Rantings Diversified

Ok, I have to give you a bit of background first. You see on Tuesday when I packed and GTFO’d out of Michele’s apartment, in my haste I left a bunch of my clothes hanging in the closet. On Wednesday I called and left her a voice mail telling her I would appreciate her getting them to me.
This morning, Friday, I arose from my dormancy platform at 0630. I just putzed around. You know the three S’s and that stuff. At some point I looked at my cell phone and it said to me that I had received a txt the evening before. Michele sent me a message to tell me my clothes will reach my hotel tomorrow, which is today. So I did a bit of reading and generally was having a lazy morning when about 0830 I’m just laying on my bed watching the traffic go by and all of a sudden I see an old, beat, black Chrysler. Holy Shit, that’s a Chrysler I think I said out loud. I jump up and sure as shit it pulls into the parking lot directly in front of my window. I watch as she gets out carrying a yellow Spinneys bag. Oh, I am REALLY not up for this, I think out loud. A few minutes pass and she reappears outside and walks to her car. She sits there for awhile. So leave already, I’m again thinking out loud. Then my phone beeps. It’s another txt to tell me my clothes are at the front desk. Whew, that was close. She eventually pulled away.
So, I’m figuring by the way my feet felt at the end of yesterday that I did 20 to 25 miles. Well, today maybe I’ll hit 30. I’m off to Al Satwa to have a look-see around. Mr. Cabbie man drops me on Trade Center Street and I start my walkabout. I found a tiny little internet café kinda’ scary place in an alley and popped off a few quick emails. I was just kinda’ wandering again and I came upon a hotel called the Rydges Hotel and Resort. I went in. I really had to, “see a man about a horse”. Don’t you know to get to the WC one must walk right by a bar or pub in this case. Seeing how it’s 1430 I decide to stop and do some weight lifting. One Imperial pint 20 ounces at a time.
This is where I met Steve the Brit, Frank the Scotsman and Brian the pommy blow-in from Sydney, NSW. Three good guys. We talked about Soccer and Baseball and Rugby for a bit and then we all headed to another bar in the hotel to shoot some pool. That we did. We played teams. The Brian’s vs. The World. We won some and lost some. Come to think of it we all sucked at pool but it was good craic. As I stated above it was 1430 and sunny when I went in this place and it was dark and very much night like when I left. Well so much for doing a lot of walking today. I guess pounding a bunch of Kens, shooting pool and good craic is akin to walking around. Isn’t it?
I wake up this morning, 0630, Saturday, with a bit of a headache. Gee, I wonder why? It’s a grey, overcast, basically shitty kinda’ day. It matched my mood. Once again I had another killer breakfast at The Grind except today they refilled my tea pot. Oh brother was I over caffeinated. I felt like a hummingbird on Methedrine.
So I get this crazy idea to go to the Mall of the Emirates and I did. The Mall of the Emirates is where Ski Dubai is. Ski Dubai is an indoor ski resort. Yes you read that correctly. Inside this immense building they built a small mountain, refrigerated it and then they make snow so one can go skiing whenever one wishes. Absolutely bizarre!
I spent 5 hours walking around this place and I’d bet I only saw about 2/3 of it. Huge doesn’t describe it! If this isn’t the largest shopping mall in the world then I don’t wish to see the largest. Every store conceivable was in there. I saw women’s dresses that cost over $10,000. I went in to the Breitling watch store and ogled a couple of $18,000 watches. I also found a Tobacconist. Hehehe! Do you know what that means? That means I am sitting here smoking a Cuban cigar!!! It is a Cohiba #2 to be exact. This I could get use to. I wish that Castro guy would just die so we can start getting these at home. I also found a sports store and bought myself a real honest to goodness UAE rugby team shirt.
I had lunch at some place sitting beside a bunch of guys from Glasgow, Scotland. What language do they speak there?
My whole experience in the Mall of the Emirates, in hindsight seems to be a bit surrealistic. $18,000 watches not 50 yards from a dollar store. Women in abayas(sp?) walking next to girls in shorts and bikini tops. McDonalds, Burger King and KFC right next door to a coffee shop selling $30 cups of Joe
The cab rides there and back took me right past the Burj Dubai. This is the tallest man made thing in the world. Gee, I wonder if anyone is going to fly an airplane into it.
Dinner reading and bed.
I awaken once again at 0630 and start this the last day of my adventure in Arabia. It dawned on me that I may not have gotten the whole Arab experience because I have not raced a single camel nor have I seen any women getting stoned to death and as far as I know no one has been beheaded here this week. I’ll tell you one thing I am definitely going to miss and that is my bangin’ breakfasts at The Grind. After breakfast I headed down to the old Gold Souk again. This time I knew what I was looking for and whom I wished to buy it from. The other day when I was there I met an Afghan guy trying to sell me a really nice Arabian dagger. It was silver and hand engraved and WAY more than I could afford but I went and searched him out to buy some presents to take home. It took me about an hour because you see his stall is not actually in the Gold Souk but in one of the little alleys off of it. I found him and his name is Abdul Razzak or Razzak for short. He was blown away that I remembered him and sought him out to buy my presents. He gave me a great price for all of it and then gave me a little glass statue of the Burj Arabia as his present to me. We sat down in the alleyway and had some tea and talked for awhile. I told him all about Michele and my life in the US and he told me he worked as an interpreter for the US Army until the Taliban kneecapped him(shades of Belfast). The Army took him to hospital and fixed him up but then his father wouldn’t let him go back to work and sent him to Dubai until the Taliban are defeated. He has been here two years and expects to be able to go home in another year. He claims the Taliban are evil and use Islam to do the devils work. He is a really nice guy and if nothing else good comes of this trip at least I got to meet him and share a cuppa’ with him.
I get back from the Gold Souk and head to the Al Karama Post Office to send off some things, which I did. Ya’ know gub’mint offices are the same the world over. Actually maybe I shouldn’t say that because the people at the windows I dealt with were very nice and helpful. There was a ton of paperwork to mail things to different countries and every country had different paperwork. Anyways that took about an hour and a half and then I decided to hike it back to my hotel. The walk was only about a half hour but about 2 kilometers from my hotel it started raining. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one who melts in the rain. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was refreshing and cool but by the time I got to my room I was soaked. Wonderful, now I have to pack wet clothes! Oh well, it could be worse. It’s now 1900 and I’m 95% packed and more than ready to GTFO this sandbox. I’m going to head to the airport around 2100 so I can get checked in and buy some duty free smokes and a bottle of Jameson’s. I hope to find some free internet access so I can post this but if not it’ll go up as soon as I get settled at home.
What a long, strange trip it’s been.
Coming next; Episode Three, The Return

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 13th, 2008 at 12:30 and is filed under Arabian Daze. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.