To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries
- Aldous Huxley

Wednesday 31 July 2013

Day 5 - Goodbye Dubai, Hello Israel


Today we woke up at 4am, yeah that’s right, to head to the airport to catch a flight to Israel via Istanbul (since you cannot fly directly to Israel from the UAE for whatever political reason). Even at 4am it was hotter than Satan’s sauna and just as sweaty. But the roads were empty (because no sane person would be awake) and it was a quick ride to the airport, which was also fairly empty.
So far, so good.
We checked in and bordered 2 hours later onto Turkish Air and found the 5-hour flight quite pleasant with excellent food. We descended into Turkey and got some amazing views of Istanbul. I never realized it was so big, but it seems as if the city stretches on in all directions forever. Stunning city from the air and I can’t wait to visit it next year.

I didn't have my camera on me so this is the closet thing to Turkey you're getting

We went through transit and onto another Turkish Air flight, meeting a very happy Israeli ticket checker/question-why-you’re-going-and-when-you’re-leaving guy which was surprising as I had the perception all Israeli people, especially officials, were serious, no-nonsense types.
The flight was a little bumpy and I could have done without Danni smelling out the airplane and putting herself on the Turkish Airlines no-fly list as a biochemical weapon (she blames the tabbouleh).

Passport control was going to be our biggest issue since some countries won’t let you enter if you have an Israel stamp in your passport, we were all prepared with the reason why we didn’t want a stamp in the passport but our passport control guy greeted us with a “G’day” and told us they no longer stamp passports. So that was reliving and would not prove any further headaches.

A nice, easy going airport (even if it is limited in English) allowed us an easy escape into a taxi where we were told it would cost 150ILS (Israel Shekel) and tightass trying to argue it down but to no avail (we could have risked the meter but might have cost more due to traffic and us being foreigners and prone to taxi scams (see Dubai) we didn’t really have much of a choice.
We arrived at our hotel and had a brief glimpse of the city. Naturally it’s no Dubai and it looks like an old city but it has character. We went for a walk and found the packed out beach only a few blocks from us and the water was beautiful, not the boiling bath water of Dubai but a cool, refreshing feeling on a hot Isreali day (32 degrees today).

It would be the perfect beach...if not for the sand.

We found a restaurant along the beach and had a delicious dinner with the best chicken wings we’ve ever had and took a quick dip in the ocean before having a gelati and heading back to our room.
It's only been half a day but we are both impressed by Israel as long as you can look past the cosmetic value of the city itself and appreciate it's history, the people and the food and beaches.

So delicious I even ate the fork

Tomorrow is a big day as we tour Nazareth, Tiberias and the Sea of Galillee.

Tuesday 30 July 2013

Dubai Day 3 - Watersports and sharks


DAY 3

I woke up with a sore throat and cursed God, Allah, sand, heat and everything else for getting a sore throat where it’s too damn hot for germs to live.  Also it was a day for Scuba Diving, nothing would stop me.
We got ready and headed to Atlantis, the Palm. The amazingly huge and probably out-of-my-price range expensive hotel with also has a waterpark attached to it. We drove past the hotel and on to Al-boom diving where we were given the introduction to what we’re doing, how many Sharks and all the usual stuff for diving. Suited up and took a golf cart to the water park where the Aquarium is.
The water was refreshingly cool and horribly salty. I, as usual, was underweighted but eventually managed to descend enough to hit the bottom. The Aquaventure aquarium isn’t the biggest aquarium going around, and it’s depth is about 6.4m at it’s lowest point but it has 8 different types of sharks, lots of different rays and lots of fish, including an annoying one that is apparently eating the concrete (guess he needs to toughen up). I had my GoPro ready and finally got to use my underwater camera without it stuffing up on me. I would say the video is awesome but somehow I managed to delete it. But it did take 17000 photos, so that’s going to be fun to go through.

D'awww

The dive lasted 30 -35 minutes and it was amazing fun, it was good to get back into it and see all the different sharks and interact with the other marine life. After we finished the dive, we headed back to the dive center (and a brief stop to see what 40-degree heated beach water feels like) and took a shuttle to the Aquaventure park.


Spotted Eagle Ray

This park is amazing. It’s huge and has a lot of different slides and rapids and you can go single or with a partner in a tube. It also has a giant slide where you can go up to 100km/h. More on that in a sec.
The great part of going at this time of year is that, although it is insanely hot, it wasn’t busy and they have attendants everywhere who help you out. Within 10 minutes we’d gone through 3 rides, compare that to Wet N Wild and you’d be lucky to be halfway through the line on the first ride in 10 minutes.
Danielle chickened out on the giant slide, but I didn’t. The line wasn’t too bad and I didn’t know what to expect but it is crazy. I have it on video, so I will upload it. But it’s so hard to explain what the feeling was like, and the view was amazing. I also happened to lose my hat halfway through that ride.
Aquaventure is fairly expensive, but it is definitely worth it. It’s incredibly fun and I would do it again in a heartbeat.


He wanted to be left alone. I wouldn't until he posed. A stand off ensued.

Despite all the fun I’d had, I was still sick and the headache started to hit me then, as well as a sore throat and the hot weather, we took a taxi for the Emirates Mall and then the Dubai Mall.
Man-o-man, both of these Malls put any shopping center I’ve been to, to shame. Like everything in Dubai, they are huge. There would be over 1000 shops easily and you’ll get a good workout. They’re both 3 levels high and about 4 billion kilometers long.  We walked so much we’d put Moses to shame, it was long but there is a lot to do. Dubai Mall is smart about how it is set up. They have an area for all their electronic stores, and an area for fashion. It saves a lot of time if you ever go for one specific reason. Emirates is all over the place like any other Shopping Center, but both are amazing.
Also, ladies (if any of you actually read this), if you go, leave your man in a good spot, not in the lingerie section of H&M scratching himself and staring at a mannequin wearing a g-string.


Isn't he cute?

After the long long walks and the ever-increasing headache, we ate at Outback Streakhouse, the most Aussie restaurant in the world, and took the train back to our hotel.

A thing about public transport in Dubai, it’s incredible. The trains are driverless yet always arrive on time and every 10 minutes, spacious, and quick. They don’t have trams to block roads and even the bus shelters have air-conditioning. Our bus shelters get their airflow from smashed windows by drunken morons.

Dubai - Day 2 & 4 (Malls, Malls, everywhere!)


DAY 2

Dubai is bat-shit crazy. And I mean this in the nicest way possible.

Today we took a tour of the city. I mentioned in my previous entry that I hadn’t seen the “rich” part of Dubai, but now I have and wowzers they sure love to splurge.
The buildings are huge, opulent, and probably worth more than the entire suburb of South Morang put together (minus Walking Jesus). It is an architect’s wet dream. They have literally built a community in the desert and the emirates are treated like kings. Forget what you may think about Muslim countries because I am pretty sure Dubai said we’ll take the good stuff from our religion but still build a place for man, woman and child, foreign or not.

Kinda like this

Emirate nationals are given land, they don’t pay for it, they are given it. Given! Foreigners cannot purchase land, they lease properties for a maximum of 99 years. Tiger Woods, Michael Schumaker, etc are a couple of many famous people who have leases on houses here and live in it. Though I am guessing they do not frequent very often during summer.
If an Emirate man is to wed an Emirate woman, the government gives them 70,000AED towards the wedding, although weddings usually cost around $80,000 US.
If you have an old car, you are actually required to purchase a new one, or you get a fine. Cars are cheap though, you can buy a 6-month old Toyota Camry for around $4000 US. We could buy 5 of those for the price of one in Australia.
Their medical system is free (for nationals), paid for by the government and they have a driver-less train system that runs better than Metro could ever dream about.

I do say this, all of the above applies to citizens of the Emirates, which accounts for about 13% of the total population.

But the best part is, they do not pay any tax at all. They pay no income tax, they don’t pay tax on goods. Gold is cheap. Cars are cheap, it is actually more expensive to own a camel than a car. But the cost of living is high, though not higher than Australia.

The United Arab Emirates is the seventh richest country in the world. Qatar is the richest due to their natural gas and the ability to undermine FIFA in bidding for the World Cup. Dubai makes their money on oil. However Dubai only has enough oil for the next 10  -15 years so they are doing what no Western government has ever done. They are future proofing. They are building all these buildings, creating these water parks to attract tourism and keep Dubai thriving.

I learned all this on our tour. The tour took us to the height of decadence, the Burj Al-Arab, the world’s only 7-star hotel who have a menu where guests can choose their pillows (because apparently there are 70 different types and you know, if you can afford to stay there you are probably picky enough to have a specific pillow in mind).

Like everything else in Dubai, this lake is man-made.

Unfortunately we did not go in and afterwards we moved on to the Jumeriah Mosque where we also did not go inside (sensing a theme here?) but it is an amazing looking building.
The tour moved onto the Dubai Museum where, like all other Museums it showed the history of Dubai from early human findings to foundation. It was interesting but nothing memorable.

The Jumeriah Mosque

Next we took a boat across the river to a souk (market) where we got to browse stall after stall of Middle Eastern spices and stall after stall of people really wanting to sell me their spices (that isn’t innuendo) and a few others transporting me back to Thailand where we could buy “authentic” handbags, watches, t-shirts etc in a secret back room more likely to hold bacon than anything authentic.

After we went to the Dubai City of Gold where they import gold from Australia and South Africa yet it is cheaper in Dubai than it is in Australia (Seriously). Aside from the same people trying to sell me authentic handbags, watches etc, they have a large number of stores with gold (legit) and watches (also legit) for ridiculously low prices and you can haggle to get even lower prices.

I couldn't haggle this down past 300 million.

DAY 4 – Abu Dhabi

So today we took a looooong tour in hellish conditions to Abu Dhabi. Apparently Dubai and Abu Dhabi have a dick-measuring contest to see who could outdo each other in the most ridiculously huge city in the world.
After a 2-hour drive and a 15-minute wait for a rude couple who decided that everyone could wait for them to finish breakfast we arrived at our first destination, the Abu Dhabi Mosque.
The Abu Dhabi Mosque is the biggest Mosque in the UAE with the world’s biggest chandelier, the world’s biggest dome (indoor and out) and the world’s biggest carpet (that took 2 years and many bloody fingers to weave). I’m not a Muslim, and I’m definitely not big on architecture but the Mosque is amazing. Naturally it is massive, it has something like 100 domes and lots of gold built into the columns.  It can hold 41,000 praying Muslims at once. The inside is a marvel, including the carpet, it has amazing designs etched into the columns and walls.
The Mosque was actually built by the Sheik using his own personal funds which is a pretty amazing gesture.


Almost had another convert

Next on the tour was a museum of something, I didn’t even go inside and after that was another Museum, this one was about the Sheik lotsanames (the one who united the country). The guy, while seemingly gun happy, seemed like a genuinely good guy.

The world's largest Chandelier. Not pictured: Me swinging off it. 

Afterwards we went to the Marina Mall (which has nothing on the Dubai or Emirates Mall) to get lunch, which is pretty pointless during Ramadan since nothing is open and you can’t eat in public. But we were able to grab some things from the supermarket and eat on the bus (since that is allowed) and we moved on to a view of the Crown Prince’s old palace and currently being built, new palace and then headed home.

We all need a house this big

We hit the hay pretty early since we have to get up at 4am to get to the airport. Next stop  (and hopefully colder) is Israel

Saturday 27 July 2013

Dubai Day 1 - I am quite possibly the world's greatest sandboarder.


Dubai – Day 1

After a long long flight, but well worth it since we got upgraded to emergency seating which means extra leg room since we both clearly need it, and then an insanely short one, we finally arrived in Dubai via Doha, Qatar.


 Sunrise over Doha, Qatar


And boy is it hot and humid. Exited the surprisingly empty airport quick smart with no fuss from Customs, baggage ready to go and best of all. No lines. Anywhere (learn from this Australia!), and found my glasses steaming up it was that humid.

 The face of a guy who got an upgrade to extra leg room

Dubai is not what I thought it would be (well except the heat), aside from one asshole scammer at the airport, the people we have come across have been incredibly polite and helpful. Being an apparently strict Muslim country, I didn't really expect the people to be so friendly. I expected politeness and the usual hospitality tourists get in most other countries, but so far, this has been above the norm in my experiences. 
I did expect more opulence than there is, although so far I haven’t been into the “rich” part of Dubai, the “old” part is, while clean, surprisingly slumish. Buildings sit on top of each other and so close you’d be forgiven if you thought you were in the slums of India.

 But I have seen ridiculously tall buildings.

I guess I had unrealistic expectations for the entire city, which seems to be pretty much impossible. Although it does seem they are trying. I read on a sign at the airport that in 1990 they had 1 high-rise building and now they have 90 or 900 or something like that.
I also thought there wouldn’t be much “Westernisation” but there is the McDonalds and the radio station playing “Western” songs (and much like Australian radio, it will play the same 5 songs throughout the day). Also, and probably for the benefit of the tourists, everyone speaks English and everything is primarily in English. Signs, TV shows, radio stations, advertisements are in English with Arabic translation on the bottom. Not a big thing, but surprising since I thought it would be the other way around.

We arrived at the hotel thinking it was 4pm rather than 10am (good ole jetlag and 16 hours on planes or airports) but were greeted with the abovementioned politeness. We checked in and got an upgrade for being on our honeymoon (shh!) to a higher floor, got the wrong key, went back down, got the right key and entered the room with a pretty good view of the vastness of Dubai (ie: sand).  I went straight to the most important issue first, getting the air-con down to Arctic level. We confirmed our tour for later on in the day, and explored the lobby-level of the hotel, finding the grocery store (and OMG they have bounty ice-creams. Best. Country. Ever!) and the ice skating rink.
But Danny, why does a hotel sitting in the hottest place in the world have a ice-skating rink you ask? Because Dubai, that’s why. That’s the opulence I was expecting everywhere. At least the hotel didn’t disappoint. After learning about Ramadan (not allowed to eat or drink in public during daylight) we promptly respected their beliefs and downed a fruit salad, my oh-so-good Bounty ice-cream and took a 2-hour nap.

Our view from our room. Look at all that sand.

I woke up feeling worse than I did before I went to bed.  Had a shower, still felt like a zombie and got dressed in what felt like slow motion before heading downstairs for wait for our driver for our 4x4 desert safari.

I’ll say it now. It was damn fun. We were picked up first, an young Asian couple were second and an Indian man who looked like he would prefer to be extracting dental floss from a dog’s rectum than being there and his wife were last. We drove about an hour out to the desert-y part of the desert Dubai. There we were met with 3 other cars full of people from different parts of the world (Americans and Germans, and some from India/Pakistan I think) and we went on the wild ride through the desert dunes.  We drove like we were P-platers in a Holden Commodore but with less unnecessary deaths.

Naturally I had my GoPro on for about 25 minutes of it and we had brief stops in between for photos, including a high dune that provided some amazing desert scenery.


After driving through the tour we arrived at a “camp” of sorts where I got to hold a falcon (and was told afterwards it was 10AED to hold him) and saw some camels in a fenced off area.

I wore a matching hat to be accepted into Falcon society.

Not entirely sure of the purpose of this stop we loaded back in arrived at another camp that was more camp-like than the previous one. This one had camels as well, and I got to ride one, it’s surprisingly comfortable. And about as exciting as I sound, though it was cool.
After the thrilling camel ride, it was sandboarding. Now, I’m not one to toot my own horn, but I can safely say I am the best sandboarder to ever grace the sands of Dubai. Never will you see such poise and balance in a beginner sandboarder., unlike a certain partner of mine who screamed and fell on her ass. Naturally I gopro’d this and the video is to come, but in the meantime, marvel at my balance…

The form, the grace, the balance. 

and Danielle falling on her ass


After my perfect sandboarding attempt that brought cheers from the crowd of people watching, I got to hold ANOTHER falcon (two in one day, whose the luckiest guy in the world? This guy)


The falcon didn’t do much but stand on his perch thing and pose for photos. I was hoping he would demonstrate their awesome hunting skills. But alas, I shall have to continue watching National Geographic to marvel at a falcon's hunting skills.
Next came the food. Oh boy it was good and I even tried some new stuff, healthy stuff even.  I won’t elaborate too much on the food. It was delicious and that is all that needs to be said.

Yes mum, I ate my greens.

It was during dinner I reflected on sand and how gosh-darn freaking annoying it is. Even with thongs on, it’s annoying. Going up sand dunes is about 10 times tougher than it is going up a normal hill of similar incline. It’s hot and it gets everywhere. My camera is full of sand particles, and it probably got into my food. It bad at a beach, it’s worse in a 40-degree desert, but the silver lining is it is good for weight loss. We (and everyone else I assume) sweated so much I could have filled an ocean with it’s own salt water.

After dinner we were treated to a dance of such impressive twirling performance, Fox Sports would need its RPM indicator to tell how many revolutions he did per minute. I don’t know how he did it, but it was a mightily impressive display of endurance and how to not get dizzy when turning so often while dancing. As someone who loves a good twirl on his chair, I could learn a thing from this guy.



We were then to depart at around 8.30pm. The sun had settled and the road was busier now than it was during the day. Apparently during Ramadan stores are open until the early hours of the morning (for example we have booked a restaurant for 9.00pm tomorrow which is when it opens) so those who are fasting (I call them Ramandanpires) were out and about and the traffic congestion showed, but there roads are impressive and more importantly they don’t have trams or one-lane roads with traffic lights every 2-seconds leading out of the city (yes I am looking at your Plenty Road!).

I was going to end this with another photo of Danni falling off her sandboard but the editor-in-chief yelled at me so here’s a photo of camels on the dunes.