Today’s been really tough. It’s been an emotionally brutal day. I’ve just been going through the day in zombie mode and just thinking about everything.
I’ve been missing moments and things and… yeah. Some made me sad and others made me smile and the ones that made me smile made me feel even worse.
This is all so hard.
I talked to my sister for a while and that distracted me a bit but not really. Ibby ‘talked’ to me for ages and that was incredibly cute. He’s growing up so fast and is at that incredibly cute phase kids go through before they turn in to monsters.
I’m going to try to distract myself by going to the mall with my house mate and then for a three hour walk like yesterday.
I went with really high expectations of the place, I have to admit. My sister who’d been there before absolutely loved it and had been waxing lyrical about the place for weeks and months. I had a list of all these things I wanted to do and places I wanted to see and I got through a lot of it.
My favourite part of the trip were the people. I met up with my friend from LSE and her husband a few times and I loved talking to them about everything. I met my friend on her own once and I feel it’s the best conversation I’ve ever had with her. We talked about life, the universe, and everything for hours and hours. She’s too cool.
Seeing my brother and sister-in-law was hard for a few minutes because I was distracted by life but once we settled it was totally amazing. They were way too cool towards me and playing with my niece was really wonderful. It really made me miss my family and the unconditional and limitless love they have for me. They really are the most special people in my world.
The facilities in Dubai are excellent. A lot of money has been spent on infrastructure and it really shows. The public transport is spectacular (compared to most places, not just riyadh) and people actually follow the rules of the road. The city is impeccably clean and people know how to queue in lines for things. I was surprised at the civility of it all but I think Riyadh has messed up my ideas of what should and shouldn’t be proper.
The buildings and sights I had a problem with. A big problem. It was one of my first thoughts after getting there and I saw nothing to challenge that impression. The city is soulless. The buildings have no personality, except the Burj Khalifa and the Burj Arabia. The rest are just concrete constructs in the most superficial way stacked up next to each other. The malls are insane! Even though I say that, I did get some very, very nice photographs of the buildings against water and the lights and everything. That was cool.
I didn’t take as many photographs as I would have liked to have done but I got enough to share with you guys over the next few days and weeks. I think you’ll like some of them as much as I do. My camera hated the weather. Whenever I went from inside to outside my lenses all clouded over and would take AGES to go back to normal again. It was incredibly annoying because it happened at least once everyday.
What else… My hotel was really nice. I didn’t have the best view in the world but the room was really excellent. It was spacious and clean and very comfortable. I actually ended up spending a whole lot of my time in my room but I don’t mind that. It was way too hot, in that sticky humid kind of way that makes you clam up right away.
I like exploring places on foot but the city is too sprawing to really get to places on food. It’s too hot to be outside for too long, too. Spending too much time in the sun is debilitating and not conducive to fun.
Islam in Dubai is so different from Saudi. Malls and stores don’t close at prayer time but the call is audible from almost everywhere in the city. Mosques aren’t as ubiquitous as they are in Riyadh but that wasn’t a problem. There are a lot more non-Muslims in Dubai than there are in Saudi but people were very respectful of the fact that it was Ramadan. I didn’t see anyone eating outside during the day.
Speaking of food… Dubai has some amazing restaurants and they’re cheap too. If you can get yourself out there, seriously, go to all the good restaurants. Treat yourself to quality food. You owe it to yourself.
In the end, I felt like I had a good week out there but it didn’t live up to the incredibly lofty standards that people had lifted it up to. It’s worth a visit to say you’ve been but I think I could have been happier visiting Beirut, Damascus, and Amman. Maybe that could be my next trip…
I went to the mall to go skiing but they said I’d have to have four lessons before they’d let me on the piste/slope and the cost of those lessons was loads and they’d take loads of time so I thought “screw that” and decided against it.
Instead… I walked to the beach. I didn’t go prepared so I didn’t swim but I did wade in up to my knees. The water was so clean and clean. The sand was immaculate. I sat on the beach, in the sweltering heat, for what must have been a couple of hours and just thought about things. I wrote in journal I have and I read a little bit of the third Game of Thrones book, A Storm of Swords.
I skipped dinner with my friend and decided to watch Man Utd v Arsenal instead. I’m sorry, Serab, but it was the best decision I have EVER made. That game is going to be one I tell my grandchildren about. What I’m even more jealous of is the fact that I know more than a few people who were there today. Bastards! :)
I had THE MOST AMAZING DINNER EVER! I swear, it was like… there’s a metaphor I want to use but I won’t. It was at a Chinese/Far Eastern place called PF Chang’s and, I swear, it was TO DIE FOR. It’s worth coming to Dubai just for that restaurant. The service was excellent and the staff were really attentive and nice.
I went to watch X-Men: First Class. It was so good. I really loved it. Long time readers of this blog know how I feel about January Jones (hint: I love her!) and she was stunning as usual. The plot, the acting, and the special effects were all top class.
I walked home from the cinema and got talking to that guy from the other night again. He’s leaving Dubai in a few hours and I felt really bad that I didn’t get to hang out with him. He’s going to add me on Facebook and I might give him a call when he’s in Saudi (he’s off to Jeddah and Mecca tomorrow).
Now, it’s the last potential night of Lailatul Qadar so I’m going to pray for a while and make a whole bunch of duas.
It’s been a good day. Tomorrow is going to be even better, in sha Allah.
It’s hot! That’s a given but it’s a very different kind of hot from Riyadh. Riyadh is a dry heat, I hardly ever sweat in Riyadh. Dubai is a wet, sticky, humid heat. Walking down the street makes you feel like a clam. Not sexy at all. It’s the kind of place where you need to have three showers a day!
It’s vapid and shallow. Don’t get me wrong, vapid and shallow isn’t always a bad thing. It’s like a cheeseburger. It’ll fill you up but, nutritionally speaking, it’ll leave you lacking. It is a dream location if you want to shop and see tall buildings. It’s a nightmare if you want something ‘real’ with culture and history.
But, just like a cheeseburger tastes damn good, it’s a really fun place. There’s a whole lot to do and it’s a great place to spend a week!
Today I went to the biggest mall in the world, saw the biggest building in the world, and saw the biggest fountain show in the world. None of them were a disappointment. Tomorrow I’m going to see more cool things. I’m excited.
Where are the Emiratis? Seriously? It’s like Dubai is a city full of tourists and foreign workers. I saw hardly any locals. I’m used to a lot of foreign workers in Saudi Arabia but here it’s to another level. There are so many Filipinos and people from South Asia. It’s almost as thought there are more Indians and Pakistanis here than there are in India and Pakistan. It’s kind of surreal.
Dubai is expensive. Maybe I’ve been spoilt by Saudi and the crazy cheap prices in Riyadh but things here are more expensive. Taxis are more expensive; food is more expensive; stores are more expensive; and entertainment is more expensive. Now I understand why fellow teachers of mine who worked in Dubai complained about not being able to save anywhere near as much as they do in Riyadh.
People drive AMAZING cars. I saw Bentleys, Aston Martins, Porches, Ferraris, and Lamborghinis. Not a bad selection.
Hanging out with my friend and her husband was totally cool. I miss having good friends around me. I miss being able to walk around a mall with a woman and just talking. I don’t even mean in a romantic sense…
It’s so weird seeing women working the counters in stores and shops. It’s something that’s totally alien in Saudi.
So, Dubai is one of the major tourist destinations of the world. That’s partly to do with the fact that it has excellent airports and fantastic connections to most major cities of the world (through Emirates airline). It’s a desert city but once you’re there you wouldn’t really know it because of the abundance of green and water. There has been so much money spent on the place to make it as friendly as possible for tourists and there are more than a few things I want to see…
I’ve written about malls in Saudi Arabia on this blog before - I think - but I’m compelled to write about them again today. I’ve visited a few of them over the last few weeks but I haven’t been with the express intention to buy anything in particular. The people I went with, however, did want to buy things. I noticed a few things about them that are really interesting.
I’ve been a desert rat for over six months. It’s been over half a year since I landed in Riyadh’s sweltering heat. I remember thinking all those months ago that it was going to be a fairly monumental period of my life and, I have to say, it has lived up to those expectations in the best and worst ways.
I want to be in Medina and get lost in my faith and shut out the world and my thoughts for a while but, sadly, I don’t think it would help me today. You see, I have this crazy way of linking things in my mind and forming associations and everything right now reminds me of everything. I can’t shake it.
I’ve talked on this blog a million times before about how much I love shopping and spending money - money that I, sometimes, don’t even have. Well, yesterday I went shopping and bought something that I haven’t ever owned before.
Riyadh is a really quiet city. There really isn’t that much to do here. I few days ago I wrote a post about going shopping and how the malls here are of pretty high quality. Well, yesterday I did something else that could be added to that list…
Well, there really isn’t much to do in Saudi Arabia that you could describe as fun in the traditional sense. There’s no mixing of the sexes, there aren’t any clubs, there aren’t any bars, there aren’t any cinemas, and even shisha lounges are banned from the city. Not that many of those things normally appeal to me (except the cinema, of course) but it means you have to be creative with your fun.
