Dubai

I thought of a number of somewhat snarky titles for this final entry of the trip. I considered “Do Buy.” Less reverently, I also thought of “Allah’s Vegas.” Both captured important aspects of life in this most vibrant city of the United Arab Emirates. Yet, by the time I was finished with my visit I found it hard to be snarky. I would never want to live here, and I doubt that I would make plans for a second visit. But I found myself with a grudging respect for a country which has completely reinvented itself in the last 50 years and is continuing to change and adapt to the modern world while still holding on to many of its cherished traditions. It deserves our admiration.  

We arrived at the Columbo airport around 3:30. We cleared immigration and security with remarkably little difficulty. All of our large luggage was automatically check through to Los Angeles. Of course, we never mentioned to them that we planned to leave the Dubai airport. We spent time in the lounge while waiting for the flight to board. Once on board, I fell asleep pretty quickly. John had breakfast and then did the same. 

We arrived at Dubai International around 8:30. We were a little nervous about the customs and immigration procedures, but these proved to be a breeze. It was just a little weird dealing with the airport officials all wearing traditional Arab costume. It seemed more like a political statement than something cute to amuse the tourists. We were respectful.

We found an ATM and then caught a cab to our hotel. We had prebooked the Raffles Dubai before we left. It seemed central and they were offering a decent online advance booking price, particularly for that hotel brand. As we expected, they were not ready for us to check in, though they tried their best. We were treated to to strong coffee and those incredibly sugary Arab pastries while we waited to see if they could figure something out so early. They were very clear that we needed a room with two beds. We knew better than to contradict them here. And yet the young Egyptian man who was at the desk knew full well that one of those beds would never be slept in. It was one many times we watched the uneasy coexistence of Islamic piety and the modern world. 

John went over and talked to the concierge to get some ideas of how to plan our 24 hours in the city. The concierge suggested that we arrange it around a trip to the Burj Khalif. This is the tallest building in the world and is both a source of profound pride for the Emirate and a huge tourist attraction. There are a couple packages available to visitors. We were told that while the more expensive of the two was probably worth it as we would spend far less time waiting in line and would get to go to the highest viewing platform. We took it. John also signed up for the hop-on, hop-off bus. We have had mixed luck with these in the past, but it seemed easier than trying to master the buses and metro. We were told that the Red Line, which had most of the attractions that interested us, was not worth doing until later in the day as it was a Friday, and most of the cultural centers would be closed until late afternoon. So we decided to head towards the Burj and to see the Dubai Mall on our way there. 

We walked through the shopping mall attached to our hotel — one of the many ways in which Dubai reminds you of Las Vegas — and found the pick up spot for the bus. We jumped on just as it was leaving and we headed through the downtown area to the mall. Downtown Dubai reminds me of cities like Houston or Edmonton where the “downtown” is less of a neighborhood and more of an office park comprised of skyscrapers. This is not a pedestrian-friendly environment. But it does give the opportunity to look at the buildings better. I was fascinated by the one that vaguely looked like the bell tower of the Houses of Parliament (one of the least painful works by A. N. W Pugin).

Notice with both buildings the vague attempt to add Arab flourishes to body structure that otherwise looks like the stuff Skidmore, Owens, and Merrill has built all over the world. 

The Dubai Mall is one of the two premiere shopping centers here. The other, the Mall of the Emirates, we did not bother to visit. I found it rather disappointing in many ways. The Mall’s exterior is unappealing. I’m not sure what happened to the word “Mall” here. 

Inside, there are EXACTLY the same stories you can find anywhere in an American mall with a few British stores tossed in as well. Look on the food court. You’ll find Johnny Rocket’s, Yogurtland, and Pinkberry. John had lost his sunglasses somewhere, so we looked for a place to get him new ones and what did we find? Sunglass Hut. 

What this mall did not have, that even the Beverly Center would have, were little stalls on the floor selling inexpensive items like sunglasses. It hardly broke the bank, but I will be annoyed if he loses these any time soon. John loses sunglasses a lot, so cheap ones are generally in order.

The mall is the location for Dubai’s aquarium. Now this is not quite as serious a center for marine studies as the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, but it does have nearly 35,000 species and a large staff to care for them. Yet it is also just a mall attraction designed to amuse shoppers. 

I’m almost surprised that the stores haven’t adopted species for more branding possibilities:  the Tiffany sharks or the Carrefour manta rays.

The mall is also famous for its indoor ice rink. We did not stop by here. The Emirates mall, even more appallingly, has a ski jump inside. Even more so than in America, the mall is designed as something of a social center. 

We did like, however, the waterfall sculpture. John took a lot of pictures of this, but decided in the end he liked it better in black and white. He is a film school graduate, after all. 

We made our way through the mall to the place where we were to enter the Burj Khalif. It is a stunning building of extraordinary grace. 

Even more extraordinary, it was actually built by Skidmore, Owens, and Merrill. Who knew they had it in them?

We “first class” customers were brought into a little room where we were given hot tea and dried sugary dates. They then put us on the express elevators that we were told rose over two stories each second! In no time we were on the 148th floor. The views were rather stunning. This is downtown Dubai.

Far in the distance there are a number of small islands in the Arabian Gulf. We learned later that there are manmade and are designed so that from directly above they will form a map of the world. These are being readied for hotel and condo construction in a few years. 

 

There is an outdoor deck and allow you to look at the development right at the base of the Burj and the Mall. 

 

 

 

Quite the pool, huh?

 

We also caught sight of our hotel. I am not sure why the Dubai Raffles is done in an Egyptian theme and shaped like a pyramid. We are not in Egypt, after all, and there are significant cultural and ethnic differences in this part of the world. But it does add the the Vegas-like flavor of the city.

 

 

John did not really enjoy the outdoor deck. He found a more sensible place to observe the city

 

 

and its transportation infrastructure.

 

 

After we had looked at the city from both the rather private 148th floor and mixed with the cheapskate hoi polloi on the 124th floor, we went down. We did take a picture of the higher elevators just to show those numbers.

 

 

And Dubai follows the continental custom of distinguishing between ground floor and first floor, so for Americans that top number should read 155. 

 

The Dancing Waters is considered the number one attraction in Dubai by TripAdvisor. We knew it would be lame, but it was free. Several times a day there is a music a water show. John and I stopped at a restaurant to snack on some mezze while we waited. Sure enough, at 1:30 we had a five minute show. We heard some really lame Arab music while the water moved around in ways that vaguely suggested belly dancing. 

 

 

 

We now had about two hours before the shops and attraction we really wanted to see would open. So it seemed like a good idea to try to the the “Green Line” of the hop-on, hop-off bus and see the beach areas. 

 

It was actually torture. We had good seats but we drove endlessly through areas that looked like unremarkable suburban strip development. We did notice that there were lots of places that offered plastic surgery on the route, and we wondered if this catered to locals or foreigners. We did not see anything remotely looking like a liquor store, of course, and we also noticed that while we saw many gas stations not one of them advertised the price. 

 

Towards the end we did see a couple interesting this such as the Jumeira public beach

 

 

and the Palm. This is another iconic Dubai development:  a complete community created out of landfill to look like a date palm when viewed from above. Most of the buildings on it were either unremarkable or frankly somewhat ugly, but at the tip of the “tree” there is the Atlantis resort.

 

 

Again, this is really straight off the Las Vegas Strip, isn’t it? Although it does have one thing that a Vegas hotel does not have — an ocean view. 

 

After all this, John was ready to just return to the hotel, but I said that I was going to go to Bur Dubai, the oldest section of the city, even if he did not come with me. I think he decided that he was more curious than he was tired, so we grabbed a cab and went to the Dubai Museum.

 

 

This reconstructed 19th century walled city is not exactly in the same league as the Museum of the City of London. But it does have some interesting exhibits. It was nearly sunset when we went through the gates, and there were swallows flying everywhere. I am not sure how we failed to get a picture of that! The museum does suggest some of the prehistoric settlements of this area, but mostly focuses on how it was just a center for pearl diving and spice sales until oil was discovered in the 1950’s. The exhibits show how quickly it went from an impoverished traditional society to one of the wealthiest countries on the planet. 

 

Unlike the rest of the city, the Bur Dubai neighborhood is a pedestrian heaven. There are many small alleys that are completely inaccessible to cars. There are no chain stores in sight. Fabric stores dominate the area, particularly those catering to Indian and Pakistani guest workers. We had a decent dinner at a small restaurant right on the what they call the “creek”. This is actually just an inlet of the Arabian Sea, but it does vaguely look like a river. Unfortunately, not too many of our pictures came out here. 

 

So, off to home tomorrow. It’s been a great trip.

The Last Day

In many ways, yesterday was our last real day in Sri Lanka. Today we had to be transferred from our lovely Aditya on the south coast to a hotel on the west coast near the airport. It was a long ride and there was not much to do when we arrived other than to go to bed early. Today is really just preparation for the trip to Dubai. 

We got up early, determined to enjoy our last moments on the sea coast. We saw an sea bird with bright green legs. It was a little hard to get a good photo here, but you can see that the legs are great camouflage. 

We walked down the beach a little further to a quiet spot where I splashed about in the waves. The water is so warm here. I could swim in this part of the Indian Ocean for days.

While I was swimming, John made some canine friends. Dogs run wild on Sri Lanka, but most of them appear to have some kind of caregiver and many have collars on. There are only a few that seem absolutely feral, and those are more to be pitied than feared. The two John met today seemed well-cared for.

They were young lads and one they found some cloth on the beach they wanted to play tug of war with each other. 

John went into the sea for a while. 

As he was coming out, a steady stream of young Sri Lankan came jogging down the beach. We could not figure out if they were connected to the military or an athletic team or just seemed obsessed with fitness. We encouraged them and they responded happily.

Our final day did bring a memorable culinary moments. Aditya has a fantastic kitchen. They cook a wide variety of foods with complete integrity. And they are the only hotel we have stayed at which is willing to cook the quintessential Sri Lanka breakfast, hoppers and curry. 

Hoppers come in two forms. “String hoppers” are made from rice flour noodles. They look almost like crocheted drink coasters except that they are deliciously edible. A regular hopper is a bowl like pancake made of rice flour. A fried egg is typically put in the center though if you request additional hoppers they usually do not have the egg. 

The hopper is an edible bowl. Hoppers are served with a variety of curries and dahls. 

If you look in the center of the table you can see the curries and various condiments. Although some silver was provided, it is customary to eat all of this with your fingers. And that makes it even more fun!

After we ate, we lazed around the pool for a bit, then went back to our room to finish packing. We are hoping that we will be able to pack most of our stuff through to Los Angeles and only take a couple day bags into Dubai. We have heard the Dubai customs can be really strict on prescription medication and John has a lot of that. 

We said good bye to our attentive staff. The general manager was there this morning and he was pleasant in an “I’m the boss” kind of way. John said goodbye to the daily flower arrangement. Each day this bowl of water features different picked petals floating on the surface. 

Our driver showed up in a large van. He was an avuncular older gentleman. I am sure had his English been better he would have happily talked to us for the whole five hours of the trip. 

We were dropped off at the Wallawwa hotel. This is sort of the ultimate airport hotel. It is about 15 minutes from the airport, so travel agents book you there if you fly in late or have to fly out early. We had to fly out EARLY! The government decided schedule new runway construction during the height of tourist season! As a result, a flights can only leave or arrive in the night. It is chaotic. Our hotel assured us that we would have to be there at least FIVE hours early or might miss our flight. We decided we would chance it with three hours before. That meant we had to be picked up at 2:00 AM. 

The Wallawwa is lovely. A colonial building, it features room arranged around beautiful beautiful courtyard gardens.

Grounds are extensive and lots of games are available such was croquet and cricket. 

Interior rooms are tastefully decorated.

There was a nice pool there. It would have been perfect had there not been a British family there. They were straight out of a Roald Dahl book. I just knew that the father ran a crooked car dealership somewhere in the Midlands. 

When the awful Brit Brats weren’t around, we could appreciate the thought that had gone into planning this pool The colors are awesomely coordinated, aren’t they?

I’m already passed my eight o’clock bed time. Adventures in Arabia await tomorrow. 

Bike, Boat, and Buddha

John arranged a bike ride through out hotel yesterday. This is one of their many prearranged tours. They promised to take us through the countryside on bicycle and then to put us on a boat through a lagoon to an island where we would have a picnic. It sounded fun!

We met our guides around nine in the morning. There were only the two of us on the tour and there were two guides to accompany us and a tuk tuk driver who would be following us. This seemed a little ridiculous, but we have learned to simply accept the attention as if we were one of the Granthams on Downton Abbey. After all, these folks need jobs. 

We had not gone far when John remembered that he had not brought along some important medication. The tuk tuk driver took him back to the hotel. I waited right by the wonderful gates of this Buddhist temple. 

John soon joined us

but we had not gone far when the gears on his bike began to malfunction. He sat down and waited while the men tried to fix it. 

They finally adjusted it so that he was perpetually in low gear. Not the best solution possible, but it allowed us to continue on. 

Our guides brought us first to a small farm where they were processing coconut shells. The fiber from the shells, called coir, is extracted first. This is later woven into strands that are made into things like rugs. 

The remainder of the shell is ground up and used as soil amendment. 

Our guides proudly told us that absolutely no part of the coconut palm is wasted.

We rode on a bit more and stopped amid a group of cinnamon trees. John sat down by this odd bit of the American Southwest in South Asia.

We have some fully grown cinnamon trees near us in Los Angeles. They are large and handsome specimens. But the trees we were shown looked like badly potted ficus trees from an office building. They seemed more like bushes than trees, each with half a dozen tiny trunks. Our guides led through the fields to a small cement building that looked something like a garage. Inside a half dozen people were working. 

The guides explained that each year one of the small trunks of the tree is cut off. The rest are allowed to grow. The leaves are set aside to dry. They will be pressed and turned into cinnamon oil. The bark is stripped off the branch. It is all done by hand. 

This bark is what we call cinnamon. 

We walked a little further and came to the plantation owner’s home. It was quite deserted. We were told that he lives in Columbo now and rarely comes here. 

John had fun exploring the almost empty home. 

In a little bit our boat was ready.

They insisted we wear life jackets which make me look even fatter than I am.

Mr. Pratt looks fabulous in anything.

Our boatman was friendly.

We landed the boat on the island. Our main guide motioned us to walk a bit up a hill to what looked from a distance to be a Portuguese church. 

But as the iconography reveals it is a Buddhist temple. And absolutely one of the most amazing ones I have ever seen. A resident monk who spoke passable English was our guide. 

The interior of the temple is dominated by a particularly beautiful image of the Buddha.

Around this inner sanctuary is a kind of ambulatory with other pictures of the Buddha and devotees

and scenes from the Buddha’s life. This one recounts a time when he nursed a monk who was ill with smallpox. 

We still do not quite understand the hand decoration iconography but it is certainly striking.

 Possibly the most curious thing about the temple is the fact that it is dedicated to the god of revenge.

Outside is the usual stupa and Bodhi tree.

 We had our lunch — not that different from the breakfast that the hotel had packed yesterday — seated on the shore by our boat.

It was pretty hot by the time we were to leave, but John found a way to stay cool.

Returning to the hotel, we just lounged around for the rest of the day. We walked down the beach and splashed in the warm Indian Ocean water. 

 And we lounged by the pool.

It has been a wonderful time here in Sri Lanka. Tomorrow we will be starting our journey home.