Deira & Bur Dubai

On my last full day in Dubai I visited the northern parts of the city. This is the 'old town' area of Dubai and was originally centred around Dubai creek, a trading & transit hub based on fishing and pearling and located on the major waterway of the area. Warning - this is a very picture intensive post...it was a big day!

The 'creek' is still a major part of the transit infrastructure and is a little larger than I expected

There are a couple of bridges but most people cross the river using the 'Abra', or water taxi

and the river is still used to ship in a lot of produce, from food & drink to white goods. That dhow could fit a bit more I reckon...

The north side of the creek is Deira, the most traditional part of the main Dubai city, which is a strange mix of half built (or half ruined?) buildings backed by new structures

Interspersed with a few mosques

ridiculous traffic (why are you hooting? There's 100 cars in front of you!)

and a few 'souqs', or market areas. The new spice market was still under construction

 but in the back streets were the old spice souqs. They smelled even better than they looked!

After a few hours of wandering around Deira I caught an abra and crossed the river. That was an experience in itself - you basically take a seat and wait until it fills up, and then the driver walks around the edge taking the 1 Dirham fee. He then promptly backed out into another abra, which was a bit concerning

but after a bit of shouting & gesticulation we were on our way...

and I started to relax...hey, if the worst comes to the worst the camera is waterproof

It took about 15 minutes to cross the 'creek', dodging tourist boats and dhows as we went

The southern side of the creek is Bur Dubai, which is based mainly around the riverfront. By this time I'd been wandering around in the hot sun for a few hours and was starting to feel the 38 degree heat, so it was time to seek shade in the Dubai museum. The old fort was more than a little oppressive   

but the underground gallery provided some welcome relief and some interesting background on the history of the region. For instance the bedouins really liked their goats in the evenings

 and were early adopters of break dancing

At this point I was ready to go back to the hotel, but I couldn't help stopping by the Bastakiya region. I was tempted to grab a quick burger but didn't want to get the hump

 Instead I wandered around the beautiful and strangely deserted 'old town'

Despite what it looks like I don't think these are intended to be celebrating gay pride...

 Still slightly creepily deserted

Look - a person!

By this time I'd been out in the sun for over 5 hours so I beat a footsore & undocumented retreat back to the hotel. Not a bad way to finish a stay in a strict Islamic state...

It was a very interesting morning. If you're in Dubai for more than a couple of days it's well worth taking a break from the glitz and glamour of downtown and checking out the Creek area.

Downtown

Another new part of Dubai is 'Downtown', featuring the world's tallest building and the world's largest shopping mall. Astonishingly the construction of all this only started ten years ago and was finished within five years, although due to funding problems during the GFC the tower was renamed from the planned 'Burj Dubai' (and all signage changed overnight) after the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi stepped in and bailed them out near the end of the project.

History aside, it is a very very imposing building up close

and the associated shopping mall has a huge restaurant & bar complex which overlooks the Burj and reinforces the enormity of the building 

There's also a huge 'dancing fountain' attraction, which apparently had the design brief 'it needs to be like the fountains at Las Vegas, but bigger' 

They met the brief...

When the tall fountains launch (up to 150m high!), you can hear the bangs from the water cavitating as it's pushed through the nozzles

All in all a very impressive display, although the steak I had at 'Meat Co' afterwards blew both the fountain and the view away...

Jumeirah

I have a couple of friends who moved out to Dubai a few years ago and I was lucky enough to be able to catch up with them on Saturday afternoon. They have a different life to the guys I work with, with more of an emphasis on living longer-term within the local community and not just being there for the beers, the bling & the brunches. They picked me up from outside my hotel and took me down to the Jumeirah area of Dubai, one of the more affluent areas of the city with a couple of distinctive landmarks

 

Unfortunately you can't just turn up to the Burj Al-Arab and take a look around - you need to show advance bookings even to get to morning tea - so this is the closest you can get without a room or an appointment

Just down the road is the more accessible Madinat Jumeirah, which is an upmarket shopping mall and a couple of classy hotels built in the old style around a network of artificial canals

Overlooking the Burj Al-Arab of course

 

It's a strange place, part Souq

Part bar and restaurant complex

Part theatre (Dubai's only one)

 and part completely over the top hotel - rose petal covered pool, anyone?

If you're staying there then you get ferried around the waterways for free, but if you're a visitor you can still book a tour by 'Abra' (water taxi). It was very relaxing to drift around listening to evening birdsong and trying to peer into rich people's windows...

It was great to see the world outside Sheikh Zayed Rd, for the first time in a week, and better still to catch up with some old friends. Cheers guys!

Some mornings just don't pan out...

The weekend falls on Friday and Saturday in Dubai, so today I had some time to myself. The plan was to sleep in a bit before heading down to the Mall of the Emirates and visit the world's largest indoor ski slope for a long-awaited snowboarding session. Unfortunately sometimes things just don't work out...

I started off waking up early and checking my work email, promptly getting embroiled in a work conversation where I was just trying to help but was dragged into someone else's crisis. After a couple of hours I gave up, left it alone and grabbed breakfast at a local Tim Horton's - a mistake in its own right. Then at around 10.30am I left to go snowboarding and walked down to the local transit station. After walking across the road to the train station it turns out that trains don't run on Fridays until 1pm, so half an hour after leaving the hotel I had to walk back across the road and jump into a cab to get me to the mall. The cab dropped me at the opposite end of the mall to the snow slope but after a 15 minute walk I got to the 'ski resort'

although it looked strangely quiet on the slopes with no chairlifts running

It turns out that the slope was closed until midday because they were running a charity competition, and I was meeting friends at 2.30pm so no boarding for me that day. All I could do was look longingly at the guys that were shaping the snow...

I didn't want to catch a cab back to the hotel so decided to wait for the trains to start running and wander round the mall instead. I get bored shopping fairly quickly, but the architecture was  pretty impressive (in a traditionally ostentatious way)

At 1pm I wandered over to the transit area and joined the rush as the doors opened and hoards of people dashed through the the station, only to wait 30 minutes for the first train to arrive. It was a busy one too...

I looked at the crush and thought 'I'm never going to fit on that', but then thought I'd give it a go. Not only did I get on but two other people pushed in behind me before the doors closed, although the third guy dragging a suitcase that he tried to leave outside the doors for the journey whilst still hanging onto the handle was unceremoniously ejected by the guard. It was an uncomfortable 30 minute journey where every station turned into a moshpit as new travellers fought to get on before the already packed crowd could let people out. Things weren't helped by the unsettling sensation that the guy next to me was enjoying the press against my leg a little bit too much, but I had nowhere to go so I just focussed on not crushing the older lady to my right as the train swayed.

Did I achieve what I set out to do? Nope, nowhere close. But it was an interesting morning nonetheless...

Living the high life

It's been a hard few days in Dubai. Not so much the work, but more the socialising. I've been out later and more often in the last week than in the last year, and I'm suffering from 'age-lag' - my mind thinks I'm 20 years younger than I am. One of the places we frequented was '43', on the 43rd floor of a local hotel. The view from the top was OK I guess...

Note the unfinished tower on the left, a victim of the GFC

 

The seaward side is still awaiting development

and then the sun went down as we drank beer and relaxed

 Of course the thing with Dubai is that there's always someone doing it better than you...

I think you could say that the place is growing on me. Many more photos to come!