¦ dialling in from Umm Suqeim #, Dubai ¦
01:34 UAE, Sunday 28th Feb 2010.
I'm hunched forward in a big L-shaped settee, firm but soft
oatmeal fabric, white ceramic tiles beneath my bare feet, mercifully cool
against the intense heat and humidity of the night. I'm in a large open plan lounge / dining
room. Sliding glass doors to my left
open up into a walled garden... a wooden gate leads into an alley formed by
high wooden fencing, the alley zig-zags around various properties and ends in a
large swimming pool. The house itself is
all on one floor. Lots of space. I'm about to go to bed, then up in a handful
of hours to catch a flight back to the UK.
Dubai
is a bizarre and yet amazing location.
I'll certainly come back. I could
even live / work out here for a couple years if the direction of my life went
that way.
Jo and I travelled out there to see the place, and were
looked after by Jo's very lovely and wealthy friends H & C; a married
couple in their mid-thirties who have climbed above the middle-rungs in
international corporate world.
Dubai...
Vast size. Far beyond
anything I'd ever imagined. Looking at
the spare tourist map H & C gave us when we arrived, I figured the distance
their house to the Creek was only three or four miles. An hour's walk max? Wrong.
It was a staggering straight line road 15 miles long.
It's a playground for the wealthy, and for architects and
structural engineers.
Building sites and luxury palace's co-existing within the
vast plains of reclaimed desert; there are vast tracts where ground is a
uniform grey brown of crushed concrete, dust and sand, abruptly bordered by
lush green fauna or vibrant pink flora, deliberately placed there and kept
alive by the myriad of thin black water tubes that bring life into the harsh
ground.
Dubai
hasn't even entered spring at the temperatures were already up to 33c.
And then there are well-developed and long established
(couple years) locations, where the building site vibe has faded and rendering
has dried and the staff and servants and guests are in full swing, and it's all
magical and impressive.
Scratch below the surface though, and you hear many stories
of random blisters of shoddy quality or bad workmanship appearing in even the
best places.
This shouldn't spoil your fun. Rather, you should accept it as part of the
character of the place and allow those moments to amuse you.
It's gone through an incredible spurt of rapid
expansion. Dubai should be applauded for it's impressive
enthusiasm and passion for creating the biggest and the best of
everything. In that rapid upward and
outward surge, small blisters of crap are going to form. It's inevitable whenever humans are involved.
Day 1
Arrived late at night after 7 hour flight. Collected by H
& C and driven to their villa. Recent sandstorms had obscured much of the
city-scape view with dust in the air.
Day 2
Woken by the dawn prayers of nearby mosques.
H & C head out to work.
Jo and I are left to own devices.
We throw on some clothes, lock up the villa and head out
into unfamiliar terrain. Yesterday we
were in Bristol
and 2c.
We've decided we're going to do the "Big Bus
Company" tour of the city, get our bearings. We walk to Jumeirah Beach Road and end up getting
taxi to the nearest bus-stop because the distances are so incredibly vast.
Bus Tour is well worth it.
Two decks, upper deck open to elements.
It took us 8 hours, including 1 hour on a Dhow cruise along the creek,
to do the whole circuit... almost no time exploring away from the bus (we
figured that would happen when H & C took us out). You do not get to see much culture by
European standards (not a snobby statement, just a fact, Dubai's only 25 years
old so compare that with the Roman city of Bath in the UK, for example). I had my tunes playing and my eyes open. A lot of blasting along motorways with warm
wind roaring over you, or chugging past large building developments, just
starting or near completion; again, that impression of concrete in the dust
heat, of cranes and cladding... but also the impressive size of it all. The
city's delight in its own growth.
On the Dhow boat cruise, don't expect to be glimpsing the
kind of archaeological treasures you can be shown on a cruise down the Nile in Egypt. The blaring tour-recording talks about
building's built in the 80's and 90's, about a large car park that can hold
2,000 vehicles to relieve pressure on the Souks. It's not enlightening stuff, but it was nice
to just cruise up and down and see the city from another angle.
We got back to H & C's place around 7pm. The sun had
set. Out in the wall garden, C had set
up a BBQ and oil lamps fluttered, throwing off a rich yellow light. We ate and
drank and told stories. We listened to
final prayers from the mosques. Stayed
up late indoors before going to bed.
Day 3
Woken by the dawn prayers of nearby mosques.
Friday / Saturday is the weekend for international ex-pats
in Dubai.
H & C prepared breakfast outside in the walled
garden. Water melon, toast and bacon
sarnies. Mmmmm :o)
C had wanted to take us out in his boat, but Dubai coast guard has a
very strict policy: you must get authorisation on the day you want to go out,
by faxing a form from marina to coast guard office, and then wait, for somebody
to fax the form back with the appropriate stamp. Sometimes the fax just never comes back. Sometimes the marina tells you that the coast
guard isn't letting anyone out that day.
It doesn't matter how big or small your boat is, how rich you are. If the coast guard catch you out without the
stamped faxed form, they can confiscate your boat.
Today was a nobody allowed out day.
We grabbed some supplies and walked five minutes to the vast
beach front. Hazy view of the Burj Al Arab hotel nearby. A sandstorm during the night had kicked up a
lot of dust into the air, so all other high landmarks were hidden for now.
Staggeringly beautiful beach. Crystal
green waters.
Spent a few hours splashing around, swimming out to a large
sandbank, lounging around in the sun.
Then we clambered into C's Range Rover and went for a drive
and a tour. Vast 6 lane motorways where traffic interweaves with random
insanity... almost as crazy as Cairo. A lot of hard acceleration and heavy
breaking.
Drive to one of the new palms under construction. Utterly
huge development. Jaw dropping tracts of
deserted land that is a man made island in the Arabian
Gulf. Concrete. Dust.
Cranes. Half finished palaces and
giant hotels. No people.
Then we blast out of the city and head into the open desert.
C turns off the strip of black top and takes us off-road in
his Range Rover.
We stop. Get out. I
pull off my sandals and run up a dune in my bare feet. It's beautiful, mysterious and potentially
deadly. Our trust and faith is in the
machine that will take us back out of here.
The sun starts to set.
We drive back as night falls upon the city.
Head to Mina a'Salam for dinner. It's a hotel that's more
like some extravagant creation of a medieval Arabian fortress / palace. Lots of soft twinkling lights. £30 for four drinks. A view of the sail, the
Burj Al Arab hotel with its helipad jutting proudly out to sea. To reach the restaurant we take a quick
little boat, one of many, that runs guests between various parts of the hotel
complex through it's internal man-made waterways. Very quaint.
At the restaurant we're escorted to our table, one of a handful on
wooden decking overlooking the beach.. white sands and black glassy water
gleaming in the near-full moonlight overhead.
A great meal, shame about the unusual service. Our waiter was a very short, very
dark-skinned Sri-lanken who I dubbed Boris Karlof, because of his deep baritone
voice, monosyllabic way of speaking, and weirdly intense glaring eye contact.
Day 4
Woken by the dawn prayers of nearby mosques.
A lazy breakfast.
Marmite on toast, fruit smoothies and water melon, sitting out in the
walled enclosure of the garden.
H & C take us to one of the marinas and take us out on
their twin engine speed boat. The weather turns weird however. There's a promise of rain in the air, the sky
turns misty, the horizon vanishes. C
gives me the helm and I grin like a kid in a candy store as I gun this thing
past 4,000 rpm, trim the engines a little and carve great sweeping arcs into
the Gulf of Arabia.We head into the bays formed by the vast development of a new palm area… one of the gargantuan man-made islands. Nobody around. Eerie hazy sky merging with grey brown dust and concrete landscape. It was like something out of Yellow Dawn. Very evocative.
In fact, Dubai has had a massive influence on me for my writing within the Yellow Dawn world. Dubai is like the early days of New Tokyo, perhaps.
That night we head out to the Atlantis. A monstrosity of a hotel perched on the edge
of the original palm... a man-made island nosing far out into the gulf. A round of drinks. And then the heavens open. We wait a while for the rain to ease up a
little. The bar is out on its own. To get back to our car we have to cross a badly
lit pleasure area of swimming pool and sun loungers, go through the main hotel
and out the far side. I come outside the
bar, trot down a couple of steps to the ground area that is reflecting the
moonlight back as if it's a layer of water.
Two steps down and I'm ankle deep.
JESUS! I yelp and jump back, to
much laughter from the others. I'm
convinced I've been a dumb-ass and tried walking into the swimming pool. But
no. In the half hour of rain, the
Atlantis has started to sink. We reach
the hotel and discover the lower floors have started to flood. C and I take off our boots and wade back
through the hotel with bare feet and trousers rolled up, much to the chagrin of
hotel staff who are apologising to everyone we see.
Reaching the car we discover that most of the roads are
flooding.
Even off the island, in the city, which doesn't have the
storm drains to cope with the deluge, surface water is causing mayhem.
We have dinner at the Royal Meridian, with big discounts
because the rain has closed the Arabian restaurant we'd booked into. Instead we have Thai. Probably the best Thai food I've ever eaten
in a restaurant. Nuff said. Bloody perfect.
Back home, with damp feet, full bellies and big smiles, we
chilled out.
Now everyone's gone to bed and here I am, writing this...
Back home tomorrow, due to get to Bristol around 6pm, and 2c. Brrrrr.