When my alarm went off at 8 this morning I thought to myself at least today is an easy day. We got dressed, ate breakfast, said goodbye to Jean and his parents (promising to visit them in Korea soon), then went to our rooms to pack.
By 3pm we were piled into a minivan and on the road to Dubai. I was able to schedule the car ahead of time using Careem since the option for a larger car doesn’t exist on Uber and our driver was a really nice guy from India. I slept through most of the drive but was amazed at how quickly the city melted into small desert towns and how straight the road was. When I awoke there were ginormous skyscrapers overhead, very nicely spaced along the skyline and I realized that we were already in Dubai.
I messaged Johnston who recently moved here from Gold Coast, Australia since his wife’s job moved her here last year. I met Johnston while living with Bren, he came to visit Jobin and go to Ultra (a music festival) at the end of February. When I initially arrived in January, Jobin told me that his best friend would be visiting and he hoped that we would meet. At the time I didn’t think I’d be staying in Melbourne that long but in the end I did and it just so happened that my final weekend there was also the weekend that Johnston was visiting for Ultra and Bren was coming down with the flu. I found myself on a Saturday night hanging out in my pajamas and drinking a beer by myself when Jobin and Johnston came home from the concert. At first I let them have the dining table but the boys quickly invited me to join them in the first of many Kraken and Cokes. I ended up having the best conversations with Johnston and we jived just as well as Jobin and I had, quickly becoming friends, and I ended up staying up all night and morning with the two of them. It was definitely one of the highlights of my trip. So when I found out Johnston moved to Dubai just in time for my visit I reached out to him to see if he would have time to have another great night of drinks and chats. I’m not sure if it’ll work out but I hope it does.
Anyway we pulled up to our hotel and I initially wasn’t very impressed at all. The Marriott Harbour lobby was a pitiful thing but the staff was warm and helpful. When we finally got up to our room I was amazed. It is a huge apartment with two bedrooms, a bonus servants quarters room with an extra cot in it, four bathrooms, a full living, dining room, and kitchen. I thought when I went to Tasmania with Bren that our one bedroom hotel apartment was fancy but this one puts it to shame. We also have a great view of the palm manmade island and the ocean. As mom started planning what we would do with the evening and the next few days I took a nap. By the time I woke up the huge red sun was quickly setting on the horizon.
We decided to do the Marina walk. It’s a 7km path along the Marina, which looks more like a river, and dotted with shops and restaurants along the whole thing. Mom originally thought she would walk the entire thing, even after I translated 7km into miles, but by the time we got a fourth of the way through it we were quickly too hungry to give it a go. The marina walk makes the San Antonio riverwalk look like a joke.
We ended up at a middle eastern cafe/restaurant for dinner, one of the many that had young men shoving menus in your face as you walked by. We sat outside with the ocean breeze on one side and a fan circulating air on the other. We ordered a bunch of food and I got Moroccan tea again (quickly becoming my favorite beverage) and I picked out a shisha for us. Mom was very curious about it and had a lot if questions for my brother and I about how we discovered it and what it was all about. She even ventured so far as to try a little bit of it along with her serving of Moroccan tea. I gorged myself on kebab, with garlic paste on pita, and tea and shisha while we talked about our trip and the Arabic drama that they were showing on a large tv outside.
With leftovers in takeaway containers we ventured back down the marina walk toward the hotel. Mom wanted ice cream so we stopped at Spinneys, a supermarket that it turns out is just a rebranded Waitrose. They had so many different juices and a little bakery and a great selection of ice creams and frozen desserts. We filled up a reusable bag with all kinds of treats and dad even picked up a camel milk because he said that if we came all this way then we should try it. Personally I don’t know if I’m adventurous enough to try it but dad is right that it is our chance to do it.
On our walk back I could feel the humidity rising and my pants and shirt sticking to my skin. I enviously watched the other women pass in their skimpy skirts and athletic tanks and I quickly realized that Dubai is far more liberal then Abu Dhabi was. In Abu Dhabi all the women were covered, western and local alike, whereas from what I’ve seen so far here the women’s clothing tends to be far more western. As my jeans seemed to meld into my wet skin I wondered to myself if I would be able to put the emergency pair of shorts I brought with me to work. Part of me feels like it would be fine and the other part just doesn’t want to chance it. I guess I’ll have to see how the rest of our evenings here go.
Now that we’re back in our apartment in the hotel it’s all about planning how we’ll get to all the different sights. It looks like our answer is the hop on, hop off bus tour which is one of my other favorite things to do when traveling. I can’t wait to get out there and see all that this city has to offer. Hopefully I won’t be too tired after getting up early to join my dungeons and dragons group for a game.
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