Dubai

DUBAI 14-16 September 2004

So the Stateside Hombres dragged me to Dubai. Kicking and screaming, of course. No, really, I was, the moment I strolled into Heathrow Airport, nicely on time, the required two hours before take-off, and realised I hadn’t brought my passport with me. It dawned on me as I was approaching Zone C check-in. I think I did actually yelp, and while kicking myself was a bit difficult while running back to the tube station, I’m sure I did slap myself about the head a few times, before screaming down the phone (what did people DO before mobiles?) to my flatmate to PLEASE PLEASE get my passport from my room and meet me at Green Park (why didn’t I say Hammersmith? By the time I thought of a sensible station to meet at, she was already on the tube…) An agonising 16-stop journey later, I meet Edel at Green Park, the Angelic One clutching my passport, and an even more agonising 17-stop (there’s an extra stop at Terminal 4 in this direction) journey back (complete with calling the check-in desk every two stops to update them on my location), I finally get back to Heathrow. I call the check-in desk, sprinting as fast as I can with heavy bag thumping around my shoulder, as soon as I have signal in the airport and she tells me to stop running, they’ve closed the gate. I’m too out of breath to cry and stumble into the completely empty check-in area when MIRACLE UPON MIRACLE!!! “they’ve been held up for another reason! Get on that buggy and they’ll drive you to the gate”. God bless the invention of the wheel – the gate was MILES away and the little buggy is so cutesy and travels so much faster than an unfit me with heavy bag in tow. I’ve always wondered how you get to be driven around on one of those, and now I know. They have a cutesy hooter too, which makes people jump… Tee hee… If I hadn’t been so desparate to get on the plane I might have enjoyed the trip.

As it happened I rushed onto the plane only to meet Stu, one of the band, hovering at the door undecided as to whether he was getting on the flight or not. Now it is already 10 minutes late, and as I get to my seat, my triumphant arrival is somewhat spoiled by Stu deciding to GET OFF the plane at the very last minute – he’s left his asthma pump behind and doesn’t want to risk going without it. So he gets off, and the plane dithers another 20 mins before it takes off. We thought nothing of the extra delay at the time, but little did we know…

The Gulf Air flight was almost empty, so all remaining 8 of us (down from the usual 11) got to stretch out and sleep luxuriously on several seats each, and woke up to sunrise over the Saudi desert. Sunrise was spectacular and once it was light, all you could see for ever and ever was sand and more sand and more sand. There are tiny little human settlements every now and again, all very symmetrical and very modern looking, and quite often there are big black circles in the sand. I assume they have something to do with oil, although they didn’t look like any form of liquid, and some had slices out of them like pie-charts. The desert is also cut through by very long, very straight, very lonely roads, and then there’s just more and more sand. Only two colours are visible- the (sand coloured) sand and the (blue) sky. Very annoyingly we had to change planes in Bahrain for the final leg (less than an hour) to Dubai. As we approached landing there was more evidence of human activity – more perfectly symmetrical, modern looking roads and developemnts, and what looked like a highway of pipes, I’m assuming for oil, but they seemed a bit exposed, especially in the current climate. It was also 32° celcius at 7AM.

Leaving Bahrain we flew out over the sea, where the desert dunes seem to continue under the water in great big sand banks that turn the water several shades of blue and green, truly beautiful.

Landed in Dubai minutes later and soon realised that not only were several suitcases missing from the bulk, but also ALL the instruments. Guitar, bass, snare, kick pedal, Milf’s records… Blaming the airline for being crap, we wait another hour or so trying to trace the luggage when it comes to light that all the missing items are still in London. When the band checked in, all the luggage went in under only two names. One of these was Stu, who had decided to get off the plane. Naturally no airline is going to fly with luggage belonging to a passenger who has got off at the very last minute, so the extra delay was due to them having to find all the luggage under Stu’s name and TAKE IT ALL OFF!!!!!

Eventually we get to our hotel, which also has the club we’re due to play at that evening. Luckily there is a house covers band that have been playing there for the last five months, and they bent over backwards to help us, and lent us all the necessary instruments. Bless them, they were really, really helpful! So after lunch we all dispersed for a while until our four o’ clock soundcheck. Well, we might all have dispersed but not all of us came back. Chalks (bass) had failed to take note of the fact that we had crossed a few thousand miles and was still on London time. Slept through attempts to rouse him and strolled in at “4.30”. Which was actually 7.30, by which time we’d given up and soundchecked with the house bass player instead (I did resist the temptation to mention that even if it were 4.30, he would still have been half an hour late…)

By the end of the soundcheck my heart had sunk to severe techy depths. The mixer was ON the stage, behind the speakers and right next to the bass amp. So not only did I have no idea what it sounded like out front, but any sound at all was obscured by the proximity of the bass amp. The venue was called the Rock Bottom Café, which could have been a Hard Rock anywhere in the world, and so audience space was kind of inbeween tables. So while I could easily jump on and off stage during soundcheck, I knew this would be very difficult during the show (and it was). Also the mixer was upright against a wall (I HATE mixers being placed like that. You just KNOW the sound was an afterthought..) and consequently had every lead hanging down over the knobs in swathes of jungle-like cable-overgrowth. I ended up tying them up into pony-tails to try access the channels I needed behind them. Soundcheck was pretty stressful – the room was very poorly EQ’ed and I was not confident at all going into the show. But as they say, bad soundcheck, good gig, and the old adage was proved correct once again (I do have faith in it!)

We were out there for the venue’s 8th birthday party, and the line-up for the evening consisted of a number of DJ’s (all playing a hideous collection of chart hits and student stuff) interspersed with the house band “Solidaz” (bunch of Kiwi’s all decked out in their gold and silver disco suits in honour of the occasion) and later the Statesides. They were also giving away free drinks to ladies (something called a Bullfrog – disgusting concoction of tequila, gin, vodka, barcadi, blue curacao and red bull) and people were seriously pissed from a fairly early stage of the evening. The gig was fabulous in the end, even if I was very stressed (I really struggled to get out front, and was mixing on my knees with a bass amp in my left ear) and everyone LOVED it. The audience was entirely made up of western ex-pats who do, pour souls, seem to be pretty desperate for good live music. They occasionally get the superstars out there, but not a reglular fix of smaller bands. The only entertainment, it seems to me, is drinking and shagging. There’s no drugs, just cigarettes, alcohol and sex. The Kiwi boys (who live in the hotel) organised a huge party in our honour (or that was their excuse, anyway) after the club closed at 3AM – tons of JD, lots of random hangers on and ridiculous debauchery. In true rock’n’roll style it spread out over three floors of the hotel and ended sometime after breakfast had started. Me, I forget what time I got to bed, my last memory being being swigging out of a port bottle with one of the Kiwis. I was VERY grateful to find myself alone in bed when reception called at midday to wake me up… Mikey gloatingly pointed out that I had commented (much, much earlier) that he was pissed… At least he remembers…

Luckily a buffet lunch was being served at about the time I made it downstairs and a bit of good food and bad coffee stopped my head from spinning too badly and I managed to get across the road to the shopping centre to buy a pair of trainers I’d been eyeing the night before. Dubai is weird. Inside, you could be anywhere in the world. There’s almost nothing to point you to the fact you’re in either a desert or an arab country. The air-con is too cold and everything is western in the hotel. But as you walk out the door you are slammed by a solid wall of heat and humidity. The air is almost wet. Risking life and limb to cross the 8-lane road, you’re inside again – an air-conditioned shopping mall that, once more, could be absolutely anywhere in the world. In fact, almost everywhere I went I felt like I was in a brand new airport.

Later in the day we were treated to a beach resort at a $1000-a-night hotel and driving there took us through a large part of the city. There is absolutely no sense of history whatsoever. Everything is brand new, and the landscape is completely and utterly flat. There is not a mountain, hill or even a mound in sight – it is all flat, flat, flat. There is almost no greenery (I guess it is a desert, after all), only sand sand sand (and concrete). The only things that rise above the flat (and rise they most certainly do) are the ultra-modern buildings and towers of various sorts. Seems in all that space, upwards is the only way anyone wants to build. In fact, they have started construction on what will be the highest building in the world – when it’s completed in 2007 it will be something in the region of 740m high. Yep, that’s _ of a KILOMETRE up into the sky! Real bugger if the lifts don’t work! They’ve also started work on “Dubailand” which is basically one mother of a shoppping mall – it will cover 2 BILLION square feet when it is complete, and “The Palm” group of man-made islands (in the shape of a giant palm tree big enough to be visible from space) is being complemented by “The World”, another group of man-made islands in the shape of the world map. Each island will be purchasable for private occupation and will be themed according the part of the world it represents. The world’s first underwater hotel is also on it’s way. Seems the place is so damn full of money all they can to is build the first, the highest, the best, the biggest. I find it all quite sickening, actually.

The uber-posh beach resort we were sent to was right next to the 7-star hotel that looks like a sail . There are two hotels in this one resort and at first we were at the wrong hotel (security were getting a bit edgy, we didn’t quite fit the usual description of 5-star mega-monied guests) but eventually got sent off to the right one (we weren’t, however, allowed to use the water taxi on the fake Venice-like canals) and were ushered through “Are you the band?” “Oh, the band! Welcome!” etc etc. Our only bit of glamour for the day… Of course it’s always foolish to mix the riff raff with the hoy paloy and a certain member of the group (who shall remain unnamed) had to be asked to stop putting the waiter’s tray (on which drinks were served to all on the beach) down his shorts. This was after he’d tried bribing the unbribable waiter to let him take it home (we found out later, on the plane, that he had in fact successfully managed to nick an ashtray…)

The sea is about as warm as the air, but at least there were quite good waves and the loveliest breeze was blowing, and as the beach wasn’t very busy and the drinks were very expensive, the afternoon passed without too much incident in a lazy, sunny, hungover, beachy kinda way. Only mishap was Milf’s brilliant idea to go swimming with three hundred dollars (US) in his pocket. The sea got a good tip… After watching the sun go down we all trooped back through the posh, plush, ridiculously luxurious hotel. The aforementioned but unnamed tray thief took it into his head to smuggle a hotel towel out, and stuffed it down the front of his shirt. This pregnant look flumouxed the staff, who all just looked confused, and he got passed almost everyone until we got outside to get a cab. At last one security dude had the sense to question what exactly it was that he had stuffed down his shirt. Don’t think they’ve ever been confronted by the likes of The Stateside Hombres before!

Back to the shopping centre over the road from our hotel, where Nugsta bought his FOURTH pair of trainers in two days (he has a separate suitcase just to pack his trainers. Worse than any girl I’ve ever seen, he had four suitcases and bags for a one-night trip! And as his was one of the sets of luggage that only arrived just as we set out to the beach, he’s naturally HAD to go shopping to buy something to wear on stage…). Dinner in the airport-like food hall and then we all gathered in reception to drink sambucca shots and argue about who owed what on the mini-bars that had been plundered the night before.

After sorting all that out (it took a while), we piled onto the hotel bus to be taken back to the airport. All was just going so well, when Babbat couldn’t find his ticket. No way were they checking him in without it and panic ensued until someone intelligently thought of calling the hotel to ask them to look in his room. After the second phone call to check if it was there they eventually did send someone to go look, and there it was, sitting snugly by the TV. The Gulf Air guy chased the rest of us through while poor Babbat waited outside for the hotel driver to bring it to him.

Luckily the driver found him easily and Babs came sprinting through at the last minute and once again disaster was averted by a matter of minutes.

So, two near plane misses, a $300 donation to the sea, a ludicrously silly party, a great gig and a bunch of lost luggage later, we were back on our way home. Amazingly, no incidents worth writing home about happened on the way back, and it was only when looking through my bag for my passport at Heathrow that I realised I’d been carrying a dirty, smelly, much-used hash pipe through four sets of customs in two arab countries… GULP! Remember kids, check your bags for offending items before you leave home!