I also drank about three litres of water and didn't need to use the lou even once.
It was 43 degrees, but with the humidity felt like about 48 (Hayley, that is like the "windshield" factor, only different). I am definitely getting accustomed to the all over body glow. All I have to say is thank goodness for hotel laundry services!
In the past 24 hours I have experienced two very different sides of Dubai.
Last night I went for drinks and dinner at Madinat Jumeirah - an area that houses two resort hotels, many restaurants, night clubs, wine bars, and Sheesha bars as well as a recently built Souk. But it is definitely the sterilized, air conditioned, westernized version of a souk. The architechture is beautiful and evocative of arabian desert structures, but lets face it, it is at most 5 years old. A lot of expats and young arabs hang out in the restaurants and bars here.
Got a wonderful view of the Burj al Arab - the famous sail shaped hotel that put Dubai on the map as a tourist destination. And actually got to have cocktails sitting outdoors. It had cooled down to about 35 degrees, so the locals thought it was fabulous patio weather. So much for the desert being cold at night!
Then today one of the girls from the Fairmont Dubai took me out driving to see the city. Unfortunately it was so humid that it was incredibly hazy and the lense on my camera kept fogging up and it was just too too hot to stand outside or walk around to take photos so I did not get nearly as many pictures as I had hoped. The buildings here are amazing. And the pace of construction is staggering. On average they complete three floors per week on the big sky scrapers here. They have masses and masses of cheap labour from India and Pakistan and who knows what the building codes are like. Certainly there is little regard for health and safety standards and all workers are on a 6 day work week putting in 12 hours each day. It sure is dramatic to see these buildings rising out of the desert. But I am not sure I'd want to be living on the 37th floor - or working on the 172nd floor of the Burj Dubai when it is complete. Soon to be the tallest building in the world, this monster is going to be a full 200 m taller than Tapei 101.
We also went to a souk in Karama. Where we haggled with a vendor for Pashminas and my fancy new shades. He wanted to charge me 45 Dirhams for one particular pashmina because he could tell I really liked it. In the end I walked away and he ended up coming back with the price we wanted. And then when I got back to the room I did the math...I was arguing over paying him the equivalent of $12 USD for something that usually costs around $80 - $200 USD. Crazy.
But I was so hot and grumpy by that point I actually managed to pull of a pretty good "you're not taking me for a ride because I'm a foreigner" negotiation.
This evening after dinner of Hummus, Fatoush, Sambousek, and Kebbeh in Deira, thinking about the total diquotomy between the very rich here and those who work so hard under inhumane conditions for almost nothing, I paid it forward by tipping a security guard 10 Dirhams for letting us park where we were not supposed to. I asked my friend how much he would make in a month. She said probably not more than 500 Dirhams. Such a tiny amount for me. I can't even comprehend it.
Today I...am tired from a long hot day in a far away land (and am hoping I can find good postcards since my camera lense was foggy most of the day)...am seeing clearly how privledged I am...am curious about what tomorrow holds.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment