Further Wanderings

Dubai (and, to a lesser extent, Sharjah) was like a mixture of LA and Singapore. 

Take the haze; sprawl; traffic; American fast food reataurants and wide, palm lined boulevards of LA.  Add Singapore’s plethora of fancy shopping malls; its official encouragment of the growth of a “modern” city; and a pinch of it’s subtle authoritarianism.  Then season with a bit of middle eastern culture and Arabic writing.  This ought to give you a bit of an idea of what our UAE experience was like.

Atrium in the Burj al Arab

So what, you ask, did we get up to in the United Arab Emirates? This:

Smuggling.  The UAE is made up of several Emirates or Princedoms, each of which has significant leglislative power of its own.  Sharjah, the one in which we were staying (and that we flew in and out of) was technically a “dry” emirate, and no alcohol is permitted inside its borders.  Thankfully they’re not very strict about enforcing this, especially with western tourists, so our four bottles of Lebanese wine went un-noticed.

Dining.  Our one lunch in Dubai was meant to be THE highlight of our time in the UAE and (almost to my surprise) it didn’t disappoint.

 

The Burj al Arab.  Note the haze.  Which may serve to illustrate how hot and humid it was there.  The UAE was similar to Petra and Wadi Rum in that it gave one that “I’m melting!  Aaah, I’m melting!” feeling while out in the sun.

We’d made a reservation at the “seven star” Burj al Arab hotel’s flagship Al Mahara Seafood restaurant.  We arrived by taxi and after a few minutes sitting at the gate while our reservation was confirmed (they were VERY strict about who got onto the hotel grounds and we had to be re-checked when we wandered out again on foot before lunch) we headed on up to the hotel proper.

Me lounging in the mezzanine of the Burj al Arab.  Don’t think of it as an expensive lunch.  Think of it as a cheap lunch PLUS an expensive ticket to get into the hotel!

I’d almost expected a “seven star” hotel to be built of gold, encrusted with jewels and feature staff strewing rose petals in front of you as you walked.

The service and surroundings weren’t quite as obtrusive as this, but they were impressive all the same.  The decor was about as tasteful as could be managed given the large amounts of gilding, fresh flowers, fountains and brightly coloured ceramics.  The service was good, but in a subtle way.  You weren’t being waited on hand and foot, but every time you turned your back, something was being done.  The cushions on the couches were re-arranged each time someone got up after a sit.  The tower of (cotton) hand towels in the bathroom was replenished and restored to symetrical perfection each time one was taken.   Subtle, but impressive.

Lunch itself was very good.  Sarah and I shared four courses:

Salad of Spanish octopus, pine nuts, watermelon, orange dressing

Miso roasted Scottish salmon, bok choy vegetables (alcohol)

Line caught sea bass, gnocchi, mussel and clam mariniere (alcohol)

Chocolate philosophy on cardamom crisp, blood orange jelly and ice cream

If you’re keen to try out Al Mahara but aren’t on an unlimited budget, the fixed price lunches are definitely the way to go.  You pick whether you want 3, 4 or 5 courses, and then order items from the menu.  Doing it this way offers significant savings over a la carte dishes, lets you try a few more things, and sharing the four course option filled us both up nicely.

Each was presented in impressive fashion, delivered promptly, but not in a hurry and was very, very tasty.  Both of us noted independently that, leaving aside the wonderful sauces, marinades etc. and the freshness of the ingredients, the food was notable for being PERFECTLY cooked.  Even the octopus, which is notoriously difficult to cook, was handled perfectly and came out wonderfully tender.

Our table at Al Mahara reflected in the mirrored ceiling.

All of this was enjoyed at our tankside table.  The restaurant has a HUGE aquarium at its centre that features two sharks, big grouper and wrasses and dozens (hundreds?) of smaller fish. 

The fish tank at Al Mahara.  Sadly the simulated submarine ride that visitors usually experience on their way into the restaurant was closed for maintenance

It was an experience more than a meal.  Given the $240 price tag (a bottle of fairly common NZ Sauvignon Blanc could have added another $280 to the bill!) it’s not likely an experience I’ll be repeating, but it was a delicious meal and a lot of fun.

Sarah in the lobby of the Burj Al Arab.  The name of the hotel translates to “The Arab Tower.”  How original!

Me and my hot date.  There were people with trays offering the HUGEST dates I’ve ever seen on the way in and out of the Burj al Arab lobby. For all its apparent splendour, Sarah and I both agreed that the place seemed to be more about SEEMING luxurious than BEING luxurious.  It seemed like it was probably more a place for the reasonably wealthy having a splurge than for the SUPER rich just going about their business.

Aside from our ”splurge of splurges” lunch, we ate only one other thing in the UAE: Indian food.  Given the huge population of migrant Indian and Pakistani workers in the country, and their relatively low pay, its easy to find dynamite Indian food on a budget.  On our last night we ordered dinner and some takeaway for brunch the next day, and the three kilos of food (we weighed it) set us back a mere $12.50!   

Shopping.  Given that this was the UAE, we had to go to a mall.  Not much to say here… It was a mall.  Pretty much exactly as you’d find in North America or Europe.  Probably a few more high-end shops, but prices were comparable, and it really wasn’t anything special.  At least it was air conditioned

 

Another faux-Sinan masterpiece.  Sinan was the architect who designed the best of the imperial mosques in Istanbul.  It seems that anywhere in the arab world where there’s money to be spent and building to be done (see Beirut) they’ll try to imitate his works.

Some other observations about Dubai/Sharjah:

It’s really not a very pedestrian friendly country.  Public transport is pretty good (the bus shelters are air conditioned!) and decent sidewalks are usually present, but the breadth of the streets, the infrequency of crossing points and the fact that pedestrians were obviously included as an afterthought in the signal sequencing made it tricky to get around on foot.

Observing.  Both Sarah and I smile a lot.  A trait which wasn’t shared by most folks we met in the UAE.  When with their families, as on the Sharjah Corniche, people looked happy.  When they were paid to smile (as at the Burj al Arab) they smiled lots.  But just walking down the streets, or at work in the shops, most folks didn’t look particularly cheerful.  Not sure why…

Further observing.  Despite its reputation as a fairly liberal nation, the brand of islam practiced in the UAE seemed more restrictive than that we’d seen elsewhere in the middle east.  There were separate sections on public buses for women, and if these (comprising about 1/4 of the seats) were full, the driver would often ask unaccompanied ladies to climb back off and wait for the next bus.  The proportion of women who covered their entire face (as opposed to just hair) seemed higher.  The hotel we stayed in specifically requested that both women and men keep their shoulders covered and not wear shorts.

 

A palm “forest” along the Sharjah corniche.  Passing by the Sharjah lagoon it was a great place to walk in the cool of the evening, joining all the local families out for a late-night picnic.

But for all this, Dubai and even Sharjah had many more women out and about with no headcoverings at all.  While the religious views of the emiratis themselves may be a bit stricter, they don’t seem to impose too much more than the basics of their faith on non-muslims.  Though what IS imposed on them is done in the form of laws and regulations rather than social pressures… And as western (i.e. white) tourists we didn’t experience the full expanse of the religious law that some other migrants are.  The UAE was a very interesting place in this respect…

An utterly ridiculous gold chain mail vest we saw in Dubai’s famous gold souq.  Not everything for sale in the UAE was this over-the-top, but the simple presence of this thing gives some idea of what it was like.

Relaxing.  Due to a period where I spent almost a full year staying in hotels across the US, I was able to cash in some points and get us a room at the 5 star Holiday Inn Sharjah.  A nice trick if you can manage it, especially somewhere like Dubai where budget accomodation is VERY thin on the ground :)  The place was pretty impressive, and once in a while somewhere like that makes a nice change from a steady diet of budget hotels/dorms.

Sarah in our fancy-pants hotel room

The relaxation noted above provided us with a nice rest-up before our 07:15 flight to Kathmandu, which in turn provides me with a perfect point at which to finish this entry.  I’ll try to get one more up from Nepal, but we’re going to be hitting the trail for some trekking very soon after arriving, so if you don’t see anything new for a few weeks, not to worry!

Dhows (traditional Emirati trading boats) unloading their cargo.  It was very cool to see how the dhows are still used to transport cargo from the port to the market districts (and to have a water taxi ride across the creek, which got us out amongst them!)

Tags: Burj al arab, Dubai, Llew Bardecki, Sharjah, UAE

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 9:36 am and is filed under Travel, United Arab Emirates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.