Blake has Stockholm Syndrome: 11/23: Old Dubai

We arrived in Dubai bright eyed, bushy tailed, and smelling of roses. We hopped in a cab and told our cab driver the name of our hotel as we sped away. In retrospect it would have been nice if he had waited for the hotel name to register (or rather, not register) because he had no idea where this hotel was. Our sketch-balls website we booked it through didn’t give us an address and instead just showed a tiny blip on a huge map that we later found was nowhere near where the hotel actually was. We drove all through the “Bur Dubai” area of town (which is one of the “older” districts) before we finally asked our cab driver to drop us off at an internet café while we tried to track down our place. We both independently attempted to keep ourselves from freaking out and instead enjoyed a coffee and muffin while we tried for the better part of 45 minutes to find an address. Eventually we found it, and it was only a 15 minute walk before we arrived at our destination somehow more bright eyed, bushy tailed and more rosily pungent (or is it pungently rosy?). We then sat in the hotel lobby for another 30 minutes while the people at the desk spoke in hushed tones until they finally decided we had suffered enough and showed us to our room. We then promptly passed the fuck out.

Nap time lasted for only a half our or so before Blake (that’s me), empowered with his Lonely Planet guide of Dubai dragged Courtney out of bed and off we went to explore ““historic”” Dubai. Note: I put two sets of quotation marks to further stress the sarcasm of Dubai’s history.

Our first stop was for food. Courtney peaked into a restaurant which was packed full of locals, a waiter caught our eye and led us to a back room. He then basically made this guy get up and sit with some stranger so we could have a table. It was a little awkward and perhaps the first instance where we felt like we as white tourists were treated better than the immigrants that make up a vast majority of the population of Dubai. In the end, the food was awesome and actually turned out to be the best meal we had on our trip (Thanksgiving excluded).

We walked to Dubai creek, finally feeling a bit more comfortable in the 80 degree heat now that we had changed into more comfortable attire.

Here’s Courtney and me at Dubai creek. It was around this creek that the city was first born as a small community of pearlers and traders.

While walking along the creek we encountered a boat warning people to stay off. Apparently somebody’s stuffed animal collection did not head the warning.

In their defense, it did say that unauthorized person (note the singular) are to stay away and not stuffed bears, moose, and god knows what else.

Regardless, they were shown no mercy.

We also walked along Dubai’s ‘Grand Mosque’ which is still standing after being built 10 years ago! ! ! (I guess to be fair it was rebuilt from a mosque from 1900)

Courtney and I hung out for a bit and watched some of the boat traffic go by. We began to see the big disconnect between wealthy and poor:

Here are a few of the “dhow” boats that are still used to transport goods all around the region.

After that we wandered in and out of some of the market places (aka souks or souqs depending on what website you refer to).

Most of the shops were closed at the time but a few were open and I toyed with the idea of purchasing a few locally made handy-crafts.

Ultimately we decided to join the “have-nots” crowd to take a small boat to with some locals to ferry to the other side of the creek (known as Deira). The trip is awesome and costs only 1 dirham, or roughly a quarter.

Courtney likes as you can see:

After that we walked through the spice souk which was just opening up it seemed. We cruised through it as numerous people tried to sell us saffron and other stuff that I would have no idea how to use.

After that we went to the Dubai Heritage House. We didn’t really know what to expect from it, but the Lonely Planet guide said that if you’re lucky you’ll get free tea and treats. I was skeptical because the Heritage House was free as well, but sure enough as we started wandering through this guy came up to us and asked us if we wanted to have some tea. He also brought these donut hole type sweet baked things which were super tasty. So Courtney and I hung out in this tent and relaxed in the beautiful weather.

The Heritage House had a lot of rooms with mannequins set up depicting early 1900’s life in the region. After that we went to see Dubai’s oldest school (founded in 1912!) which now is a museum showing what the traditional schools were like. After a little sleuthing I came across a similar conclusion that FOX News came up with as well.

Here’s a random but beautiful mosque in Deira.

Next stop was the Gold Souk, which had ridiculous displays of all sorts of jewelry. Here’s Courtney inspecting the bling.

If Courtney found a magic lantern right now she’d be wishing for a boyfriend who isn’t a cheap-skate.

Here’s the Grand Mosque from across the river. Behind it in the distance standing by itself is the new Burj Dubai – already the worlds tallest man made structure and soon to be the worlds largest building when it is completed.