Dubai

We flew over some mountains

to get to Dubai.

We stayed in Deira, which was hopping. We'd been told that Dubai wasn't at all walkable and that we shouldn't even try, but that's really only the case downtown; Deira is all about the walking, and it was bustling.


We went for a walk, around the streets and the souks, the night we got in. It reminded me a lot of Istanbul... I'd tweeted that it was Istanbul meets Tokyo, with a dash of Shanghai and Jaipur.


The next morning, we got up early for our reserved time slot to the 128th floor of Burj Khalifa. We hadn't realized until a few days prior that we'd have to reserve ahead of time, and all the regular-priced tickets had sold out. We shelled out $83 a piece--it was that or nothing--for the fast-track tickets, which allow you to cut the queues, and it was wonderful to do so. Nonetheless, it was crowded at the top. And hazy. But we got some good pictures.

We descended and had a lovely Middle Eastern brunch (mmm, ful), which was pretty hard to find in the Mall of Dubai. We had to get past all this bull$hit:

Then we explored the mall some. Rick marveled at the dapper dishdashas. We saw the the sculptures, the ice rink (not pictured)

 --before taking the beautifully-lit metro

 to the Bastakiya, or Dubai's (refurbished) old town.

 Afterward, we hit the beach.

 

We opted for one of the free beaches--the one we'd originally wanted was closed for whatever reason, so we ended up at one to the north, just south of Sharjah. I'd read that two-piece suits were fine, as long as they weren't "micro-bikinis," which mine emphatically was not. I don't wear one-pieces because I hate the feeling of wet fabric clinging to my stomach, and I wasn't going to pack an extra suit just for Dubai. The interwebs warned me that, either way, dudes would be gawking, and boy were they gawking. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. Like, the guys would keep walking and still turn their heads to stare.

Rick: Is this normal?
A.: The gawking?
Rick: Do you get this at other beaches.
A.: Um, no. Women in swimsuits abound and nobody cares. There's a woman in a bikini over there.
Jay: She's flat-chested.
A.: Well, there's a dude over there with breasts bigger than mind. Maybe they should gawk at him.

We left the beach as the sun was setting and cabbed back to the hotel with the last drop of cash we had. Our search for an ATM took us through some crazy gold and silver souks. We made it through a gauntlet of hawkers holding watches up in our faces and got enough cash for a nice South Asian dinner. Afterward, we explored the night market and what seemed to be a holiday display.

Because there are so many South Asians (and other foreigners) in Dubai, English is the lingua franca. We had no trouble getting around.

The next morning, the guys overslept. I waited too long to wake them--I wasn't sure what time Jay had set his alarm for, and it turned out he'd set it for the wrong day. At the last possible moment, I said, "guys! we have to go!" We made it to the airport just in time, but Jay was concerned they wouldn't let us check bags (we'd be just a few minutes over the hour or 90-minute minimum). I wasn't as worried--I didn't see Emirates as being jerks, but I wasn't entirely unconcerned. The check-in line was long (they didn't separate it out by flight, so everyone going to every South Asian country with every appliance in Dubai was ahead of us in line). I thought, we're not checking microwaves; we have backpacks. They've got to let us check our bags. And they did.

The woman at the counter had no idea that Ho Chi Minh City was a thing; she asked to see my printed itinerary. So few of their traffic is for that part of Asia. And so, after the long lines for check-in, emigration, and security, we just barely made it to the gate. Where we got on a bus, which went for over 20 minutes. Except someone missed the bus, so we had to wait for that person to catch the next one. Which further delayed the flight. I'm glad we'd changed our original plan, which was to take a train that night from Saigon (which is what everyone in Vietnam calls it) to Danang.

Instead, we got in late evening and after dodging motorcycles--which is what one does in Vietnam-- settled into our apartment down the road from the airport, and wandered a few blocks for dinner. We sat on small, kid-sized stools (as the Vietnamese do--you'll see in my later pictures). The guys got beer, I got dinner. The menu was in Vietnamese, but with Jay's phone we managed to figure out what was what. It was mostly meat and seafood, so my best choice was snails. This was the only time during the trip that I'd have to eat animals, and I wasn't particularly bothered (I'm generally not bothered about gastropods or mollusks). They grilled them right out on the street.

That was our first night in Vietnam. We loved it.