Dubai To Do

The top photo shows what's done in Dubai: the Burj Khalifa, Palm Jumeirah, and the tennis court/helicopter landing pad on the Burj Al Arab. The Dubai To Do List includes the three photos below showing the Dancing Towers, Chess City and Hydropolis.

Another Big Dubai Project On Hold (Just Kidding!)

If you find it hard to distinguish fact from fiction these days, you'd feel right at home in Dubai.

Keeping track of the various megaprojects, many of which have been suspended or put on hold, is a job in itself. I admit to being mind-boggled by a recent report outlining some of the largest recent casualties of Dubai's debt crisis. According to the e-magazine Mena Infrastructure, "among them were the Hydropolis - a $500 million underwater hotel, the Dancing Towers - a multi-billion project that would have seen several skyscrapers entwined together and Chess City... a city that, as the name would suggest, was to resemble a chessboard." I hadn't even heard of any of these projects! Here's the link:

http://www.menainfra.com/news/the-cancelled-dubai-mega-projects/

So I was not surprised at all to see The Onion's take, obviously fake: "Dubai Debt Crisis Halts Building of World's Largest Indoor Mountain Range", which were to be known as the Alps Dubai. See photo, and here's the link:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/dubai_debt_crisis_halts_building

The Onion, which bills itself as America's Finest News Source, is not likely to be mistaken for a serious news source, as the headlines and photos are so absurd as to give it away immediately. But how do you tell with all the other potential sources out there, comedic, ranting or otherwise, who purport or pretend to be speaking the truth? Despite my recent plug for Jon Stewart, I don't rely on him or his like for news as I find it hard to swallow when drenched with biting sarcasm. How do we know when people are just kidding or speaking the truth?

They Race Camels, Don't They?

Camel racing is very popular among the locals in Dubai during the winter months, so while my son was here for a short visit we made plans to go. It proved to be more difficult than expected to find out when and where the races are held. I consulted various sources, including the must-have guidebook, Dubai Explorer, and internet sites such as one for the Dubai Camel Racing Club, but details and locations were not available. Apparently the camel racing people do not encourage tourists to visit. My husband's office administrator got us a phone number of a man who should know about the schedule. I called that number and the man who answered gave me another number. I called that number and the man who answered told me there was racing that afternoon at 2 pm, so we were in luck! I wasn't clear on the location he gave me, but it was somewhere off Al Ain Road where the Rugby Sevens stadium is located so I had a vague idea.

Now that my husband decided to come my vague idea of location was not good enough so he asked the Arabic-speaking lawyer in his office to give the camel man another call, and the location with exit information was made more clear. We headed out with plenty of time to spare. We definitely would have missed the exit had we not known which one to take, since there was no signage or stadium visible from the road to indicate that the camel racing track was around the bend. There were, however, long lines of lights and a roadway of sorts that later turned out to be part of the extremely long track for the races. (We had mistaken these rows of lights for a huge parking lot when we passed by the area on the way back from a day trip to Al Ain.)

Driving to the track area, we passed many small groups of men escorting camels in that direction. We parked with one other car in front of what looked like a clubhouse and found some stands with TV's around the back where we took seats. There was no admission charge--no booth of any kind, nor any sign of a concession stand or public toilets. We were the only ones in the stands for quite a while, but we could see a few men praying and other people warming up camels nearby. One man joined us in the stands and asked where we were from but then left us alone. A few other men came and took seats in front of the TV, and we were glad we did not choose to sit there as we would have been in the way. The first race started from an area to our right (we almost missed it!) and then a bunch of men, the ones who seemed to be working with those camels, came to the stands to watch the race on TV. The camels, about 10 in number, headed out straight along the main road away from us, accompanied by a herd of cars driving alongside the track on both sides. From what we had read in the guidebooks, we knew that the men in the cars were the owners, honking their horns and urging their camels on. Each camel had a small robot rider with stick on its back, which apparently was controlled by the owner from the car.

The race track seemed to be in the shape of a very large tear drop, going straight for a long way and then circling to the left and then going a long way straight back finishing in front of the stands where the finish line was put down in chalk. Apparently camels can race longer distances than horses, but maybe they are not as good at turning. We figured the track was about 4 miles long, and it took a good 13 minutes for the first camels to finish, so they may have been going about 20 miles per hour. As they approached the finish line, the cars with the owners peeled away, miraculously avoiding crashes where they got bunched up next to the track, and the men in front of the TV left to collect their respective camels. There wasn't any cheering to speak of, just some occasional clapping and greetings exchanged between the men coming and going. The next race started even before all the camels had finished the first race, but with the track being so long there was no danger of any camel being lapped.

We could not tell if there was any significant difference in the races. The camels in the second race seemed smaller, perhaps younger, and the camels in the third race were a bit faster, but not by much. We also could not tell by looking if the camels were male or female, seeing no obvious male anatomy. One thing was clear--I was the only female person at the track! After three races, we had had our fill and so we left at the start of the fourth race, in time to pass the stragglers on the first straightaway as we drove back along the main road. While it was a memorable sight very worth seeing, we could see why camel racing is not a tourist attraction, from the standpoint of both the locals and tourists.

Sheikh Mo's Big Show

We were there for Sheikh Mo's Big Show last night, the grand opening of the world's tallest building, the Burj Dubai. The opening had been postponed twice but was now a go for 8 p.m. on January 4, 2010, coinciding with the fourth anniversary of Sheikh Mohammed's becoming the Ruler of Dubai. The celebration had a last-minute, disorganized feel to it as it was obvious preparations were furiously continuing up to the last minute. Crowds began thronging the area in the afternoon and evening, especially in the Dubai Mall. Roads that were supposed to be closed never seemed to close as cars lined up to get in various parking lots. There were plenty of good viewing areas all around the circumference of the building. The best might have been further from the traffic and crowds along the beach road, as even those of us close enough to see the ceremony on a large screen TV would not be able to hear or understand the speeches, which were in Arabic.

My husband, son and I wandered around the area starting at 4:30 p.m., walking through the Mall and then stopping for a light dinner of sushi in the Japanese restaurant at Souk Al Bahar to kill some time. We then posted ourselves near the bridge to the Burj Dubai "Island" where the ceremony was taking place. My son questioned whether it was properly an island since it was based in concrete surrounded by a shallow pool of water, and we all agreed the water would not be the place to seek shelter from the debris field of the building, mapping ourselves an escape route through the Souk Al Bahar to our rear. We enjoyed watching workmen carry red sofas over the bridge, presumably for the comfort of the attending dignitaries. My husband bet us that the ceremony would start late in the Arabic fashion, but a musical salute with fountain show began early at ten minutes before the hour, followed by the scary sight of parachutists descending perilously close to the building to a bullseye landing on the island. Then there was a longish pause for speeches (inaudible) before the rest of the show began.

We were expecting fireworks, of course, and more of the big fountain show, as the lake fountain watershow set to music has already been running for months as one of the must-see sights outside the building. No surprises there, except perhaps for the unusual height achieved by the jets of water, which sound like fireworks exploding when they collapse back onto the surface of the lake. The fireworks then started, with a nice set coming out of the top of the nearby Address Hotel at the Dubai Mall. What we were not prepared for, and what came as a total surprise, were the lights and fireworks that then started coming out of the Burj Dubai itself. Searchlights shot out from everywhere, scanning the area around the building, all white at first. Smaller twinkling lights began flashing randomly all over the building. The building was backlit for a while to show a stunning profile against the black night sky. And then fireworks started shooting out of the building from top to bottom, bottom to top and winding all around, up and down. It was like a huge lit up exploding Christmas tree, or, perhaps more appropriate, like an enormous torch being lit up and exploded over and over. After all the white fireworks were exploded leaving plumes of smoke, the searchlights turned all different colors, not just the green, red and white colors of the UAE flag, but also blue and purple. At the end the building was left lit up with the small white twinkling lights, in perfect harmony with the clear night sky.

It was a spectacular show, even better than I could have imagined. We made our way out of the area as quickly as we could, hoping to avoid the crowds and traffic by walking back to where our car was parked near my husband's workplace. As is usual in Dubai, there was no easy way to do this, as pedestrian walkways are a rarity. In this crowd the typically numerous and cheap taxis were impossible to find. We had no choice but to fight our way against human traffic back through the thickest part of the crush in the mall and surrounding parking lots, where we found an exit leading to the road we needed to follow. Once we were on the right road, it was not too hard to make our way back, with the accompaniment of honking horns and the twinkling Burj to our back. It was a good ending to an historic evening, shared among a very peaceful crowd of all ages, a grand mix of Arabic and other nationalities.

Driving home we learned on the radio that Sheikh Mo had renamed the building on the spot the Burj Khalifa, in honor of Sheikh Khalifa, the Ruler of the UAE. My husband joked that the naming rights must have cost $10 billion, which was the amount that Abu Dhabi just paid to bail out Dubai. Probably something to that, as the news services also seem to see a connection there. This morning's radio revealed that some clever chap in Mirdif somehow managed to buy the internet naming rights to the domain name www.burjkhalifa.com, with all kinds of speculation as to how this could happen and what might happen to this chump for doing so.

By the way, it was a closely guarded secret, but now it is public, that the height of the building is 828 meters, over 160 floors, far eclipsing the next tallest building in Taipei. Visitors will be able to take the trip to an observation deck on the 124th floor starting later today.