Day 16.1: Welcome to 2030...

... with funky futuristic buildings and other crazy infrastructure in Dubai.

For example, what the heck is that?

Before I get into that, however, a word from our other blogs.

Sergey's Karibuni Tales continues with Mozambique and Kenya.

Ginger has been busy with insights on life lately, while Nithin always has some great philosophizing going on.

And last, but not least, at Neal's request, his first appearance on mikekimtravels...

... in snowy Utah! He is on the left and says hello, along with Stu (in yellow helmet and also first appearance), Eric (of eating live octopus fame), and Forrest, who is actually saying hello.

Here is a picture of the crew (Neal on the right) at a lip of the crater halfway down Junior's Powder Paradise on the left side of the below Mineral Basin map at Snowbird Ski Resort. It's been a low-snow global warming kind of winter in Utah, but we lucked out into a couple storms right before we got there, so all the slopes were open and very passable, especially to this East Coast skier used to ice! Cool view on the above photo aye?

(Photo courtesy of Snowbird.com)

Now Mineral Basin is probably my favorite run in Utah, but a close second is Honeycomb Canyon at Solitude Ski Resort, which is pictured below with Eric at the bottom. Thanks for the intro Oppolds!

Don't let the camera work fool you. That mountain behind Eric is over 1,500 feet high, and the canyon is pretty narrow; I am actually about halfway up the wall on the other side. Eric and I came down the slope to the left. All the skiers were aiming for the slope in the middle, but got lost in the trees, and so had to do some touch-and-go glading. Nevertheless, they survived.

(Courtesy of skisolitude.com)

The canyon closes way early and is difficult to get to, so if you have the chance, do it often!

Okay, back to the land of sand.

What the heck is this?

Is it the cannon portion of the Terminator T-X from Terminator: Rise of the Machines? Sadly, no. Although she is smokin'.

Is it one of Ironhide's cannons from Michael Bay's Transformers? Closer, but no cigar.

(Courtesy of DV8PDX@AOL.COM)

Ahha! So is it the engine from the U.S.S. Kelvin of the Star Trek reboot? Very, very close. But still, sadly no. Although I would not be surprised if it did not have at least a little influence on the design.

The answer in a bit. What, you thought it would be that easy?

So, we woke up on Day 16 and decided it was finally time to get some "culture" and explore the center/historic/business district of Dubai, better known as Deira. After breakfast, we made our way to the subway. On the way, we passed the canal, so we stopped to admire the crazy ultra modern buildings everywhere,

Cool triangle building, and one with what looks like a glass tube in a concrete shell.

Chrysler building look alike, complete with tons of empty office space. And two of them to boot!

Can't even begin to explain what the heck those are. But they are cool.

These sort of look like a sprouting plant. I wonder if those are balconies at the top of the white extensions?

As we got the highway, this was the cityscape. What struck me as strange is that in a normal cityscape, you have lower buildings sort of filling in the gaps, and the locations of the buildings are not uniform next to each other. Here, however, you can clearly tell it is planned, which lends it an artificial air. But the designs are still amazing.

Looking down the road, where buildings continue for a loooooooooong way down.

Now, we saw the cool buildings above. But the even stranger thing was all the half finished skyscrapers, with cranes to boot, due to the global downturn. Hit Dubai HARD. When we photographed this, there was no work being done on these buildings, and looked like it had been that way for awhile.

When this twisting building is completed, it will look awesome. Sort of reminds me of the Prudential Tower (better known as "The Prud") in Boston.

We stopped at the bridge over the canal. This is facing north...

... and this is facing south. I think. 50-50.

Me walking. Not much traffic this morning.

William and Resha looking ecstatic... and squinting because the sun is BRIGHT!

And hot.

One thing we quickly noticed is that once you got even 100 meters away from the beach and the slight ocean breeze, the temperature quickly got very hot. In fact, the weather report said 100 degrees and sunny each and every day we were there (with a low of 80), and we could definitely feel that now.

After walking about half a mile, however, we finally reached our destination... and the answer to my trivia question.

That crazy futuristic looking thing above is a subway station of the Dubai Metro. We are at the Dubai Marina station. The Red Line sort of follows the coast and Sheikh Zayed Road, while the Green Line goes inland from Deira. In a bit of super-duper future planning, however, on our way to the Jebel Ali Golf Resort & Spa, we passed a bunch of these stations in the middle of nowhere with nothing around them. Wonder if the trains actually go that far?

Anyways, here is the station. Perhaps not as futuristic as the exterior, but squeaky clean nonetheless. And notice how sweaty I am. I wasn't joking. The 15 minute walk was HOT!

We bought our tickets at the kiosk to the right. The price? 2 dirhams - or about 60 cents. For a 30 minute ride. Talk about subsidies!

Ecstatic William.

The doors to the station while we wait for the train. Also super modern. They installed these things in Seoul on the busy lines to prevent people from being shoved on to the tracks. Don't think they have that problem here.

Our station. And map. We are near the Palm Tree, and we are heading out to where the Green Line crosses the Red Line.

This is the view out of the front of the station toward Deira.

Finally, the train came and we got on. Interesting crowd. No Emirati that we could see. More of a mix of guest workers, professionals, and tourists. You would think at the low price a lot more workers would ride it, but kind of like the subway in LA, I guess it doesn't really connect where regular people live to where real people need to go.

The Burj Al-Arab sail hotel in the distance. I covered that in a previous post.

Another view of the Burj Al-Arab and the Madinat Jumeirah.

But definitely the highlight of our journey was our proximity to the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, now of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol fame.

(Courtesy of movieblogbuster.com)

I leave you with the below video of a portion of our subway journey. As you can see, Dubai is clearly a strange eclectic mix of immense riches and spectacular buildings like the Burj Khalifa, but also empty lots and half-finished eerie ghost-town skyscrapers filling with sand and dust.

Until next time...

Day 15.1: Pools, Palm Trees, and Peacocks...

... in other words, a Jebel-Ali paradise. Or Aladdin's oasis. Or something along those lines.

Before I begin, however, Sergey has put together an awesome video (movie really - edited and everything!) that details his journey through Africa. It's two hours long, so here is the first 30 minutes for now.

Okay, back to the tale.

Now, we are staying at the Oasis Beach Tower, which is one of the Jebel Ali empire. And this Jebel Ali thing is a bit weird. Ostensibly, Jebel Ali is a small port town 35 miles to the southwest of Dubai proper. But it is also a company. I am not sure where one ends and one begins. Perhaps it's sort of like a keiretsu, chaebol, or other type of horizontal conglomerate?

View Larger Map

Anyways, within Jebel Ali is a free trade zone which has a huge influx of companies who wish to, you know, trade freely. And just past the free trade zone is Jebel Ali Golf Resort and Spa which, because we were staying in Jebel Ali land, we had access to. Now, it's not the easiest place to get to. It's really past where cabs go, and there were only two shuttles from our hotel daily, so we really had to make sure we got up early enough to catch the 9:30AM shuttle. Ha. Hey, it's vacation. We shouldn't "have" to do anything.

So anyways, we got on the shuttle and proceeded to drive 45 minutes into what seemed like a Mad Max wasteland. Sure we were still on a ten lane highway, but the highway eventually just entered the desert spotted with drab buildings like the above (I think they are apartments for guest workers), and the Jebel Ali Free Zone on the oceanside. Eventually, however, we turned off the highway and headed a few miles straight toward what could only be a resort in the distance...

... and it was. Tada! The crown jewel of the Jebel Ali empire (or so we would like to think). We were very excited.

We went through the hotel, and "checked in" with no problems. We then made our way downstairs until we exited at the pool. Huzzah! This is the life!

William and Resha are very excited. Can't you tell? We considered staying at the pool, but as we looked past it, a big phat Gulf with immaculately manicured grass next to a picturesque beach beckoned. So, we made our way down.

When we got there, we remembered we were in the Middle East, and that it was very hot. 100 degrees everyday, after all. There were a lot of chairs, but we looked around for a couple with umbrellas. Unfortunately, all the ones with umbrellas appeared to be taken. So, as we were looking around cluelessly, a very nice Philipino came up to us and asked us if we wanted some chairs. We said yes, but that we were looking for some with umbrellas. To that he said "no problem. I will give you the umbrellas, so just let me know where you would like to sit. Would you like towels also?" Awesome.

We picked some chairs in the second row from the beach, directly under some palm trees and next to an artificially running stream.

There was this German family in front of us. At least I think they were German from their gutteral speech patterns.

Our pad for the next few hours.

William immediately settled into his book... something about Odysseus or Ulysses. And no, he is not wearing a shirt (kidding, kidding, kidding).

As luck would have it, we had picked a spot that was also relatively close to the bar. I immediately took the opportunity to order a watered down daiquiri for about 40 dirhams (10 dollars). Resort pricing at its best.

A panoramic of our spot... our home for the next couple hours.

Cool palm trees.

As you can see in the above photos, in the distance there were these weird building like objects.

A closer look reveals that they are bridge pylons. Confused us for a bit, but looking at the above map, it now makes sense. That is the Palm Jebel Ali, and those are pylons for the road they were building to and from the island. I don't know if they have made more of it now, but at the time we were there, again, Mad Max wasteland.

I just liked the way the shawl flowed in the wind, and was taken just a second before we saw...

... the peacock! Or peacocks, should I say. Our neighbor was clearly as excited as we were.

Geez, strut around like you own the place, why don't ya?

I took this photo to show the peacock, but also to show the cranes just past our beach in the Jebel Ali Free Zone. Sort of an eyesore like the bridge pylons, I guess it's sort of like Manhattan Beach in Los Angeles being right next to the Chevron refinery. There is only so much coastline.

Closeup of senor Peacock.

Stopping to wonder what is up with William. Now those, peacocks were cool, but they had nothing on this guy (or gal, I didn't look).

True blue, and purty.

Also taking a view of William, you peacock-magnet you.

That is some true blue.

But the cutest one of all was, of course, the mother and child combo. Pretty awesome. At first we thought it was a bit weird that peacocks were wandering around, but then we later realized it's the symbol of the Jebel Ali Resort. Although when I was at Ko Olina Resort in Hawaii, they had peacocks also, so maybe it's a paradise resort thing?

There were also a few things in the water. Sailboats we sort of expected. Kind of close to the shore, but not unexpected.

Planes, on the other hand, were a bit of a surprise... and surprisingly close. I guess this is what happens when you have a country relatively lawyer free.

Since we were at the beach, we of course had to spend some time in the sand. But not too much, what with that Middle East sun and all. I think William is already a lobster here.

A view of the resort looking roughly east...

... and another looking roughly west. Hard to tell if this was manmade, or if it was just sand dunes that happened to meet ocean.

A panorama.

The resort hotel and the Moon rising over it. Somehow the Moon always looks larger in person.

Chairs and palm trees as far as the eye can see.

Underutilized beach volleyball nets. In fact, the whole resort was pretty empty, which was fine with us. Guess October isn't peak vacation season?

Yet another Cornholio.

Anyways, eventually fun time came to and end, so we waited to catch the bus. We had to get out there early, since the 5:30 bus was the last one for the day, and I don't even want to know what the rack rate is for a room here at an all-inclusive resort.

So long Jebel Ali, we hardly knew ya...

... and hello steak! Or lamb shank, in my instance. We had been eating relatively pedestrian up to this point, so we decided to indulge this night with some Australian cuts. We were all in agreement, however, that American beef tastes better. America rules!

And with that picture, Resha and I (and William) bid you adieu until next week...

Hawaii Preview...

... Merry (Belated) New Years from the Aloha State...

... where they take the holidays surprisingly seriously (with an island twist, of course)...

... given the utter (unsurprising) lack of anything resembling snow.

What was also a little surprising was the relative lack of beach time in favor the mountains. Who knew Oahu had the mountains from Lost?

And I must say I really enjoyed Hawaiian cuisine, particularly the ubiquitousness of Tuna, for which Hawaii is one the world epicenters, and Spam.

The winter waves on the North Shore were satisfyingly violent... too violent in fact, for surfing...

... but the scenery was nonetheless breathtaking. Thus, I leave this teaser with a picture of Euni over Makapu'u Point. Don't worry, she made it back alive... at least in body, if not in mind. ;)