Before there were skyscrapers...there was only desert

There's a whole different side to Dubai that is not really easy to see amidst the emerging forward momentum of business and commerce in the country. It's easy to forget that not long ago (I think maybe just a little over 30 years) most of Dubai was pretty much sand. I got a chance to get a little of the desert experience recently, in the form of a desert safari.

Getting ready to head out, my buddy, Yessine describes the adventure to come.

It's actually a very cool experience. The company we hired took us out about an hour and a half into the middle of the desert for quite a ride.

In between sand dune 4 wheel driving, they take breaks for photos. It was a group of about 4 SUVs.

Before we headed out they checked under the hoods to make sure all was well. Also, this came as a surprise to me, they let a lot of air out of the tires. Apparently, less air means better traction in the sand.

Not sure if you can tell from this vid, but the ride is crazy. We were climbing up and descending dunes with pracitcally 90 degree inclines and declines. There were points where I thought the truck was going to tip over because we were tipping so much, but just when you thought we'd turn over the driver corrected the angle and leveled us out.

We stopped every once in a while to take some photos and take breather from the vomit ride of climbing sand dunes (Yes, I got a little nauseous). It was a little weird being surrounded by nothing but desert. Very peaceful.

The sunset was quite amazing...

After dark they took us to a camp in the middle of the desert. We ate dinner under the stars, with nothing more than torches and dim lights to illuminate the pitch black of the desert.

The food was delicious too!

And to cap off the night, we had a pretty awesome belly dancing show...

Here the belly dancer balances a sword on her head. Harder than it looks...trust me.

And when the ladies joined in it got even better :)

The ladies do it much better than the guys. Trust me you don't want to see that video.

Over all the whole day was a great one. It was nice to get out of the chaos of Dubai and just surrounded by nature. The desert is such a barren, dry, and intimidating place, but at the same time it's really quite a beautiful as well.

Especially at night.

The Atlantis Hotel on the Palm Jumeriah

Before I came to Dubai a did a lot of research just to try and get familiar with the place I was about to call my new home. One of the many things I really wanted to see was the Palm Jumeriah island. If you've seen any documentaries about it, it's a pretty amazing place. It's the one of the many artificially built islands off the coast of Dubai and it's built in the shape of a Palm Tree. Right now it's the only one that's actually open. When you drive onto the Palm it's got quite a view. Just imagine the way a palm tree is shaped. The trunk connects to the mainland and that's what you drive up to get onto the island.

Driving up the trunk your flanked by immense apartment buildings on both sides.

When complete, the Palm Jumeriah is supposed to have something like 50 or 60 hotels on it. Right now the Atlantis Hotel is the biggest one on there, and it's very beautiful. I decided to take a look from the front.

The Atlantis faces the Persian Gulf so the view is spectacular from both sides.

What can I say? I'm still a tourist and I had to get a touristy shot in the front.

As soon as you walk in, the lobby it's quite a site...nuff said.


They had the biggest aquarium I have ever seen that wasn't...a CITY AQUARIUM. This was inside the hotel.

It was very soothing watching the fish swim by. I've always wondered what they think of us standing on the other side of the glass. "Dude...look how weird they look. They don't have fins...just weird gangly things hanging off the sides of their bodies. Gross!"

Quite a view

WOW, it's been over a month since I've updated this blog. I really suck...seriously. I wonder if anyone even checks it? If you do, leave a comment and tell me how much I suck for taking this long between updates. I know I've said this before, but, I promise I'm going to start updating this with at least one post per week. In any case I'll just be talking to myself which is pretty normal for me.

Anyway, It's been almost 4 months here in Dubai. I've met a lot of people, made a lot of friends, and seen a lot of different places. One of the coolest places I've see so far is a place called 360. It's a lounge/restaurant/bar that sits out in the middle of the gulf. And just like the name says it's a 360 degree circular structure. The roof on the top is where the bar is and it's very cool because from that spot you can walk around in a cirlce and basically see all of Dubai.

The day started off with a brunch at the Jumeriah Beach Hotel. Very beautiful place with amazing food. From there we took a 10 min walk from the hotel to the 360 Lounge. On the way you can see the Burj Al Arab, Madinate Jumeriah, and the Wild Wadi Water Park.

I had my friend Ryan give a little commentary on the walk there.

That's the Jumeirah Beach Hotel in the background. I'm not sure but someone told me that the shape of the hotel is supposed to be a wave behind the Burj Al Arab which is in the shape of a sailboat. So the two go with each other.



A little further down and there's the Burj Al Arab, the sail shaped famous 7 star hotel of Dubai. It's quite impressive when you're right next to it. Before the Palm Jumeriah this was the first man made island built in Dubai.

After reaching 360, I took a quick shot from the rooftop bar. Awesome view.

When we left it was pretty late and we were tired, so we decided to ride a golf cart back. That's when I found out my new British friends call them buggies...crazy Brits :-)

"You know how I know you're gay? Cuz you like Coldplay."

Yes, yes, I like Coldplay...all my headbanger metal head friends always make fun of me when I say I like Coldplay. Whatever...a couple weeks ago I got the chance to go see Coldplay live in Abu Dhabi. The U.A.E. is made up of seven Emirates...Dubai, Ajman, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaima, Sharjah, Umm Al Quwain, and Abu Dhabi, which is the capital. The drive from Dubai to Abu Dhabi is a little over an hour and this was the first time since I've landed in Dubai that I left it at all. It was nice to get a change of scenery. Compared to the fast paced city atmosphere of Dubai, Abu Dhabi is a little more relaxed. A lot more family friendly...more trees, grass, and places to walk. I was told the late president of Abu Dhabi, His Highness Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, was a lover of the enviornment. He made sure there were plenty of parks filled with trees and grass and actually fined anyone who cut down a tree. People were incouraged to plant gardens of their own and spread the enviornmental awareness. You can definitely feel that in Abu Dhabi.

The streets also are a little easier to navigate in Abu Dhabi, at least in the parts that we drove through. It seems to be a grid system...like Manhattan. In Dubai the roads are a little more sporadic, and by sporadic I mean retarded.

The concert was an outdoor one. With the Emirates Palace hotel in the background. All weekend long the weather being predicted was rain, rain, rain. All day it was fine...cloudy, but no rain. When we arrived at the ampitheater it started to pour. I did not have any kind of rain protecting device (a.k.a. an umbrella) a friend I was with had an extra hat. One of those Gilligan hats...I don't know what they're called, here's a pic...

Obviously, I got wet.

Fortunately it stopped raining and we went and got our spot in front of the stage. Mercury Rev was the opener, and they sounded great, even though I'm not a big fan. Then Coldplay took the stage and literally 2 mins later it POURED. Now...this was my first experience of serious rain in the U.A.E. and I have never experienced rain like this. The rain drops were the size of basket balls. One drop drenched my entire head. It was insane! And they were heavy...I felt like I was being pelted with gummy bears.

Here's the opening of the show, we had a really good view. We were on the lawn in front of the stage with an excellent view of the band, they were amazing...it was quite surreal actually. At one point in front of me Coldplay is playing behind me is an ampitheater filled with people, and off to our right is this giant emerates palace hotel. I thought to myself...there's going to be a day when the words "I saw Coldplay in the middle the pouring rain and flashing lightning in Abu Dhabi" will come out of my mouth. It's not too often that you get to say something like that.

Even Coldplay brings on the "Lasers"

You can really see the rain here. At this point it's really coming down. And you can see the lightning was flashing in the sky every few minutes. You can't see us but Chad and I are chiming in. Chris Martin is actually a really funny guy. He kept breaking off into rain themed songs like "Singing in the Rain," right in the middle of Coldplay tunes.

Here are some great snapshots...such an awesome show...

I got really hungry at one point, so I got an ice cream, and as you can see, the fact that I look like a complete tool has completely escaped me.

The stage setup was pretty cool, they had these two giant screens flanking the stage...her's a close up of Chris Martin.

It was definitely a memorable night that was a lot of fun. Here's a photo of all of us from work who went. You can see how wet we are, and this is actually before Coldplay went on. Afterwards we were completely drenched.

A shopaholic's paradise

I've been here in Dubai now for 2 months and I've learned one very important fact...Dubai knows how to shop. There are a plethora of malls here...out door malls, in door malls, malls with aquariums, malls with indoor ski slopes, malls with ice rinks, malls with movie theaters, malls that are one floor and 2 miles long, malls that are 10 floors and take up numerous city blocks, malls with rivers surrounding them, malls with sand surrounding them, outlet malls, designer malls, foreign product malls, domestic product malls...I could go on forever. I haven't even scratched the surface of all the malls here. I've been to quite a few but I keep discovering more. This post is about the ones that I've seen and to see if I can give you an idea of HOW intense shopping is to Dubai. People come from all over the world for the Dubai shopping festivals that happen a few times a year, because the prices drop so dramatically. It's kind of strange. Some things are ridiculously expensive and others things you would think should be ridiculously expensive are super cheap. Take designer brand clothes for example. You can get Armani, Prada, Versace, Louis Vuitton and any other european hard to spell and even harder to pronounce brand for a very cheap price, but a flat screen LCD TV costs an arm and a leg. An iPhone costs 3500 Dirham here, that's roughly $800 bucks! In the states I can get an iPhone for $200 bucks. It's very strange. You can get high quality hand made furniture for pennies (I saw a 3 seater couch/2 seater couch/and single chair combo set made of cashmere for about $1000 dollars but a pair of Rayban sunglasses cost more. I don't get it. OK, let's go shopping...





This is outside the Mall of the Emirates...one of the biggest malls in Dubai. It's the one with indoor ski slope, called Ski Dubai. That's that big grey ramp looking thing in the background.

Charity and prostitution go hand in hand?

A couple weeks ago, I volunteered my time to help sort clothes that were going to be shipped to orphans in Afghanistan. It was organized by my friend Natalie at work. She collects as much clothes as she can and stores them in a friend's office that he doesn't use. The office is a really tiny room located in an old ratty building in old Dubai. The office is so tiny and Natalie has so much donated clothes that there was no room for us in it. We had to sort the clothes in the hallway outside the office. The office door also happened to be across the hall from this other apartment. And literally every 2 mins a different woman would walk out the door of this apartment and take the stairs or the elevator down and come back with a man. Or a different man would do the same on his own, either by stairs or elevator and knock on the apartment door, to be answered by a woman. The way we were located was exactly in the way...right in front of both the elevator door and the stairs.

We were wondering what was going on in there that so many different men kept coming and going, then Natalie tells us..."Don't mind those guys, they're just going to the brothel." Yes...I said brothel. There must have been 20-30 different men that came and went in the span of 1 hour. It was insane. And every time one of the women walked through she would curse in Arabic about how we were being rude and disruptive. WE WERE BEING RUDE AND DISRUPTIVE TO THE BROTHEL. Here's the video...watch as Simone, James and I sort through clothes and people keep walking between us and Simone can't stop laughing.

How dare we sort clothes for Afghani orphans and disrupt the business of the brothel!

Gotta love gramatical errors.

Man, am I sucking with these updates or what? Way too much time between updates...I am sorry...I truly am. Constant running around over here. Biggest update...I got my apartment! Yes, I officially have my fatty boom batty crib. I'll put pics and vids up soon. In the mean time I drove by it last night and snapped a quick pic. This should tide you over until there's more pics.

I know it's a little blurry. Sorry, I was driving. It's the one with the yellow lights.

In the mean time, I have to furnish it. Every single inch of it...over 800 square feet. I have to buy stuff I haven't had to buy in a while...stuff I never even think of. Like...spoons. I can't remember the last time I had to buy spoons. So far, every place I've lived already had spoons there. Most likely because I was living with someone who had already provided the spoons. Or curtains...I don't think I've ever bought curtains! A bathroom mat...where do I get a bathroom mat? Anyway, I'm looking at the classifieds online trying to find some deals and I came across this...



I'm not sure if that headline means the same thing in Dubai as it does in the states, but I think I'll pass on this one.