Dub stepping our way to Europe. Dubai to Dublin. I sit here on the plane trying to wade through my foggy, muddled, jet lagged brain to recall my 24hours in the Middle East. Seeing the tallest tower in the world with my own eyeballs and riding a camel in the desert I consider quite epic.
Landing on a clear, beautiful day and my jaw physically dropping at the site of the large round ball of fire rising on the sand dune horizon.
We grab our, well at least my, ridiculously over sized hybrid (suitcase/backpack which will break my back if I ever actually try mount that thing on myself) and head out to grab a taxi.
Heading to the closest one, naturally, being the second class citizens us females are, we were escorted across the road to the fleet of pink taxis with female only drivers. Helping the poor woman get our hefty suitcases in her boot we could automatically smell the overwhelming floral pong oozing from the inside of her car.
Dropping the Emily zombies to the Arabic Park Hotel at 6:30am, only 7.5 hours before we were allowed to check in.... Bummer.
Unfortunately no rooms were ready for us to claim but the man must have noticed our black eyes, messy hair and pale faces and realised an early check in would be more than appreciated. Best he could crank was midday. Well this is great but we were due at the Dubai Mall 10am for brunch with a friend. So popping our luggage in storage, sitting by the pool we phoned home and made sure the news was out we were safe and sound in Dubai.
Heads up, with our greasy hair, baggy eyes and sweat pants we proudly ventured out to the amazing, wealthy Dubai mall. We definitely looked the part. Unfortunately for us we had a sneaky taxi driver trying to play us for dumb even though we knew what he was up to and took us the long way to the mall. Ah well, tour of Dubai.
Had brunch in the most amazing spot with an incredible view of the middle eastern Vegas. It looked like a painting it was so clean and perfect.
Bircher muesli and yoghurt with fresh watermelon, peach and ginger juice I had to remind myself it wasnt as expensive as it seemed with the dirrim being about 3.5x less than than what the kiwi dollar is worth.
Dead on our feet, Natasha (my friend who lives in Dubai) showed us around the mall which included a two story aquarium with sharks, an ice skating rink and a waterfall.
Desperate for showers we head back to the hotel, check in and find we have a great view of the city in the distance and we hear the middle of the day call for prayer echo about the place. Quite awesome. Yip we aren't at home anymore.
Catch some wifi's, shower and prepare for our sandpit play date.
A tall dark man in a white robe picked us as well as a few others a few hours later in his 4WD and in a convoy with about 20 other vehicles we hit the dunes with our very own middle eastern roller coaster ride. Simply awesome and a little bit envious of the local guys dancing around us in their sweet little dune buggy's, darting, jumping and doing wheelies. Our bums leaving the seat fairly often and heads nearly smacking into the windows on a number of occasions we zoom our way through the sandpit wonderland.
Arriving to our destination we see a beautiful camp set up for our Arabic meal on cushions and belly dancing show. Before this though, we of course had to take Alice for a spin. Alice the camel had one or two humps, it's debatable, either way just enough space for Em and I. Bumpy ascent and descent but smooth sunset ride which went in a circle and ended far too soon. Middle eastern merry go round it seemed.
White sitting on our cushions chatting to our new German friends sipping red wine we decided to go get dressed up in burqas and get henna tattoos (don't worry Mum, these ones only last a week).
At the end of the show we headed into the dark, our toes sinking into the cool sand finding our driver (who in the pitch black of night still wore his fancy sunnies) to cruise us back across the dunes and highway towards Arabic Park for our beauty sleep before our 4am get up and flight to Ireland. Not wanting to think about the fact it was like 1am in Dublin. St Paddys here we come!