Dubai - Day 1

Hi guys – I know you all anxiously await Beverly’s blog, but this morning you get me (Michael)! Turns out I went out solo on an early excursion today, and so I have the most to report.

What an exciting day in Dubai! This morning, I led an excursion to the city of Sharjah, about 10 miles north of Dubai. Dubai is such a completely remade city in that its original culture is virtually gone, and they are working very hard to recapture it in Sharjah. On the way, one can’t help but be overwhelmed by this most amazing place. For example, only 20% of the population are citizens, or can ever become citizens; there is almost complete segregation between the sexes; 93% of the potable water is produced through desalination; everything is lush and green and manicured here in this desert environment; there is a (gorgeous) mosque about every ½ mile; and the wealth here is just mind boggling.

We stopped first at the Al-Hisn museum. This was originally a fort built in 1820, and eventually served as the residence for Sharjah’s ruling family. They had lifesize dioramas depicting every facet of life at that time, including where people were stoned to death, you know when they misbehaved. We went next to Bait Al Naboodah, which was a conventional family home converted into a museum. Here you could see how everyone lived in traditional Islamic style. We went next door to a local Souq (market) for a little shopping, but it was mostly junk.

Everything is segregated by sex. Boys and girls don’t play together or go to school together. There are separate parks and country clubs for males and females. Women have to ride in taxi cabs driven only by women; these taxis are identified by their pink color.

Our next stop, the Gold Souk, was most definitely not junk. It was 300 stores all selling gold. There is purported to be 500 tons of the stuff on the premises, but you are hard put to find any security. It’s amazing. I guess in a culture where any crime is so severely punished you don’t have much crime. Our guide took us along the sea shore on the way back and it was most striking. I got back to the ship about 1:30PM to pick up Beverly. We then headed out to the new city, and so I can let here take over from here.

We were on a mission – to get a new computer. The IT people called this morning to remind us to return the loaner computer today. We took the shuttle to the Dubai Mall. Were we in the desert? Were we in an Arab country? It was hard to tell because I thought I was in Las Vegas. Everything is NEW and tall and sleek and modern. There is building going on everywhere. The city is extremely clean and I did not see any clunkers on the road. The buildings are tall and skinny with lots of glass and are crowded together. There is oodles of traffic. I did see a few camels in a vacant lot (one of the very few). It was hot, but thankfully not humid. We went from air conditioning to air conditioning and didn’t even break a sweat.

The mall was unlike anything I have ever seen with more than 1,200 stores. HUGE and upscale upscale. Fountains and flowers decorated the multiple entrances. Included in the mall is an aquarium, zoo, gold souk, cinemas, restaurants and an ice skating rink. Women were dressed in all sorts of garb from casual to full burquas. Many men wore the traditional Arab robes and hat thingies. Most of the sales people were either Indian or Asian. We headed right to the electronic section of the mall and after perusing the different products, we decided to buy an HP netbook computer. It is cute, so tiny and compact. It is easy to type on and has a bright screen. But you don’t really care about that; what is interesting is we now have a computer that has Arabic characters on the keys! It’s OK, there are English characters, too with Windows 7 in English. It feels really good to have a computer again. I hopefully will be able to upload some pictures in the next few days. We still have some programs we have to download from the internet before I can do this.