Saturday, March 07, 2009



My HoliGroundhogday

Tuesday 10th Feb, 5.15 AM. I land in Dubai on my way back from South Africa. A flight that improved immensely after I handed this note to the air steward, she sniffed the air, and took pity on me…



In Dubai airport, I meet Colin and we jump in a cab. We’re on our way to Beirut, but flying from a different airport. We’re flying from a different Emirate, in fact, Sharjah – a dry country. Possession of alcohol is a jailable offence. Our flight is at 7.50 AM. I have a bottle of wine with me, purchased, as one does, at duty free in Johannesburg. It’s most of an hour’s drive to Sharjah, during which the dry status of the place becomes clear to me.


As the double-domed, single-minaretted mosque-esque airport hoves into view, I mention that I have this bottle of wine. True to form we feel it’s a terrible waste to throw it away, so risk incarceration and search out a nice corner in a carpark hedge and proceed to neck it (thank god for screw-tops…). Around 7AM we think we really ought to go check in.

7.05AM, and we’re told in no uncertain terms that check in has closed and there’s no way in hell we’re getting on that plane. Much arguing later we’re still nowhere near a check-in counter. A couple of other people have made a similar mistake (probably without the wine, though), but no amount of begging, cajoling or other attempts at persuasion can change the mind of the stony-eyed woman in the elaborate grey veil.

We then refer back to the airline agent. “Tomorrow’s flight is wide open, Sir. We charge an extra 100 Dirhams to book here, why don’t you go home and book online?”

Already having lost one flight’s worth of money we appreciate his point, and head back into Dubai, in morning rush hour, with a Sri Lankan lady cab driver, dressed in an elaborate blue veil. Apparently it’s compulsory uniform for female cab drivers in her company. It takes a long time. A very long time. A huge amount of time-spent-in-traffic later, we sneak (I’m not really supposed to be there, what with fraternisation between the sexes very much frowned upon and fornication being downright illegal) back to Colin’s “cell” in “Alcatraz” – a very large and slightly unnerving development of residential apartments, whole swathes of which are unoccupied, nodding to Security Man on the way in. He clocks the backpack and wheelie bag.



We give up and get some sleep.

What is there to do in Dubai? Certainly a lot less than there is to do in Beirut! So,we do as the locals do, and go to the Mall. Exiting past security sans luggage, we drive into the sunset, off to the Mall of the Emirates to watch people fall over on the indoor ski slope whilst sipping £7 pints. An absolutely luscious (alcohol-free: SOOOO many places don’t serve alcohol at all) Persian dinner followed, and then it was time to book our new flights for the next morning. Could we get connected? Could we fuck. Neither the free nor the pay wifi could get us online.



Never mind! The flight is “wide open”! We’ll just bite the bullet and pay the airport surcharge… We’re going to Lebanon!

[Notes on the Mall of the Emirates: (1)The ladies toilets have a full lounge facility. I’m reliably informed the Gents do not.



(2)” Mall Walking” is an accepted form of exercise (it seems ludicrous until you think that in summer it reaches 55° Celsius with 80% humidity)]



And so, to bed, sweet dreams of Lebanon gracing the night…

Wednesday 11th February, 4.30 AM. The alarm(s) ring(s). Yay! We’re on our way to Beirut. Enthusiasm for getting out of Dubai defeats any inclination to stay in bed. On the way out the door - backpack and wheelie bag in tow – we nod to the (same) security guy. We trek on foot to the local mosque, where cabs are apparently more plentiful. It is dark and we pass lots of “worker accommodation” where the underclass of Pakistani labourers are “housed” (6 to a room, some hot-bunking). Hundreds of men are streaming out of the buildings and getting onto buses bound for whatever health-and-safety-free, in-serf-like-bondage job they’re here to do. The muezzin are calling and we’re chiming in, trying to attract a taxi. Eventually we get one, do the classic Dubai U-turn (there’s very few opportunities to turn left or right out of the often 5-lanes-a-side roads, and U-turns are the accepted way of turning around, with inside lanes provided for the purpose) and off we go! To Sharjah! And thence, Beirut!



6AM and we are well in time for check-in. We waltz smugly up to the counter and ask for two tickets to Beirut, please. The (same) guy struggles to look us in the eye as he tells us the flight is full. Yesterday it was “wide open”, today it is full. We can go on the standby list but tickets are triple the price. We opt not to go on the list. We do, however, opt to buy a ticket for tomorrow right then and there, screw the surcharge. We can still do ONE night in Lebanon.

Another taxi back to Dubai (by now we’ve spent almost a flight’s worth of money on fruitless taxis to Sharjah and back) and in we waltz into Colin’s block, with backpack and wheelie bag, once again past the same security guy (who is fortunately turning a blind eye to all my comings and goings). We nod sagely at him. He stares at us, trying to compute.

Still, we now actually have a ticket to Beirut. We spend the day on the beach, which is very chilled,



Note the Desert Cool bag…

and head for the Malaysian (I think) area, via what I like to call “Muscle Alley”. If anyone has ever been to Trade, you’ll know there’s that passageway between the bar and the dancefloor where all the Muscle Mary’s stand against the walls and you have to run the gauntlet of them to get to where you want to be. Well, there’s one particular street (more of a motorway, actually, it has about a zillion lanes) which is just lined with these skyscrapers, all of them glitzy, many of them unfinished, and they’re just so imposing it feels like running the gauntlet of Muscle Alley.





Once we bail from (yet another) cab (it’s the only way to get around) we stumble upon an internet café. A decision is made that since we’ve only got one night in Beirut, let’s just book ourselves a nice hotel and be done with. The “let’s just turn up and see what happens” approach is no longer so appealing. A tediously slow connection eventually provides us with a Deluxe Sea View Room in the Palm Beach Hotel, With Luxury Spa Bath. Happy, we go find ourselves a very random bar, manage to avoid the Indonesian covers band due to play later, and eat some very odd Thai food.

We go to the base of the Burj Dubai to gawp at the tallest building in the world, but the weather has come up and we can barely see it. Luckily you can see it from afar, no sweat.


And so another day not in Beirut draws to a close.

Thursday 12th February, 4.30AM. The alarm(s) ring(s). Enthusiasm for another trip to Sharjah Airport is not quite as evident as it was yesterday. Nevertheless, we now have flight tickets in our grubby paws, and we have a Deluxe Sea View Room With Luxury Spa Bath awaiting our pleasure. Once again we pass Mr Security Guy. Luggage, as always, in hand. By now he’s barely raising an eyebrow. We joke about him setting his watch by us, but we’re going to fool him by not coming back this time! Snigger and chuckle… We have tickets and we’re on our way! We walk to the mosque in the dark. We witness the I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening-in-the-twenty-first-century class system in action once again. We sing along to the muezzin to hail a cab. We get one. The cabbie moans about having to drive back in the morning traffic {it’s particularly bad on the way into Dubai from Sharjah, and Dubai cabs can’t pick up passengers in Sharjah, so he has to drive back empty}. We fail to care.




We get to Sharjah airport. Miracle upon miracle, we actually manage to check in! We have boarding passes! We have allocated seats! We are going to Beirut! It’s all worth it in the end!

And all continues to go well. We manage to ascend the escalators with no hindrance. Even the queues for immigration are short. With glee we approach the immigration officer (another steely-eyed woman in an elaborate grey veil). Mr Bremner hands over his boarding pass and passport. I let my gaze wander about the room. I think how glad I am that I don’t have to see this goddamn shitty airport again.

“Excuse me, Sir,” the elaborately grey-veiled woman says, “but your passport seems to have expired.”

And that was the end of Beirut.

All that anger management therapy seems to have worked. Colin got away with being called a cock and buying breakfast.

Remember kids, always check your passport before attempting to travel! It might cost you two flights to Lebanon, one flight back from Lebanon, and one Deluxe Sea View Room With Luxury Spa Bath in The Palm Beach Hotel, Beirut.


* * *

At this point going back again to The Cell, and passing that damn security guy once again was simply NOT an option. Turns out he could have set his watch by us. So, while trying to locate another internet connection to book ANYTHING that’ll get us away from Alcatraz, we randomly saw an ad for new resort opening in another emirate – on the other side of bloody Sharjah - that was doing good deals for the opening week, and booked ourselves in there…


Although it was not QUITE Beirut, Ras Al Kheimah was at least different, and very educational. This is what Dubai was like not very long ago – sand, sand, sand and more sand, with the odd settlement here and there. Like, really, it’s a desert. All there is, is sand. And super-giant-enormous billboards promising fabulous new developments. Marinas! Golf Courses! Wonderful, luxurious homes! Communities specialising in Ostentatious Displays of Wealth! Glamorous western families horseback-riding over a perfectly manicured lawn(?)! And behind the billboards, just sand. We travelled there by rickety public bus, an event in itself. There are two single seats up front for single female travellers – fortunately I was Ostentatiously Displaying My Fake Wedding Ring, and could sit with Colin. Oh yes, and there were lots, I mean lots, of camels.


The place we stayed eventually was just such a billboard come to life. Something rather elaborate built out of absolutely nothing. Not really my thing, but if you’re going to have unchecked development in a pristine environment, I guess the desert is the best place to do it. It’s not like you’re chopping down ancient woodlands or anything. One does have to admire the human endeavour in creating these places once you’ve driven through sand for an hour and a half. How exactly they picked this particular piece of sand rather than any other to develop a huge resort, who knows. But they have certainly managed to build it.

Still, like most other things in Arab World, it was ever so slightly tacky and designed precisely to assist all comers in Ostentatiously Displaying Their Wealth. By this time we, of course, no longer had any Wealth to Display, ostentatiously or otherwise, and had to make do without a sea view… Only the picture of the dome ceiling was taken in anywhere near our room.

And again this funny transport rule applies. The bus from Dubai cannot pick people up in other emirates, so it goes back empty (you can tell they don’t suffer a shortage of oil). And there is no bus from Ras al Kheimah to Dubai, so we had to get yet another cab. I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated proper public transport before. Having taxis, even though cheap, as your only form of transport is quite tiresome.

Truth be told, it was an awesome adventure. Even the groundhog day effect was endlessly entertaining, and it was good to see more of Dubai than I’d planned to, and it’s all about the company anyway. It was fun!


Dubious Foreign Product of the Trip:



Now let me explain as far as I understand – I could be totally wrong…

On the way out to SA I stopped over for one night in Dubai and we went to the Creek. It was the most charming part of Dubai I’ve seen (it’s a big enough river to make you feel comfortable in the desert), and is a bit Ye Olde Worlde (for Dubai, that is, so less than a century) and there’s a touristy “traditional village” you can visit. In one area they were performing a Bedouin (I was given to understand) marriage ceremony, and I couldn’t understand why all the women had huge moustaches (the light was dim…) Turns out they’re these almost full-face metal masks, in the shape of the yellow felt mask on the doll above. I don’t know why they wear it, but they do.

Anyway, after seeing this, we come across a stall selling these DOLLS!!!!! She speaks when you press her hand. We asked the vendor what she said, and he translated it as something like “I am nothing, I have no choice, I am the slave of god”. Of course the ardent feminist in me was horrified (so was Colin, to be fair) – I mean the DOLL is wearing a MASK!!!! Kids play with this stuff!!!!! This is Barbie! (although Barbie is hardly an example of responsible toy-making). Traditional dress is all very well, but there’s something about the mask that made me want to scream and shout and rip all those little yellow bits of felt off every doll in the shop.

Turns out she is actually a character in a Simpsons-like Emirati family, so all may not be lost, but still. I was shocked.

Best Foreign Sign of the Trip:


Best Foreign Cool Cultural Thing of the Trip:
You can leave your bags in the coffee shop at the airport and both go to the bathroom and come back and find it all there, untouched. Which is really very nice. You can also tell they don’t really consider themselves at any risk from terrorism.

Best Foreign TV of the Trip:
Camel TV. Yip, a whole channel (Colin assures me, he has personally done the research) dedicated entirely to footage of camels wandering in the desert, set to traditional music. No talking, no presenting, no program beginnings or endings, just camels wandering. Schweet!



The End

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home