Sheikh your booty!

While Megan may have chosen to bow out gracefully with cucumber sandwiches at the Burj you won't be surprised to hear that things did not remain classy for long. In fact by the time we'd polished off a third tray of petit fours it was time to head off to the trade center to meet some ex-pats for what, for everyone else, was post-work drinks. From there we headed to a house party kindly hosted by one of Ahmed's work colleagues where we met Ahmed's wonderful girlfriend Maaria, drowned dreams of airlifting Dubai apartments into the West Village with hearty gin and tonics and gradually warmed up for the night ahead.

I've no idea who suggested the night's final venue but when the time came to leave the party (i.e. when Megan and I had eaten all the cheese), we took yet another taxi with Ahmed and Maaria to a subterranean and, apart from us, exclusively Fillipino nightclub. If being a foot taller than all the other customers and dressed in suits didn't mark us out adequately we immediately charged the dancefloor for a vintage display of our spin, spin, trip, catch yourself, pretend you meant it and spin again dance that is still the talk of Solihull. When the dancefloor cleared we took this as a sign of encouragement and continued to flail around as if we might never hear Brian Adams again. In retrospect the applause this seemed to generate may have been for the troupe of show girls who eventually forced us to sit down rather than our dazzling footwork but fortunately this was the first day on the trip we forgot to bring out the camera so the story is that we were awesome. And I'm sticking to it.

I would say the next morning wasn't pretty but that would be conjecture as we didn't see it. We know for sure the early afternoon was sub-par but if there's one thing a bad hangover needs when it's 48 degrees C outside it's unlimited walnut and pomegranite paste, spinach and plum stew, kebab meat by the pound and hot yoghurt soup. That's normally a tall order but Ahmed, as ever, was up to it and so we found ourselves nursing our injuries at the Iranian Social Club for their weekly buffet brunch and one of the more surreal experiences of our trip so far. As beautifully dressed Iranian women and their extended families picked at plates of dates and olives and the men gathered in front of a huge TV for the preliminary results of the election we restored ourselves with round after round of the most unusual and delicious stodge I can remember.

With the exception of a morning at the Wild Wadi waterpark we spent the remainder of our time in a comfortable routine of hiding out from the heat on our wonderful host Michelle's couch until lunchtime, window shopping and watching people ski(!) at the mall till late afternoon and heading out in the evening to a seemingly endless cycle of swanky bars and fantastic restaurants of which the highlight was probably Ravi's (a local Indian restaurant) followed by Palestinian desserts (while a three inch thick plate of melted cheese may not sound appetizing don't knock it till you've tried it covered in nuts and spun sugar and drowned in syrup...)



When the time finally came to leave Dubai I will confess to having some mixed feelings about the city. Thanks to Ahmed and Michelle we had a truly incredible time and I can easily imagine that especially in the "winter" months it is a fantastic getaway for shopping, relaxing on the beach and eating very, very well. And of course you can ski. With the huge caveat though that a week isn't close to enough time to really understand a place, this professional pedestrian and sometime cyclist will not miss the hours we spent every day flying up and down the Sheikh Zayed highway (14 lanes - still gets jammed) nor the feeling that the heat, the labyrinthine highway system and the city's huge sprawl are conspiring to stop you from ever really getting your arms around the place. Many of the cities we have visited so far and hope to visit on the remainder of our trip invite you to explore them and discover their secrets on your own but on our last day, as the wind began to blow a lot of sand up into the air and the clumps of skyscrapers to the distant East and West of Michelle's apartment began to blend into the sky, I couldn't help but feel Dubai does the opposite.

That being said it is a fascinating place and one which I would love to know more about. As I walk around New York or Cairo the ratio of shops to homes to businesses to rich people to poor people seems to make sense whereas Dubai remains a complete mystery. How does some oil wealth, a few small enclaves of white collar professionals and a booming construction industry generate so much trickle down wealth that a city of 1.2 million people requires at least 20 enormous luxury malls and city employees can retire on 75% pay after 20 years? Who is going to live in the thousands of luxury condos that billboards proudly announce will be delivered this year and next and who on earth will ride the metro system when no-one will walk more than five minutes outside and no-one lives near the stations? What was clear is that someone knows what they're doing as for all the lurid reporting of the impact of the credit crunch in the region we saw precious little evidence of a slow down during our stay and have no doubt that Dubai will keep on defying superlatives for a while yet.

Seven Arabian Nights

We are sadly coming to the end of our stay in Dubai, which has been full of food, drinks, sand, and relentlessly scorching heat. It has actually been quite educational to see a place that was built on top of a desert and designed solely for entertainment, a place where no one pays taxes, and every building, road, and island is brand new and squeaky clean.

We owe the success of our stay to our friend Salty (AKA Ahmed, Subhi, or Ahmed Subhi Hussein Ahmed - he is a man of many passports and many names), whom Ben has known since college. He's a native of the UAE and the best host ever, showing us around and taking us out literally the entire week. Without him, we would have scratched the surface of Dubai and probably still enjoyed ourselves, but with his help we've really had a full experience.

Dubai has over 20 shopping malls (including the Dubai Mall, the biggest one in the world), hundreds of skyscrapers (the tallest in the world, the Burj Dubai, is nearing completion here), and dozens of man-made islands that have been built along the coast, the better to build even more luxury hotels with Arabian Sea views.

There is so much over the top-ness here that I can't even begin to describe - the next big venture in the works is air-conditioned sand on the beaches. Air conditioned sand. Nice cool sand so you don't burn your feet when it's 112 degrees F. Craziness.

Anyway, we're loving it, and we're soaking it all up before we descend into Mumbai soon which will surely be another complete shock. Our first two nights here we stayed in a budget hotel, and then we moved into the home of Michelle, our lovely and extremely generous host that we found via couchsurfing.com. This is our first experience with Couchsurfing, and it has turned out to be everything our new friends in Egypt told us it would be. Michelle opened up her home, offered to show us around, and handed us a key, all because we met her on the Internet and told her we're not crazy. We are so grateful, and look forward to hosting visitors in NY when we're able.

Our first day in Dubai, we made the mistake of trying to walk to the souks which appeared to be very close to our hotel on the map. We learned two things: Dubai is much bigger than you would guess from a map, and no one walks anywhere. The sun beat down on us with such ferocity that a mere 3 blocks from the hotel we dove into the first cab we saw, and we have taken cabs ever since. There's not really any public transportation here (although 2 years ago they decided to build a subway system and it will be finished in September - very impressive. New York, take note.), and it's too hot to try anyway. The souks ended up being much smaller than the markets in Egypt, and so new and shiny that they were a little less interesting, although we did enjoy the huge diamonds and gleaming jewelry in the Gold Souk.

We also tried to get a little culture and history in by visiting the former home of Sheik Saeed, who ruled for over 30 years. The home is now a museum and features a lot of photographs of Dubai's development, along with a few artifacts. It was interesting, but we learned quickly that museums and history are not the strong suit of Dubai tourism. People come to shop, eat, and sunbathe.

So we changed course and went to the Dubai Mall, mainly to take advantage of the air conditioning, but once we got there we had a great time! There are over 1200 stores, an ice rink, a multi-story waterfall, and a top notch aquarium where we spent a couple hours getting nose-to-nose with sharks and staring at other strange sea creatures.

Right outside the mall is the Burj Dubai, so we took in the view of all 160+ stories of it. It's such a slender, elegant building that it doesn't look as tall as it is, but up close, we could get a sense of its proportions. It's an absolute giant, but really quite beautiful at the same time.

Right outside is a plaza featuring dancing fountains (of course, 3 times bigger than the one at the Bellagio in Vegas) so we enjoyed the show and headed home.

The best parts of our stay have been the evenings out with Salty. Our first evening, we had a terrific Arabic dinner of meze and kebabs (read: mountains and mountains of meat. Even this Texan was a little intimidated.) and then headed out to Mina A'Salam, which can only be described as Arab Disney. It's a huge multi-hotel complex with a souk and a few canals a la Venice winding throughout (stocked with multicolored fish and giant turtles!), all decorated with beautiful Moorish details. Every ceiling and surface is covered with Arabic decorations, the lanterns are all traditional copper cut-outs, and the arched architecture is very Middle Eastern, but everything is so new and perfect that I felt like an extra on "Aladdin." From one of the hotel bar balconies there is a perfect view of the Burj Al Arab, which glows in different colors at night, so we had a drink and took in the amazing view.

On our second evening, Salt took us to a "dive" bar, which was a beautiful garden courtyard within another hotel complex. We had another relaxing drink outside while other patrons smoked huge sheesha pipes, allowing us to take in the wonderful scent of apple tobacco to go with our cocktails.

The third night, however, takes the cake. As an amazing wedding/welcome to Dubai gift, Salt treated us to High Tea at the Burj Al Arab - the singular Dubai experience. We got all dressed up and headed to the Burj, situated of course on a man-made island in the Red Sea and glowing against the sunset. The building itself is spectacular, and the inside is spectacularly gaudy, all red and gilt and over the top. We took the glass elevator with Sea views to the Sky Lounge and for 2 hours feasted on delicious tiny sandwiches, delicate pastries and champagne. Moments like these, we don't exactly feel like backpackers.

Ben will take it from here - stay tuned!