The Dubai Saga Begins

Right now it is nine o-clock on a Saturday night and I will certainly say that I haven’t really slept since Wednesday and yet although I am tired beyond even my own understanding of it I feel compelled to write out my day lest it’s finer points leave me in my dark slumber.
Today really started Thursday morning when I left my family’s house in Temecula and caught the red eye that night to New York. From there, my brother and I boarded Emirates airlines for a thirteen-hour flight straight to Dubai city. On the way we met a teacher from San Luis who was born in Saudi Arabia and had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and a freelance photographer who was on his way to India to shoot a project for National Geographic.



We arrived in Dubai at eight in the morning and met up with our dad outside of customs. The airport was lavishly decorated and the size of the terminal alone put any other we have ever visited to shame (and we have been to quite a few). The air was a little sticky but not as hot as I expected. It made me think of when we lived up in the mountains of Java where it was moist and warm all the time.
A taxi took us to the Number One Hotel so named for a gigantic “number one” that is visible in the building’s architecture when looking from a distance. The hotel resides on the main strip of Sheik Ziyade Road where all the newest skyscrapers are located and where if you had been here fifteen years ago you would have been in the middle of the desert. Towers of all different colors and designs line the sides of the road making it seem like some sort of futuristic city that you might see in a superman comic book.

We dumped off our stuff and quickly showered before heading out into the heart of Dubai determined not to sleep until night so that we would be able to quickly adjust to the twelve-hour time difference. A free bus and taxi later left us at a large bay that separated two parts of Dubai. We walked along the waters edge and ended up going to a museum on the history of the city. This part of town was full of Indians and we walked endlessly through their bazaars and tailor shops. At midday we crossed the bay via a water taxi for only one dirham (twenty-five cents) a person. My brother was looking for a good deal on raw Arabic coffee and we found him one at a little Souq in an alley way.



Wandering around this maze of alleys and shops brought me into the hands of a short little Indian looking to sell me a fake Rolex. He asked me to follow him and I pleasantly said yes. I had been looking out all day for potential friends that worked in Dubai but had a family elsewhere for so that………..oh wow…….tired……I’ll finish the story tomorrow.