Dubai Part Five (The Souks)

This was probably my favorite day in Dubai.
Not that I am a big shopper or anything, cause I am not.
I just like to see different things, and there was a lot of crap to see this day.
As I mentioned before, Dubai has a lot of Indian cultural influence.
(Indian as in from India, not Native American.)

There are marketplaces down by the area they refer to as "the creek."
The creek is a natural sea-water inlet which cuts through the center of the city.
On one side of the creek is the textile souk.

Gorgeous colors. Hand-beaded table runners, and pillow covers. Beautiful pashmina scarves. All really great prices. I bought some beaded pillow covers. I think they ended up being 3 American dollars each.
Now is the time, post-trip, where I wish I would have bought more...

Aren't these shoes pretty?
I bought a really small pair to put on a shelf. I am sure the ones my size would look like boats on my size 8 feet and probably give me major blisters.

I have to pause here for a story.
Mikayla lost a tooth in Dubai. The tooth fairy paid her in Dirhams. (Dubai currency)
She got a 5 dirham bill. It equaled about $3.50 American. She carried that bill around with her to the souks, searching for a treasure. She ended up buying a camel stuffed animal. They tried to sell her this awful thing that when you pushed its foot, it played this totally obnoxious Arabian song/chortle thing. I spotted her some extra cash to get the bigger and nicer camel...the one that played NOTHING.
My ears and sanity deserve that.
She named it "Cammy Coo" the camel.

Pretty original, eh?
Cammy got carried with us for the whole darn rest of the trip.

I don't need a pashmina scarf. I am not a scarf wearer, but it makes you kinda want one anyway, just cause they were so soft and gorgeous. You know how you have been tempted to buy a velvet sombrero in Tijuana? That.

To get to the other side of the creek, you have to take a water taxi.
I guess you could swim it, to save yourself 30 cents, but the water looked suspect.
The water taxis were pretty cool.
Probably the favorite part of the day for my kids.
They were no frills.

They packed them full, and then ran them across the creek.
The ride was probably ten minutes.
The creek was not very wide.

Here is our whole group crossing over:

Crazy tourists.
Give us your money!
When you crossed the creek, the first souk was the spice souk.
You could smell it before you got to it.

The smell was an eclectic mix of curry, lavender, pepper,I don't know what else, and cloying incense.
I could not tell if I liked it, or hated it.
It was strong for sure.

Here are some curries.
They also used curry to flavor nuts.
We didn't try them.
We aren't real exotic.

They also had saffron there. It is so expensive in the states. I was tempted to buy some, because it was so cheap, but didn't.

Here was my line of thinking. What if I liked it? What if I cooked with saffron, and angels sang, and world peace was achieved? Then I would be stuck with an expensive habit. Therefore, let's not start something we can't fund.
I did buy some chunks of Frankincense and Myrrh.

Myrrh is on the left.(brown) And Frankincense is on the right. (Light green)
Both are tree resins indigenous to Arabia.
I can't really describe the smells?
Google said Myrrh has a warm, rich, spicy balsamic odor.
And Frankincense has a woody, spicy, haunting smell. It is slightly camphoric, but is regarded as more pleasant.
Let's just go with that.
I was happy to have some to show my kids come Christmas.
Also, this is a great lead-in to the next souk.
Frankincense...myrrh...and what was that third gift the wise-men brought?
Oh yeah.
Gold.

The gold souk went on for miles.
We didn't walk the whole thing.
We didn't have five days to do so.

I didn't buy anything. Truth be told, I am not really a gold fan. More of a silver girl. I guess I should have at least priced stuff. Oh well.

You never know when you will be invited to an event that requires a gold shirt.
It would be so embarrassing not to have one.
I already have two, or I would have totally nabbed this one:

I swear, I don't tell him to do this stuff...

Are you sick of gold yet?
Me neither.

Down a few blocks from the gold souk is the fish market.
Remember how I couldn't decide if the spice souk smelled good or bad?
Yeah, well, the fish market was definitely in the bad category.

There were your regular ocean variety fish, crab, calamari, and then there were large sharks and sting-rays.
They also had a dried fish area.
Smelled awesome.
And by "awesome" I mean, I wish someone would have farted.

Adjoining the fish market was a meat market, with hanging carcasses. I didn't take photos...too busy plugging my nose and trying not to gag.

And next to all that carnage, was the fruit and vegetable market.

Ahhh, smelled nice.
Thank goodness.

Way to go, bananas!

We sampled fruit we have never seen before:

We have learned you are pretty safe to experiment with fruit in foreign countries.
Hanging slabs of mystery meat, or dairy-filled street vendor pastries...not so much.

They also had a whole section dedicated to figs and dates.

I love dates!
Don't judge.
They were delicious.
I didn't know there were so many kinds.
My local grocery store carries one brand.
They look like sugar encrusted scabs.
Dubai dates have ruined me forever for my usual grocery store variety.

We took the water taxi back across the creek with our bags of souvenirs and headed back to the house.

And that was our day at the souks.

Dubai Part Four (random stuff)

There are two major event days left to document in our Dubai trip, so I thought I would compile some random crap today.

Dubai has the strangest custom.

To show "status" they drive really expensive, fancy cars.
That is not the strange part, some folks do that in the states too.
The strange part, is in Dubai, to show further status, they pay tons of money for their license plates.
Not like what you are thinking, they are not personalized, they pay money to have a smaller NUMBER, or a cool number on their plates.

While we were there, this was the lowest plate we saw:

The lower the number, the more they paid for the plate.
Another example would be C 20202. Cause that is a "cool" number.

One morning my Mother-in-law Bonnie and I went jogging past an auction house. They had license plates available for auction. We never found out how much they were going for, but Brandon told us they could be in the $1,000's.

We hit the beach in Dubai for a day.

It was a beautiful, white sand, very clean beach.
There weren't many waves, I think because the area we were in was surrounded by land on both sides.
It is pretty cool to say we have been in the Persian gulf, though.
It was also kinda cool to have such a modern cityscape in the background.

We had to go and see SkiDubai- the indoor man-made(obviously)ski slope!
It was located inside the mall.
It was massive!

I am not sure what kind of insulation that building must need, what with the hot weather in Dubai, but it definitely had snow, and ice, and no shortage of people sledding, snowboarding, skiing, and otherwise paying to have their tails frozen off.

See this last photo?

The big clear ball looking thing?
I have never wanted anything so badly in my life.
That thing was giant squishy rubber goodness. It had an inner pod that you could climb into. Then it would haul butt, rolling down the slope.
I would totally roll down a mountain in that!
Sure you would get dizzy, but F.U.N.!!
And if you barfed, just hose it out, am I right?
I think it would be cool for water too.

We watched the slopes for a bit, and then Mikayla said:
"Are we going in?"
"Nope, just looking."
"UHHHH, no fair! I wish I could play in snow!"

Keep in mind, when we escaped home, Utah looked like this:

Mikayla isn't the sharpest tool in the shed.

We also went to the Dubai Museum.

I guess I wasn't in a museum mood.
That, and in Dubai they over-air condition everything to the point of needing a parka. I busted out of that museum in record time.
The only thing I found intriguing was the bungled up taxidermy job on this poor bird:

I almost peed myself laughing.
Hysterically. With tears.
I guess you had to be there.
I blame the time change and lack of sleep.

But tell me this isn't funny? A little? No?
Okay, moving on then...

We also went to the Dubai (fail) Zoo.
It cost us about 30 cents a person.
It was worth about 30 cents a person.
I felt really bad for the animals. The zoo was one city block, and had about five billion animals all shacked up on it.
The giraffe had a habitat that was about 4 feet by 4 feet.
All the animals looked like if they could figure out how to hang themselves, they would be all over that.
They kinda gave you a half-hearted glance, and put their heads back down.
I swear to you, one of the birds was screeching "Heeeelp me, heeeelp me!"
I don't think I even took photos.
It was a sad sight.
Hold on, I found a picture:

They had cool doors in Dubai.
The really thick wooden ones you often see in foreign countries.
I am not sure why in the US we mostly have fiberglass crappers.
I really like old doors:

Took me a while to figure out what this sign was for. I thought at first it was for the bathrooms, as the little stick man appears to be desperately running...
This is their exit sign:

I don't mean to brag, but I figured this one out all by myself, even though it is in Arabic:

The food highlight of the whole trip, wasn't even a food item at all...it was a drink.
Non-alcoholic and everything.
Mint Lemonade.
Before you scrunch up your nose and get all gaggy-face on me...you need to trust.
It was the best thing ever!
It tasted like a whole glass of "fresh."
The lemonade was fresh squeezed, and then they pureed fresh mint leaves, and blendered it together.
Oh. My. Gosh.
To die for.
I am sooo planting mint in the garden this year.
It's gotta be good for you too?
It's green?

Here is a photo from the 1100+ I took.
It is cute of me.
Sam looks like he needs a helmet and possibly a bib.

I don't care.
It's going in the book anyway.
I never have cute pictures of me.
I hardly have any pictures of me, period.
Usually I am the one behind the camera.
Yes, I do feel better. Thank you for letting me vent that.

I thought this was funny:

And I am leaving you with something scarier than the picture of "special" Sam.
What in the hell may I ask is this?

You really need to click on it, and make it bigger.
Go ahead, I will wait. (With my butcher knife.)
Is it bigger?
Notice the foot, and the arms!
And the partially missing tongue!
(Hold me.)

There were TWO of them outside this store!
TWO!
And possibly more inside.
I didn't dare look.
You wanna see the other one?
I will give you a close-up:

In what type of freaky-deaky Stephen King factory were those things spawned?
Have a pleasant night.
Mwahahahahaha!

Dubai Part Three (photo heavy)

The next day Brandon took us out to see the man-made islands in Dubai, called "The Palms." Here is an internet stolen image with an aerial view of The Palms so you can get the idea of it being created in the shape of an actual palm tree. There are three "palms" in Dubai.
We saw "Palm Jameirah."

Dubai basically hauled in the sand and rocks to create the islands. Brandon told us the whole project was overseen by the Dutch, as they are well educated on how to control the ocean, and prevent erosion.
They built up the islands, and then built on top of them. I will say this about Dubai. They do not do things half-assed over there.
It is go big, or go home.

It was crazy!
They have a monorail that takes you right down the center of the palm.
The beauty of the set-up, is that each house, townhouse, building or whatever- is waterfront property.

A great idea, except that they ran out of money during construction.

So sad in Dubai. A good portion of Dubai is unfinished. Lots of bare scaffolding, and cranes standing unused. Lots of half-finished condos that are unoccupied.
Here is a prime example:

This big vacant pit to the side of the monorail was supposed to be Trump Tower.
Atlantis is finished,however, and man, that thing is huge!

It has a ginormous water park.
My kids were salivating.
For the low price of $319.00, we could have taken them there...
Not happening.

The monorail gave us a pretty good view of a couple more famous hotels in Dubai, the one that looks like a sailboat is called the Burj Al Arab. It is the world's only 7 star hotel.

The hotel next to it, that is shaped like a breaking wave was only six stars. I forget what the name of that hotel was, and only being six measly stars, I guess it is pretty forgettable...they probably don't even have breakfast waffles.

After the Tour de Palm, we headed over to the Muslim Mosque.

I was completely fascinated.
I like to learn about religion, and it is always interesting to me to pick out religious similarities and differences.
This mosque in Dubai is the only one in the UAE that allows non-Muslim folks to tour it. It was called the "Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding." I loved that. They highly encouraged questions and photos.
Religious animosity could be completely prevented with good old fashioned tolerance and understanding.

Our Muslim hostess was a convert from Christianity, and she was awesome!

She explained things really well, and cleared up a lot of common misconceptions that are out there concerning the Muslim people.
We started outside the mosque, where she explained that to enter the mosque for worship,(not for our general tour)required a specific washing. This was a way for them to prepare themselves physically, as well as mentally for prayer.
My boys were picked to be demonstrators.

You can never wash the feet of boys enough, I say.

The washing includes feet to the knees, hands to the elbows, nose, mouth, and head.(just a quick washing up and behind the ears) This is done five times a day- before each prayer. You do not have to re-wash, however, if you stay "clean" between prayers. "Clean" meaning, if you do not use the bathroom, have uh, "adult relations", vomit, have a bloody nose, or fart.
If you are clear of that list, your previous washing is still valid and you can skip the washing thing for the next daily prayer.
Whew!
That is some commitment.
Just paying attention to if I farted or not would make me quit being Muslim after a day.

The women were required to cover their heads to enter the mosque.
The provided us scarves.
They were freshly laundered, folded and pulled out of boxes.

No head lice to swap.
They also handed out water to everyone. I thought that was a thoughtful touch.
See how cute we are?

We were also required to remove our shoes before going inside the mosque.
It was very pretty inside.

This particular mosque was built in 1971, so it is not that old.
In fact, it is not old at all...now that I think about it, considering *some* of us were born in 1972, and could still be mistaken for a super young almost teenager...
Our cute hostess taught us about the different garments worn by Muslims, and why they wore them. Here she is explaining that the Burqa (head/face covering for women) was originally worn to keep the desert sand out of your eyes and mouth. Now it is worn more for tradition, and style.

We had a man demonstrate for us the daily prayer:

(Again, we were encouraged to take photos. Normally I wouldn't be brave enough to snap shots of someone praying...even paparazzi mom has her limits.)
The hostess explained that when Muslims pray, wherever they might be, they must face Mecca. Mecca is the Holy City of Islam located in Saudi Arabia.

For someone as geographically challenged as myself, I found that to be another obstacle. I can never tell my north's and south's. Pizza delivery was never a career choice for me.

Muslims pray five times a day.
At any given place in Dubai, you can hear the "call to prayer," usually from two locations at the same time. They have mosques on every corner, kinda like Starbucks in the states.
The "call to prayer" is a reminder that it is time to roll.
To wrap things up, and get over to the mosque, or to a prayer room.
There are prayer rooms everywhere in Dubai. Usually located conveniently next to the public restrooms, so you can quickly wash up, and then enter the adjoining prayer room.
The "call to prayer" is broadcast over loudspeakers.
It is a pretty, and almost like a song sung in Arabic.
The prayer times coincide with the rising and setting of the sun.
The mosques have a time board, that change slightly with the seasons, to let you know exactly when prayer times are.

There were a lot of pretty mosques in Dubai.
I liked this one with the blue tile:

This one I shot through the windshield:

Can you believe I have been blogging for over an hour?
Holy crap.
These photos are so very painfully slow to upload.
You better appreciate this! You hear me, Hollie?
That is all I have for today, I have to go and scrounge something up for dinner.