Vol 39 Dubai

Sigh. How I wish I could tell you my first trip to Dubai, the largest city in the UAE, (United Arab Emirates), was a wonderful, wild success, full of laughter and shopping and scenery. But it just wasn’t. Though there was some shopping.

My friend Mahfoodh and I, (yes, I know, I used to spell his name without the “h” on the end, but this is closer to how it is pronounced), had agreed to get an early, 6am start. I got up at 5 to get ready and called him at 5:30 to make sure he was up. No answer. I texted him. No answer. I called again. No answer. Again, again, again. I started getting pissy. I texted him again alleging to disrespect. He finally called at 8:30. He had gotten up early, for morning prayers, then fallen asleep on his prayer rug. His phone was not with him. We hit the road at 9am- him apologetic and quiet, me pissy and quiet. I was just so disappointed to be hitting the road so late. It takes at least 4 hours to get there and here in the gulf region all businesses close in the afternoon for “siesta”. So we were going to get there just in time for everything to close.

Eventually we started chatting and he got me laughing again. We hit the first border crossing, where we had to show ID and pay an exit fee from Oman. Then, a bit down the road we hit another post where we had to show ID and the receipt that we had paid our exit fee. Then a bit more down the road we hit another post where we had to get out of the car, buy 10 days worth of car insurance at one booth to drive in the UAE, then go to another booth to prove we had bought the insurance and to show my passport, Oman ID and road pass. Resident aliens in Gulf countries all must have a road pass to travel by car from country to country. You have to have oodles of ID, passport photos and a letter of permission from your employer to get one.

Then we were in the UAE. A few miles later, we were back in Oman. A few miles later, we were back in the UAE. On a map the border zig-zags across the highway. No border crossings though. Just switching back and forth between countries.

And, of course, the UAE looked exactly the same as Oman. I was a bit disappointed. But then, after just a few miles, I freaked out- started shrieking for him to pull over. Sand dunes! I know it’s silly, but it’s one of the things I’ve wanted to see since I arrived. And he knew that and so he purposefully didn’t tell me we would drive through a large patch of desert. I was ecstatic. They were huge and golden/orange/red. And sprawling. And hot. And he wouldn’t pull over! He was hell bent on getting me to Dubai. I took some video out the window, but I’m afraid it’s pretty crappy. The side window has tinting on it so I can’t shoot through it and I can’t open it because it’d be too loud. So I just stared and stared.

When I saw camels in the dunes I freaked out until Mahfoodh pulled over. You may call me a dorky Canadian girl, but I think anyone in my position would have pulled over. It was camels. In the dunes. ‘Nuf said.

We rolled into the outskirts of Dubai around 1:30 or 2 in the afternoon and found the big mall that the IKEA is attached to. Happily, the mall and IKEA were open. We wondered through the mall briefly where Mahfoodh asked if I wanted to check the shoe stores to see if they carried my size. The first two didn’t but then, a minor miracle- the Naturalizer store had 4 pairs in my size, one of which was not ugly. After 6 months, I finally have a new pair of shoes. I freely admit I have a thing for shoes. Buck used to restrict me to buying one pair of shoes a month. When he worked overtime he’d jokingly call it “shoe money”. In one of the more stupid decisions in my life I left all of my cute shoes in Washington, packed in a box, buried somewhere in my attic. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of at least one pair of my shoes. I’ve been in shoe withdrawal since I got here and it hasn’t gotten any easier. I tell you all of this so that you can understand my happiness upon finding shoes, in my size, that weren’t men’s shoes and weren’t ugly.

Then on to IKEA. We wandered through the showroom floor and I’m sorry to report, the Dubai IKEA is EXACTLY like every other IKEA I’ve ever been to. Only the prices were different. They are lower. I had my sister, Michele, on the phone last month and we were comparing prices from our IKEA catalogs. After we made it through the showrooms, we had lunch in the cafeteria, where for some reason, perhaps ravenous hunger, Mahfoodh ordered 3 meals and 2 drinks.

And he ate almost all of it.

At this point we discussed him going to Sharjah, the next city over, to hunt down an engine for his Volkswagon Beetle, while I finished my IKEA shopping. “No, no”, said he. “I’ll have a nap in the car then wander around in the mall. Take your time.” "ok. I said". "I shouldn't be too long". Honestly, what was I thinking? Have you ever made it out of IKEA in less than 2 hours? And I had an entire apartment to furnish! It is with great embarrassment that I must admit, (because he’s going to read this and he’ll correct me if I don’t), that I was in IKEA for 5 ½ hours. But some of that was eating lunch. Does that count? And then we took my overfilled shopping cart and two big trolleys to the SUV and stuffed it to the gills. Mahfoodh was keen to get to Sharjah before the auto wreckers closed at 8 or 9pm. Because businesses all close in the afternoon, they stay open late when they re-open. So we hit the road. And then the road hit us. In a stroke of unbelievable bad luck we drove over a piece of re-bar on the side of the road, instantly blowing out the tire.

So now we’re stuck. On the side of the highway. In the desert. With a flat. And the spare is buried under all that IKEA stuff, which has now become all that stupid IKEA stuff. We limped the car a bit up the road to the next exit, where we could see a gas station. But there was no garage, just gas. We talked a couple of Afgani guys into emptying the stupid IKEA stuff out of the car and changing the flat. This is when we discovered there was no jack in the car. This might be a good time to inform you that the temperature that day was around 43C. That’s 110F for you Americans. So we’re sweating our brains out and I suggested to Mahfoodh that now would be a good time to start swearing. “F*@k” he replied.

At this point a very nice Indian man came along to see if he could help. He had a jack and we were back in business. The Afgani guys got the tire changed and the stupid IKEA stuff loaded back in. We gave them all the money I had left and some sodas and hit the road to Sharjah where we promptly ran smack into a traffic jam.

Poor Mahfoodh. He drove all the way to Dubai, waited around for me at IKEA, and now we were stuck in traffic so bad he was sure we would never make it to the wreckers by 9. And we didn’t. But they were open when we finally got there anyway.

A word about the way stores work here in the gulf. They clump together. If you need a computer store, you go to one street and there are a bunch of them. Need your cell phone repaired? There’re 5 stores in a row that can help you. Need a new engine for your super cool Beetle, (it’s the only one I’ve seen in Muscat), go to this street in Sharjah. There were 5 shops in a row selling Volkswagen parts. I jumped out while he looked for parking and asked at each one for an engine. The last shop had one. They also had a giant cockroach with 4inch antennae that put my measly roaches to shame. I fetched Mahfoodh and then went and sat in the car, with the air conditioning on, while he negotiated a price.

By the time we got out of Sharjah and back on the road we decided to just head home. I never saw Dubai. It’s beautiful skyline and waterfront. We were tired. And stinky. And hungry. And broke. And a bit grumpy.

We stopped in Mahfoodh’s village, an hour from Muscat, to eat and we ran into his best friend, Ahmed, and 3 of Ahmed’s sisters. They were in high spirits. The girls all but begged me to come spend the night with them. They want to practice their English and yak about the US. They were enthusiastically insistent. You know I don’t like to refuse invitations, but it was 2:30am at this point and we just wanted to get the hell home. I promised the girls I would return in a couple of weeks to spend the night with them. Future blog perhaps. I fell into bed at 4am and slept until 1pm the next day.

So, ok, there was some laughter and shopping and scenery on my trip to Dubai but it was not a wonderful, wild success. I do have a chair now though. And a dining set. And, and, and. Things are looking up in my once empty apartment. Next weekend I’m off to Abu Dhabi, the second largest city in the UAE, to meet my friend Brian, from Seattle, and do a little more shopping at the IKEA there. I ran out of room in the SUV in Dubai...

By the way, the bing-bong, bing-bong noise you hear when we're driving is not a seatbelt reminding alarm. We're wearing our seatbelts. It's the alarm that goes off whenever you go more than 12okmph, the maximum speed limit on highways. Every car here bing-bongs when speeding. Mahfoodh generally goes 130kmph, so you'd better believe I wear my seatbelt.