cities. In Deira, you will find yourself in a cramped hotel with an alleyway entrance that is itself crammed full of all manner of boxes from Nigeria. Our room was basically an over-priced hostel-type thing, but with a view on the street below that kept us amused as we tried to guess where each passing person was from, and where Ty practiced his stealth-photography skills.

Needless to say, we were surprised and happy to find ourselves in such an aromatic, energetic and cacaphonic place. This was not the Dubai we had expected as we wandered around that first evening.

The next day, Friday, we awoke to find the streets devoid of all life and all the fun stores (selling everything from luggage to saris to shoes to gold) closed. Taking advantage of the fact that most people would be at mosque on Friday morning, leaving the highways more open for us, we headed to the Mall of the Emirates -- yes, this would be the Dubai you read about -- where the indoor ski-hill, among other things, can be found.

Me, being overcharged.... but I bought it anyway

Not wanting to waste too much time with boring shopping, we hit up a huge toy store, a Borders books and a few other necessities before fleeing back to our more picturesque neighbourhood, where we quite enjoyed haggling (and being fleeced) for a wall-hanging and a few blingy pashminas. We finally learned to introduce ourselves to the shopkeepers as locals. "We are not tourists," we insisted, "We live here". And prices would generally drop.

Of course, we were tourists in Dubai, and the one thing every tourist must do is a dhow dinner cruise. Dressing up in a pretty dress (me, not Ty), with a new blingy pashmina covering myself from the 95% male sidewalk population, we headed to the docks, where the dinner dhows were parked in a line, all lit up and waiting for passengers. Being the first on, we took the best table (right at the very front, on the top level) and ordered an over-priced bottle of wine. The trip, which lasted 2 hours, took us up and down the Dubai Canal, past both historical buildings and newly built office buildings that are slowly marching their way towards Deira, making me wonder just how much longer such a jumble of a neighbourhood will hold on to its prime real estate. Another over-priced bottle of wine, and we didn't feel the absolutely freezing breeze coming over the water anymore.

Our mission on Saturday, after an interesting breakfast of a mixed fruit juice and shwarma, was to locate the elusive Ras Al-Khor bird sanctuary. Apparently located in the middle of Dubai, at the end of the Dubai Creek, this place is home to a mix of the UAE's wild birds, including flamingoes. Finding the place, however, amidst the spaghetti-like trails of highway that cross each other like, well, spaghetti on a plate proved to be an insane challenge.

Our first unscheduled stop was a biker rally (!!!) at yet another shopping mall. Ty just keeps driving me to shopping malls, you know, it's really not my fault....

I'm hanging with the War Pigs...

A part of a convention/heavy metal festival, the bikers that we found ourselves rubbing elbows with were holding a blood drive. I'll let you insert your own jokes here: _____________. From there, we ended up in a fascinating antiques store, where a man let us play, literally, with all his artefacts from around the world. We swore we'd return, once we had our apartment....

After another two hours of driving in what seemed like a never-ending spiral, we decided to save Ras Al-Khor for a day when it wasn't playing hide-and-seek with us. With a better map, maybe we would have found it. We did, however, find a camel racing track, a lot of desert, a ton of soon-to-be built buildings, and the Burj Dubai, which at almost a kilometre high is pretty hard to miss.
Returning to Deira, we decided to walk through the more touristy area of the Gold Souq where throngs of cruise ship day-trippers followed their guides, never straying too far into the "real" old Dubai. Every few metres, we were approached by muttering man after muttering man, offering us "Copy watch, designer purse, Madam, do you want Chanel, Fendi, Prada..." or "Nice pashmina, Madam, for you, gold jewellery, best price..." As soon as Ty or I faced them, though, and they got a better view of the rather hippie-ish people they were trying to sell to, they tended to turn around and leave us be. We did, at one point, try to sell our own jewellery to a nice muttering man, but he backed off.... I guess our prices were too high.

We spent the rest of our afternoon, surprisingly, at the Deira Heritage House, a sort of interactive museum with free admission, and free coffee and snacks in the courtyard. I finally got to speak to an Emirati who wasn't one of my students, as a young sheikh chatted with us for a few minutes. Most of the people we have been interacting with on a daily basis are non-Emirati, and it was nice to be able to speak openly with someone who is actually from the UAE.

I won't go too much into the museum, except to say that, if you are ever in Dubai, you shouldn't miss it. It's got to be one of the nicest, most informative visits I've had, even though it is a small place. The free coffee, chickpea soup and homemade pancakes are a nice touch too, especially when eaten while sitting on a cushion, under a tent in a courtyard.

Ty in the museum courtyard

Chasing the sunset, we walked back to the docks and noticed that there were fleets of small wooden boats ferrying people across the Dubai Creek. We hopped on one, paid our one dirham each (about 30 cents Canadian or 2 SA Rand), and enjoyed the evening in Bur Dubai, eating supper, then spending about an hour smoking apple shisha on the waterfront, where we met up with Grant and Dianne again, just outside a collection of historical buildings that we were too tired to explore that evening, but wanted to return to for our last morning.

Apparently forgetting that everything is closed in the morning, or seems to be anyway, we packed up and checked out of our hotel on Sunday morning and went back across the Dubai Creek. There is a real lack of breakfast restaurants or even simple coffee shops, and our first goal was to find something to eat. Walking along the hot, dry pavement of the Bur Dubai docks, we turned into the Heritage Village in the hopes of finding at least a snack shop of some sort.

Much like the Heritage Village that we saw in Abu Dhabi our first week here, it was a collection of dry tents showcasing the local handicrafts, all clustered around a sandy lot where a few tethered camels yawned in the heat. Much to our surprise, though, we found a tent of burqa-ed ladies cooking up honey filled sweets and pancakes. Yay. Breakfast!

Taking a few minutes to explore, we watched a lady making silver embroidery, then had a rather interesting conversation (in Arabic, which neither of us speak) with another lady who seemed to be weaving a tent. We wandered back out to the seaside, where we fed, watered and bathed a stray kitten (yup, they know how to spot us), before calling an end to our rather varied and full visit to Dubai.

During our trip, we got to see parts of Dubai that are, unfortunately, left out of a lot of the tourist brochures, except for a passing mention of dhow cruises or the gold souq. I can only hope that you, Dear Reader, will come to visit us so that we can show you some of these incredible, off-the-beaten track things, that certainly don't come with a 7-star rating.