12/22/2023 0 Comments Stars and stripes drive in weatherWhile women are not suppressed in Dubai (they can work and drive cars) they seem to remain at home. As he looked at the traffic, both in the street and on the sidewalks, my husband remarked, “90 to 95 percent of the people on the streets here are men, and 75 percent of the vehicles are Japanese.” There were also groups of men, resplendent in white headdresses and floor-length white tunics, gathered on the decks of anchored yachts, their SUVs parked on shore. At restaurants along the water, men smoked water pipes and sipped tea. We continued our walk along the Creek, past rows of tied-up dhows, wooden boats that haul produce and other goods to Iran, East Africa and India. This restaurant served no alcohol, although restaurants that belong to international hotels are free to serve alcoholic beverages. His show was fun and the dinner (main course, soup, salad and dessert) cost about $12.25 each. We walked along Banyas Road, the busy thoroughfare bordering the Creek, to the Riviera restaurant where a waiter cooked a fried rice mixture, a Japanese specialty, on a grill adjacent to our table. A guide later told us that 10 percent of the world’s gold production is bought in Dubai. Some of the necklaces were so enormous they covered the entire chest. Most of the gold for sale is 24 carat, vibrant yellow-orange shimmering in amazing window displays, top to bottom with rows of bangles, necklaces, rings, brooches, bracelets. That night we went back to the gold souk with its 700 shops, which were doing a brisk business. The 60-story, sail-shaped structure, which was completed in 1999, was built on an artificially constructed island. In the distance we could see Dubai’s famous landmark, the Burj al-Arab or Arabian Tower at the Jumeira Beach Hotel. Many of the owners and passengers were in the water riding jet skis. We took a walk and passed big groups of SUVs parked in the sand. We heard lots of British English spoken by those sunning in their beach chairs near us. The beach was lovely - clean, not crowded, with a pleasant water temperature. We returned to the hotel where we picked up vouchers for entrance to a private beach, the Metropolitan Hotel and Beach Club. Unfortunately, we arrived at the gold souks at noon when shops were closing and many people were heeding the call to prayer and heading to a mosque. The creek, a 12-kilometer-long inlet from the Gulf, divides the city into two parts, Bur Dubai and Deira. The bus ride cost just one dirham, about 27 cents, and the boat ride, 50 fils, or about 13 cents. We got off at the bus terminal and went to the port where we lined up for a boat ride across the Dubai Creek. We noticed that all bus passengers were male, some wearing the national dress (long, white tunics), although a section in the front of the bus was “reserved for ladies.” The hotel is outside the center of town, and even though taxis are reasonable, we took a bus for our first excursion downtown to visit the souks. At a convention of the Society of American Travel Writers in the States, I had placed a bid at a silent auction for four nights at the Dubai Fairmont for $100 - and won. We stayed in the swanky Fairmont that had just opened the previous February. Today, among all the impressive buildings, are 285 hotels, including 28 with the five-star rating. Only 17 percent of Dubai residents are UAE nationals, we learned, and the common language of the 120 nationalities that live and work in the emirate is English. The airport was our initial surprise - a huge complex of glass and marble, all sparkling and shining, with most people wearing western, not Arab, dress.Ī Sudanese taxi driver, who has lived in Dubai for 26 years, took us to our hotel where we had dinner served by an Indian waiter and a British waitress. Look up at the skyline of innovative and dynamic architecture and try to imagine that not long ago this was all desert inhabited primarily by Bedouins living in tents. These days as you drive around this post-modern metropolis of eight-lane highways, numerous construction sites, heavy traffic and fast, sleek automobiles, it’s hard to imagine that until the early 1960s the only means of transport in Dubai was donkey or camel. With a population of a million, Dubai is the capital of the emirate of the same name and the second largest (after Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE) of the seven emirates. It borders Qatar to the north, Oman to the south and Saudi Arabia to the west. And, “I feel a lot safer here than I would at home.”ĭubai, one of seven emirates in the United Arab Emirates, sits on the Persian Gulf in the northwestern region of the UAE. You can wear a bikini on the beach,” she pointed out. There’s a great mix of people,” said Claire Malcolm, a British citizen who lives in Dubai, “a young, party city.”
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