Bright lights, big city

by Brian Stirling Saturday, December 05, 2015 3 comments

Photo Source TripAdvisor

If you work in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) you have to have a visa, not too unusual. There's a couple of different types of visas but the one I have right now is a 90 day visa requiring a reset every 30 days. That means that every 30 days I have to get out of the country, even if only for a few minutes or hours and then I can come back. Every 90 days I have to return to Canada and have a new visa issued. Don't bother to ask why this is a requirement, I haven't been able to discover the purpose myself.

Since I came here November 3rd but don't go home until December 19th I needed to reset some time between November 19th and December 3rd. Bad things would happen if I didn't reset in that time frame! What bad things I don't know, but don't intend to find out either! So where to go? It's not like at home where I could spend the afternoon to drive down to Dunseith ND and be back for supper. The closest border is Bahrain, 5 hours away but I'd need a special permit and insurance which I don't have, so a flight it is!

Even though it wasn't the cheapest place to go I decided on Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It seemed a pretty exciting place to go and who knows when I'd get another chance? Hydro gives me $300 to cover visa reset expenses but that doesn't even come close to paying for this trip! An MHI coworker, Jide, needed a visa reset too so we decided to go together. It was a great trip even if it was only for a grand total of 30 hours!

Dubai is a short 2 hr flight from Riyadh so it's a reasonable weekend trip. Dubai started out a few hundred years back as a trading centre in the area, renowned for it's pearls among other things. In the early 1960's oil was discovered and Dubai became a player in the oil market, increasing the countries wealth. There wasn't much oil however and their reserves have declined to the point where only 5% of UAE revenues now come from oil. So they reinvented themselves into a modern trading and tourism centre by lowering tax rates to attract business. It seems to be working because Dubai is a beautiful city and the growth is stunning!

So, what to do in Dubai for only 30 hours? Well, basically it was just a scouting trip for a return later with out families but we still did pretty good. I booked us into the 5-star Al Murooj Rotana which was close to a couple of things we wanted to see like the Dubai Mall and the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. But first we decided to visit Atlantis, a swanky hotel on Palm Jameira one of a couple of man made islands in Dubai. The islands are made of reclaimed sand and formed in the shape of palm fronds. Totally cool to see from the air... which we didn't do :-(. Something for next time I suppose. It's incredible what man can build!

After a quick look around Atlantis it was back to our hotel to get my camera stuff for a killer shot of the Dubai Fountain light show at the base of Burj Khalifa. It's similar to the fountain light show of the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Well, we got to the place I wanted to shoot from but it was an absolute, jam packed, zoo and a good picture was out of the question. So after the show we decided just to check out the Dubai Mall for a bit. Now, I would not normally call a mall an attraction but this place was pretty impressive. It's the worlds largest mall and houses an ice skating rink and an "underwater zoo" (which we call aquarium?) But alas, I'm no "mall rat" and neither was Jide so back to the hotel we went for supper and.... a beer!! Yes, finally outside of Saudi Arabia I was able to get a drink! Pork and alcohol are actually illegal in Saudi Arabia. UAE is still a muslim country but a little more relaxed than KSA, you can get alcohol in but apparently only if it's a restaurant attached to a hotel. A couple of cold Sol's were welcome guests of my belly!

The next morning we had booked a tour of the Burj Khalifa which included a trip to the 148th floor observation deck. This building recently opened in 2010 and stands at 828m high. That's almost 1 km high! There's great views from that high up but so have to see it from several angles, including inside, to really grasp how huge it is. Dubai has a pretty impressive skyline and this building dwarfs it all. If you want to see something interesting check out the Nat Geo video of it's construction.

By noon we finished the Burj Khalifa tour but still had a few hours to kill before our return flight to KSA. As in many cities there's a Big Bus tour for Dubai. Since we didn't really know what else to do that seemed like a good idea and we took the city tour which takes you into old Dubai. I didn't think we'd have time to get off and see much but we found time to tour Dubai Museum located in Al Fahidi Fort, built in 1787, a brief look around the textile souk in Deira and a look at the Dhow's of Dubai Creek.

A souk is a market and the textile souk sells all manner of cloth and fabric. Walking into the souk was like walking into a cloud of insects! We were besieged by every vendor within reach all looking for our money. They're quite inventive too, here's how a conversation went with one merchant;
Merchant: "What are you looking for?"
Me: "Nothing"
Merchant: "Perfect! I have nothing! What colour would you like?"
You have to admire the effort! Textile souk is not the only one either. There's also a gold souk and spice souk where I'm sure you can find just about anything.

As I mentioned previously Dubai is an age old trading centre and for centuries Dubai Creek is where all that trading has taken place. The boats that operate on the creek are called dhows and will travel as far as India or east Africa taking and returning goods for trade. We toured past a row of dhows being loaded and I was surprised how primitive they looked for ocean going vessels. I wouldn't be too keen on heading out as part of a crew of one of those boats!

We made it back to the hotel just in time to pick up our bags and catch a quick trip to the airport. We definitely weren't the required two hours prior to an international flight but we made the flight so I call that a successful weekend!

Note: There are many more pictures than I can add here so have a look at my Instagram feed to see the rest!