I've added a new blog to my blogroll Nithincoca.com. Nithin and I were both interns for Obama in Iowa. Nithin was a USC student (Trojan, not Gamecock) at the time and originally from Kansas City. He had to leave us when school started, but he was, of course, back for the caucuses. Anyways, his blog is more meta and philosophical than mine, or any of the others, but it takes all kinds right?
Anyways, back to Dubai. This is actually going to be a rather short post, but I hope it is still informative.
Something about this part of the world having awesome red sunsets. I know we are on the Persian Gulf, but I can understand now why you would call the Red Sea the Red Sea. The palm tree on the left and the parasailor on the right were unintentional nice touches.
Today I'm going to talk more about our hotel, and specifically how we got there. For that, we need a discussion on the geography of Dubai. As I stated in last week's post, Dubai is a part of the United Arab Emirates. It is immediately to the east of Abu Dhabi, the largest and most powerful emirate, but it's geography is very similar... it has sand. Lots of sand. Because of this, the vast majority of the development in the UAE is on the coast, and Dubai is generally no different, with the exception of the Dubai river.
The Dubai river actually makes a small stretch inland reasonably livable, which is why Dubai was founded at that location, specifically Deira on the above map. Deira is the "Old Town," if you will. It has the markets, museums, and when I did a hotel search, most of the hotels in town. Since I am a fan of walking to everything on vacation, and everything from shops to culture seemed to be nearby, I assumed that Deira was the place we should stay and get a hotel.
Never one to do stuff without some advice, however, I consulted my buddy Mark from law school. Mark's brother works for ESPN, and Mark had gone with him to Dubai to cover one of the Dubai Grand Prix. I asked him about Dubai and Deira, and in typical Mark fashion, he ignored my questions and responded "Dubai is awesome! I don't remember much since my brother set everything up, but I think we stayed in Jumeirah."
The above map is sort of a zoom out of the previous map, with Deira on the upper right corner. Now, I actually had a hard time pinpointing Jumeirah because (1) Google Maps sucks for Arabic and (2) I found out later Jumeirah is just what they call a really, really long stretch of beach (or sand dune which just happens to be near water, depending on your perspective) ... on the order of miles. In fact, some people would consider Jumeirah the entire stretch of land between Deira and the palm tree island... which is itself named Jumeirah. You see what I am dealing with?
Confused, I ended up conversing with Resha, and she said that she had a friend living here who was pretty familiar with Dubai, so she sent him a text. We didn't get a response before our next planning meeting, so she just called him then. He was at a bar and so could barely hear, so I just asked her to ask him about staying in Deira or Jumeirah. He said to definitely NOT stay in Deira, that it was the dumpiest part of town, and that we should stick to one of the resorts further out or stay at the Dubai Marina.
Bingo! Some good advice! The Marina is a relatively new development to the west of Palm Jumeirah, about 20-30 minutes from Deira. It was originally built as sort of a Mediterranean style condo development for foreigners to live, as we could easily see from all the Western style restaurants, but after the recession hit, no one was buying condos anymore, so construction was halted on many a building, and other buildings, like ours, were turned into hotels. You can see how we figured this out later.
Anyways, with that knowledge of what neighborhoods we should stay-in, I was able to focus my search better, and I found the Oasis Beach Tower for a substantial discount on a hotel website. I didn't know how much of a discount until we arrived and the manager told us the off-the-rack rate was $1,500 a night. Given what we paid, I almost felt like we won the lottery.
So, the last time I left you, William and I were sprawled out in bedroom #1. That's right, this was a two-bedroom hotel room. As you can see, these two double beds were pushed together, and so could have easily been separated to hold myself, Resha, and William. But no, this bed was just for me... for one night anyways.
This was my own private bathroom (but yes, I did share). I am sure this is the first bathroom with its own footwashing sink. Muslims use this to wash their feet for the ritual of Wudu, and the installation of these footbaths in the U.S. are apparently causing some controversy. Oh Fox News. You crack me up sometimes.
No, this is not the same bedroom from above with beds pulled apart. This is the second bedroom. Notice these is no lounge chair in this one.
And this is the private bathroom for that bedroom.
And this is our brand spanking new kitchen. Seriously, I don't think anyone had ever used us, it was so freaking clean. Definitely the nicest flooring, woodwork, and appliances I have ever seen in a hotel.
And finally, this was our living room during the day...
... and at night. Seriously, our room at Ahadi Lodge in Arusha was about the size of the area defined by the couches above. And that room had three beds! Unbelievable.
But wait! There is more! I lied when I said "finally." You see, being the Curious George's we were, we couldn't help but open all the doors and cabinets we found just to see what was in them. For the most part we were disappointed... until we found this door shut next to the bathroom. Curious, we opened it to find a cot and a separate bathroom as well. This seemed odd, as our room was listed as a two bed and two bath, and there was no window in this room. So we were debating what the heck this was, when it dawned on us that it was the servant's quarters. Duh! Who else did we think did the cooking and cleaning here? Quite frankly though, our silly American sensibilities found this a little creepy, so we pretty much kept this door shut for the duration of our stay.
And now to some of the best parts... the view! This was looking back toward the marina. As you can see, some construction, some construction stopped in the middle, and a man-made lagoon. We were pretty high (27th floor I think?), so the view was pretty cool.
This is the same view at night, with smatterings of light appearing from the buildings and the cars coming to and from the marina.
The best view, however, was out of the balcony, and the view of the Palm Jumeirah, the infamous Palm Tree peninsula.
You can make out all the resorts that sort of look like a combination of castles and sand dunes, including Atlantis The Palm. Pretty bad arse.
One other cool thing at the hotel was our elevators. They were on some sort of weird suspension that made them completely silent, but also wicked fast. Every four floors or so were broken by lounge areas that made it look like they had really high ceilings. These were also the areas with computers and wireless internet, so we quickly rushed for those when we found out about them. I had the misfortune of having some kids throw some candies at me from the floors above when I was checking my own email, but the joke was on them since they were specialty chocolates and they tasted delicious. Victory is mine.
Above is us on the elevator as we were going to the ground floor. Like I said, pretty cool. We wondered if the elevator in the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world and also in Dubai, was the same.
So I mentioned there were three of us, but that was not exactly correct. In Dubai we gained a fourth! My buddy Rahul, who I had worked with in old law firm, had taken a job with Intellectual Ventures in Bangalore, India. And since a quick search on Bing showed that Bangalore was but a quick four hour flight from Dubai, it wasn't hard to convince Rahul to join us for his first real vacation since moving to India. Well, he took one day off. But you have to start somewhere.
Anyways, Rahul arrived in the middle of our first full day there, so we did the very American thing to celebrate by going out for burgers. And luckily there were a ton of places to go right outside our hotel. Part of reason we did is was because we missed burgers, and part of it was because Rahul couldn't get beef in India. You know the cow thing and all. The above was our Coke in Arabic.
After dinner, we were deciding what to do, and everyone decided they wanted to see the Burj Al-Arab, aka, the only seven star hotel in the world. It does and is meant to look like a sail, as seen above, and it is ridiculous. Now, I had actually talked to the concierge about going to see the hotel, and well, the prospects were apparently dim. First, as you can see, you can't walk there. There is a road leading up to the island which the hotel is on. Second, you can't enter the road unless you have a reservation. The cheapest suites are $2,500 per night, and unlike our hotel, they don't offer discounts. To be fair, the suites include your own butler and you can fly in on helicopter (the landing pad is on the upper right part of the hotel). Third, the cheapest reservation you can get is for tea... which costs $200 per person. We actually considered doing the last thing, just to say we had been, but then we decided there were better ways to waste money.
So, instead, the concierge suggested we go to the Madinat Jumeirah, which is the hotel complex you see directly across from the Burj Al-Arab. He said we could see the sail from there, and they also had some bars and clubs that Westerners frequented. Sounded good to us!
Accordingly, we hopped in a cab, and 20 dirhams later (about 6 dollars) we were at the Madinat Jumeirah. I found out later that this is where my friend Mark had stayed, and in hindsight, it is probably where we should have stayed as (1) it is closer to the sights and (2) it is the most fun hotel. The cab ride was a bit amusing in that the driver was a young dude who looked a little startled when a Desi (common), a Westerner (also common), and an Asian (not so common) jumped in together (definitely not common). He asked where we were from and when we answered U.S., he was sort of impressed. Again, not the reaction we were expecting.
Which brings me to alcohol in Dubai. The UAE is, of course, a muslim country, so technically, people are not supposed to drink. However, the UAE, and particularly Dubai, wants to draw Westerners, and of course, it's difficult to lure such people without giving them the prospect of an occasional brew. So, the UAE allows alcohol sales at the airports and at bar/restaurants situated within hotels only. And this is not all hotels, as our hotel did not, in fact, sell alcohol (since it was supposed to be a condo), but if you want to drink, you have to go to a hotel. At least officially. More on that in a future post.
So, we enter the Madinat and immediately get lost. There are signs pointing to various places, and they are in English, but they are names presumably of restaurants, shops, and bars all jumbled into one, and so we can't tell one from the other. Fortunately, we do see a lot of 20 to 30 year old Europeans all over the place, laughing about as they walk down the halls. Frankly, it could have been any really nice resort in Europe. So clearly, we had found the right place to hang. We could have asked for directions, but were a bit dumbfounded for the moment, so wandered around the hotel for a bit, through a few restaurants (to the surprise of the people working there), until we see an outdoor courtyard. We finally find a bar, but we are more interested in the courtyard, so we walk our way through the bar to the courtyard.
And there she sparkled... the Burj Al Arab. And an outdoor hookah bar! Excited, we pulled up into one of the lounge areas, and immediately ordered some beers and a hookah pipe. The weather was perfect, as it apparantly always is (if you check weather.com, it literally says a high of 100 and a low of 80 for every single day... oh, and sunny), so we relaxed in the shadow of the great sail.
Resha and William, happy... and clean!
Me right before cleaning up at the hotel. I haven't shaved for 13 days and showered only once.
Me after I look human again. And Rahul!
Every seat at the lounge is taken, but it's not crowded at all, even though it is a Friday. Anyways, we find out later that they close at midnight, but then suggest that we go to one of the clubs in the hotel. We find a club with scantily clad ladies, neon lights, and boom-boom sounds, but decide we haven't quite recovered yet enough or a club (and Rahul is tired from working and traveling and jet-lagging), so we pass on the clubs and head back to our hotel. William, Rahul, and I have a few drinks at the Tiki bar at the hotel next door, while Resha calls it an earlyish evening.
I leave you with an awesome night view of the Burj Al Arab on our way out of the Madinat Jumeirah. If I go back, I will definitely stay there. Still, considering how tired we still are from the climb, I think we had a productive day. Wait until you see the next day, however...
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