Flamingo Tour: Saw lots of flamingos just outside the city, Dubai has native flamingos, I didn’t know that. Flamingos are funny creatures. We also saw some huuuuuge palace, I forget its name, I’ll look it up when I edit this. But it was really rather huge, so much land, just outside the city, like a stately home but with more grand walling.

I then took the tour bus to the end of palm island and took a tour around the crescent, which has currently got 4 5* hotels and is making another 38!! Oh Dubia.

Then I went to see the dancing fountains again on the way back (for the third time), each time it gets better! This time the song was an Arabian version of the song “Hero” by Enrique Inglesias (blast from the past!). I love the fountains, the fact that it’s a different song each time really makes it!

Now I’m back at the hostel for an early night 🙂

Oh yeah facts: 

Where palm island is built the water was only 10m deep! Even less crazy!… Still rediculous though.

Some eels have 2 mouths! One inside their throat that ventures out, kinda like Alien! 

For lots of species of big fish, they all start of as female and then the biggest becomes male when the current male dies.

Dubia mall has an aquarium (even bigger than the one that I saw the other day, but less species of fish), an underwater zoo (I’m not entirely sure how an underwater zoo differs from an aquarium, but it has both!) and an Olympic ice skating ring! There is also a bar near the beaches called “The chill out room” or something to that effect, and everything in it is made of ice, even the chairs and classes and things… In the middle of the desert! Dubia.

There is even a call to prayer sounded around the Dubia mall and in the bird sanctuary that I was in. 

Started up early…er, went around on a few bus tours (much videoing), went on an hour long boat ride through the marina, which was lovely, nice and relaxing. Then went off to the aquarium at the end of Palm island (a man made island in the shape of a palm tree… Dubia), turns out the gulf is actually only 100m deep at it’s deepest point, so making islands in it isn’t actually that crazy… It’s still crazy. Just not as crazy as I initially thought.

Anyway Atlantis Aquarium… I don’t recall every having been to an aquarium before, turns out I absolutely love them! I could have stared at each individual fish for hours! And they had 16000 different types apparently (not sure I ever saw 1000 different types, but that might just be my untrained eyes :P) But soooo many videos! I had too many favourite fish there to pick an individual favourite, but jellyfish would have come up in the list. That took about 3-4 hours of my day then as I’d missed the last bus tour back I got the Monorail (queue The Simpsons musical number), what other form of transport would be fitting of a man made island in the shape of a palm tree. Atlantic was obviously a hotel, restaurant and mall too, in true Dubia style.

Dubia: everywhere’s a mall! If it’s not, then it’s a Souk… Which is basically a mall.

Then I went to see the dancing fountains (just between the Berg Kalifa (largest building in the world) and Dubia Mall (The largest mall in the world (I think)), it was actually really fun. I videoed it and watched it a second time (the music is different each time). I liked it so much that I missed the last metro home by 4 mins. Luckily the taxis are amazingly cheap too! 🙂

It seems that accommodation is mind blowingly expensive, but everything else is as you’d expect in a major city or surprisingly cheap… Of course there are many 5* hotels if you want to go expensive.

I’ve noted that almost all the cars are new and shiny, cars here are cheap, as is petrol (40p/L!)

A few videos will come up when I have access to a computer and an SD card reader… Many videos will need some heavy editing! 😛 I have at least an hour of pure fish. Probably the same of pure skyscrapers. I’m a proper tourist now 😛

I forgot to set an alarm, so I woke up at 11… That would be fine, if I hadn’t booked a bus tour for the day.

I got my first injury! 😀 First of many I’m sure. I thought I would start with a glamorous one: I cut my palm on the sharp end of a toilet brush 😛

I then went on the bus tour (after getting lost for 2 hours): the tour was good, I’m glad I got the two day tour! After doing the city tour and having a river tour at sunset, I then took the night tour, which was my favourite, Dubai looks the nicest and most exciting at night, also the tour commentator was hilarious. Drove round the palm islands (A huge man made island in the shape of a palm tree (the national tree, does England have a national tree?… Apparently so: the Royal Oak according to Wikipedia, I guessed Oak, I didn’t know there was a royal variety). The island is mainly residential, apart from the aquarium, and of course s few malls… One thing you learn about Dubia is it’s mainly skyscrapers and malls. So much new stuff being built! There’s also a set of islands that you can’t get to by land called World Islands, which is a huge map of the world made of islands… Dubai is crazy.

Dubai: home of big shiny stuff and many many world records. Everything is the most… or at least in the top 5 😛 If there is something that can be made that displays wealth, they’ve probably made it. It seems that they want lost of rich people with lots of money to come over, because that’s who most of it caters for. I found out that the most expensive cocktail ever was made here and cost a lot! The most expensive licence plate cost over 1 million pounds. Lots of other things are really quite expensive.

They do like grass and flowers, but because it rains 3 times a year and only 12cm a year all the flower/grassy areas have water pipped out to them, luckily they use recycled water, so it’s not too ridiculous.

They have a different type of pideon, as well as occasionally a good old fassioned wood pideon.

After getting my final items through the post (except for the tent which the contents of the packaging was lost in transit, so I’ll have to buy a tent on rouge), I sprayed all things that could be with odorless bug repellent spray (in preparation for Philippines) and left to dry for two hours, luckily the overwhelming smell of white spirit that you get when you spray it on, does swiftly fade away 🙂
Final hurrah with parents before leaving: 2004 Shiraz and some Hotel Chocolate chocolates, playing a game with the chocolates where you have to try and guess the flavour or description of the chocolate (they were winter deserts themed: nom nom).
Left early to miss rush hour, arrived 4 hours early… flight was delayed an extra 40 mins. But did get on:
Review of Emirates airline: very good, I enjoyed the food: my dinner had 14 different parts! (unfortunately I slept through breakfast (sad)) in-flight entertainment: excellent. I watched The Martian and Mad Max.
Slept in quite some comfort, awoken by very bright tops of butts.
I also enjoyed flying over Paris at night 1km up, at over 500mph, in -50°C… (flying is mind blowing when you think about it too much and I haven’t flown in almost a decade, so I was thinking muchly) I was also flying on a particular model of Airbus plane that I’ve written software for assisting the construction of, which was a fun thought 🙂
Landed in a slightly foggy Dubai. After collecting my bag spent maybe even an hour front to find the way to the metro station (hangs head in shame). Thought everything was very quiet, turns out that Friday is the weekend, I didn’t know that.
Temperatures around 22°C turns out to be a bit too much when the sun is directly on you, you’re walking about with about 15kg of backpack on you and your water is running low… But I arrived quite sweaty as the service ended at Redeemer Church Dubai, which is held in the huge meeting room at one of the Marriott hotels (I did initially go to the wrong Marriott), large bustling church, around 400 there today, unfortunately I can’t make comments on how the church culture differs because I just got the after service chatter. The people I did meet though were really lovely, helpful and gave me a lift to my hostel.
My hostel: Although it is the cheapest place to stay in all of Dubai, it’s actually more expensive than a 3* hotel in Manila (my next stop)! My hostel isn’t the cleanest place, it’s two converted flats and it has no cooking facilities, but the people are friendly and my bed is comfortable 🙂
I accidentally took a nap for a couple of hours, then booked myself onto a two day and night bus tour starting tomorrow. It must be said, transport here in Dubai is very cheap! My metro trip cost me less than 60p! And it’s good! Very clean, not too busy… Bit less frequent than The Tube, but all in all, I would highly recommend!
All of Dubai is very clean… apparent from the toilets, the toilets are frequently terrible and the cubicals all have shower hoses in them… I’m not sure why.
The exchange rate is 1:5 ish Sterling to Arab Emirates Dirham (AED) but some things are priced in USD, mainly tourist things. By the time I leave I’m going to be back to year 6 levels of speed division and multiplication of 5, currently I’m shockingly slow.
I went shopping to a local supermarket and had fun browsing the unusual produce: they have the smallest cucumbers, but the largest variety of dates one ever seen… I didn’t even know there were different sorts of dates. I bought a sample of the most interesting looking fruits and vegetables I could find and then finding out that there are no cooking facilities, played a game of ‘Which items are far too bitter to eat any of without cooking?’

… turns out about half. Some have the peach effect (either unripe or off), some have no flavour at all but some are utterly delicious! I bought a handful of about 15 different things and it came to 18AED (about £3.50) turns out none branded foods here are generally very cheap, if you choose wisely. Anything branded is a huge amount more. Most things also say where they’re from which I liked 🙂
I also saw a sign that made me chuckle with it’s British level of passive aggression, it read “Thank you for not eating”, this was around the bag your own produce sections, not just rationing propaganda, but either way, it was totally ignored by around half of the people I noticed that just ate all sorts of bits and bobs often without even a vague interest in buying anything. I think passive aggression is ineffective upon a population that isn’t quite as awkwardly British as we are 😛
I’ve had lots of nice chats with people in the hostel too.
All in all, today has been eclectic and a nice start to my adventure 🙂