Happy UAE Day!

The UAE is 39 years old this weekend and boy, people are right into the celebrations. Cars are decorated, people are out celebrating, and flags are flying everywhere (even at the top of this mountain in the middle of nowhere on the way to oman!)

We also had a 4 day weekend to commemorate it. I only wish they would tell us in advance, so that i can plan stuff! Everyone was expecting a holiday on Thursday till Saturday and then another day off the following Tuesday for the Islamic New Year. Instead, we were told on Tuesday that we would get Thurs till Sun off, because the Government decided to bring the Tuesday holiday forward to Sunday so that we all get 4 days off. If I knew of this earlier, I would have flown out of the country and done something!

However, it's turned out to be a nice holiday, went diving in Oman and spent the night and next day in Dubai catching up with friends and doing some Christmas shopping. Also got treated to one of the yummiest Indian places in Dubai - the world famous Ravi's! Absolutely mouth watering Indian food! Some pics here...

Cradle of Civilisation

I just got back from an amazing 9 day Egypt trip, and boy was I blown away. Egypt was all that I imagined it to be and more. The sights are incredible, and there is so much history and culture packed in one place that after 5 or 6 days I became very blase about it being just another temple or just another 5,000 year old mummy. It's mind boggling how people must have lived 5,000 years ago, and how amazingly well preserved things are. I saw strands of hair and fingernails on a mummy that was thousands of years old, and even smoke markings on the ceiling of an ancient temple, rembrandts of cooking by the Christians that were persecuted during the time of the Roman empire.

We started our tour in Cairo to see the Pyramids, and made our way south via train and cruise to Aswan via Luxor. Plenty of temples, tombs and statues along the way, and amazing greenery throughout the journey along the Nile. We also went on a hot air balloon and the contrast between the greens of the Nile delta and the desert surrounding it is surreal. We had some very good guides along the way who really painted the picture of how people must have lived then. A highlight was also sailing along the Nile in Aswan on a felucca (sail boat) - so beautiful, tranquil and peaceful. The cruise was also very nice, and the staff made our trip. They loved us as we did them, and everyday it was a new adventure, a new comedy followed by barrels of laughter.

More than that, what really made my trip were the hospitality and the warmth of the people. I went to Egypt with an expectation that i would be hassled non-stop, that people were rude and greedy, and yes, there were instances especially in Cairo where people lived up to those expectations. However, more often than not, they were wonderfully warm, friendly and welcoming, so much so that I was so sad to say goodbye to all my new Egyptian friends. So many of them have nothing, but seem so much happier than any rich local living here in Abu Dhabi. We were greeted by smiles everywhere we went, and the contrast was startling as soon as we touched back down in Dubai. I miss the simplicity of people who are contented in life, who are not concerned with ego and money and who are just genuinely happy if you just take a picture with them, or give them a smile or just a friendly word.

Surprisingly, these are traits of people I have met in my travels in the Middle East - Oman, Jordan, Egypt, and while I have not been to Syria yet, I have heard they are the friendliest and most welcoming of the lot. It is sad that the Middle East has such a bad rep and is so misrepresented in the media. The people continue to surprise me with their warmth, selflessness and sincerity..in fact, I cannot think of anywhere besides Bali where people are as nice and welcoming as the Middle East. Sadly I stay in the Gulf Region, whose people (besides Oman) appears to be very different to those in the Middle East.

Overall a great trip and extremely difficult getting back into work...can't wait for my next big holiday, back to Malaysia in December!

Gorgeous Jordan..

Amidst my crazy few weeks at work and mum visiting, I managed to take a couple of days off to visit Jordan. Mum and I went for 4 days, rented a car and drove to Petra, Wadi Rum and the Dead Sea. We landed in Amman, and drove the 3 hours to Petra. I realised that I have been too long in the UAE when in Jordan, I had to get used to narrow and bumpy roads, dodgy looking petrol stations and cars whose windows were missing and plastic was held up by tape instead. Jordan is quite a poor country, and it's so easy to think that the whole of the Middle East looks like the Gulf states, when the majority of this region still live in pretty paltry conditions.

We got to Petra in the evening and were told that we could catch Petra at night, where the 1.2km path to the Treasury would be lit up by 1,000 candles. It was an amazing experience, to walk in the dark in this ancient city where people walked more than 2,000 years ago. We settled in front of the Treasury, which was lit by hundreds of candle. They then had a traditional oud player who played music so haunting, and then a flutist and singer too. Truly surreal..

We rose bright and early the next day to go to Petra before all the tourist buses and it was the best decision we made! Petra is a very different place with 100 people at 7am compared to the 20,000 when we left at 2pm. We walked the length of Petra and made our way up by donkey to the Monastery. It was truly magnificent - the history, the scenery, the technology they used 2,000 years ago, and mostly the people. People still live in Petra, not in the tourist site, but in surrounding areas. All the people who work with the donkeys, horses or selling trinkets are people whose families have lived in Petra for centuries. They still live in Petra, in tiny villages around the tourist site.

After we finished Petra we drove south to Wadi Rum, a magnificent desert (where Laurence of Arabia was filmed). We got a guide to bring us around, and again the hospitality we received in the little Bedouin camps was absolutely amazing. People there have nothing but were so welcoming and were so insistent that we have tea with them. It's an amazing contrast to the UAE, where people had been living in similar circumstances 50 years ago, but who because of oil, have gotten so rich that they don't have to live in the desert anymore.

After such a tiring day, we left Petra the next day and headed to the Dead Sea. I treated mum to an afternoon at the Movenpick beach and spa and it was gorgeous. They gave us Dead Sea mud which I slapped on very willingly and just floated on the oily water. It's quite a surreal experience floating. Some guys tried to dive in but no success! The water also tastes bitter, not salty like I expected. Definitely fun, and a must do, once in a lifetime experience!

We then made our way to Amman in crazy traffic and left the next day. The trip was definitely too short and I did not manage to see everything i wanted to, so maybe another trip some other time. It was so refreshing to be in a country with such a long history, where one could go to the mountain where Moses one stood, or the alleged Baptism site of Jesus. The people were definitely the highlight of my trip, so warm and absolutely welcoming ... it made me reflect on how cynical we can be about people's intentions.

I am heading to Egypt next week for 9 days, so looking forward to that!

Pictures are posted here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michelle_d/

Oman trip

I haven't had time to blog for ages, as my sis was here, and when she was not, I was diving every weekend. It's been great to have so many visitors this year and thankfully there are tons to do outside of the UAE!

My sis and I and a friend made our way down to Muscat for 3 days. I had very high expectations as everyone told me that it was beautiful and they were right. We had a fabulous time, filled of course with tons of dramas which made the trip even more memorable!

Oman is such a lovely country, and the people are amazing -warm, friendly and so inviting. I never knew how big the country is (300,000km2) and there are only 2.8m inhabitants. It also has such a long and varied history, including conquering the East African coast (countries like Zanzibar and Mozambique!). We stayed for 2nights at a huge B&B where we had a triple room with our own outdoor patio, for the price of 1 night in a hotel in Abu Dhabi. They also organised a wonderful guide for us, who was very knowledgable and helpful and showed us so many amazing sites around Muscat. He also has 12 kids from 1 wife, and says that Westerners only know how to sleep at night. Yups, a very funny character who talked to us for 12 hours non-stop!

Muscat is such a nice city, it is so lived in, and established, which is very refreshing compared to life in the UAE. Locals are everywhere, driving taxis, selling things in the souks, and the souk was a real souk, not a fake air conditioned one that can be found in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. There is a nice vibe to the city too, and a beautiful promenade with lots of good food.

On our day tour, we went outside Muscat around the Wadis (valleys) and mountains. We also visited an archeological site (I saw a piece of pottery on the floor and asked the guy what it was, he replied in a blase manner that it's part of the ruins and said just take it home..). We drove through dried river beds, and swam in a beautiful turquoise freshwater lake called Wadi Tiwi. We also managed to visit a local's house for Eid in a small village, they were so wonderfully welcoming to us (the guy was our guide's friend). Unfortunately the host had a little boy who had never seen a lady with her hair down before and started screaming like he's seen the devil when he saw my sister! It was a perfect day trip however, ended with a wonderful turkish seafood meal!

We also had tons of dramas like getting stopped on our way back to the UAE at the border crossing. I suspect they thought we were on drugs because we were laughing so heavily at a chain of very funny events before turning up at the border. They stopped our car, took my sis and I into a separate room with all our belongings while my friend waited outside with the car and his stuff were checked by the male guards. The lady guard proceeded to spend the next hour checking every single piece of item we had in our bags. She also did not know what a tampon was when she saw it, and she also did not speak English so you can imagine the conversation! All the time we were inside, my friend was outside slightly panicky wondering if we were ever going to be let out. Finally after she scrolled through our photos and told my sister to stop smoking and find love, we were let go and proceeded to head back to Abu Dhabi.

All in all a great trip, really can't wait to explore other bits of Oman soon!

Photos are up on my flickr site http://www.flickr.com/photos/michelle_d/

Dark side of Dubai

I've been having a number of very interesting conversations with some new friends recently, particularly about how crazy this country is - how lots of things happen under the table and really, there should be no expectations of 'justice' or 'reasonableness' one would expect of a more developed and westernised country. This is an interesting article published some time ago but it definitely is an eye opener to the world that we all live in..


The dark side of Dubai
Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging. Johann Hari reports...

The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed – the absolute ruler of Dubai – beams down on his creation. His image is displayed on every other building, sandwiched between the more familiar corporate rictuses of Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders. This man has sold Dubai to the world as the city of One Thousand and One Arabian Lights, a Shangri-La in the Middle East insulated from the dust-storms blasting across the region. He dominates the Manhattan-manqué skyline, beaming out from row after row of glass pyramids and hotels smelted into the shape of piles of golden coins. And there he stands on the tallest building in the world – a skinny spike, jabbing farther into the sky than any other human construction in history.

But something has flickered in Sheikh Mohammed's smile. The ubiquitous cranes have paused on the skyline, as if stuck in time. There are countless buildings half-finished, seemingly abandoned. In the swankiest new constructions – like the vast Atlantis hotel, a giant pink castle built in 1,000 days for $1.5bn on its own artificial island – where rainwater is leaking from the ceilings and the tiles are falling off the roof. This Neverland was built on the Never-Never – and now the cracks are beginning to show. Suddenly it looks less like Manhattan in the sun than Iceland in the desert.

Read more here...
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html

Grand Mufti of Dubai calls for curb on mixed marriages

Nice one...I shall not take any insult given I am a product of a mixed marriage albeit not Emirati!


The Grand Mufti of Dubai has called for restrictions on Emiratis marrying outside their nationality.

“In Islam, choosing your life partner is a personal freedom,” he said, speaking at a Ramadan majlis on Sunday night. “But personal freedoms can be restricted for the benefit of the public interest.”

Mixed marriages are more likely to end in divorce and their children are more likely to commit crimes, some experts at the majilis said.

“There should be very specific circumstances for when such marriages are allowed,” Dr al Haddad said. “Such as when a man is too old and cannot find an Emirati to marry him, or when he wants to take a third of fourth wife for certain reasons and no Emirati woman agrees to do so.”

Social experts have attributed the escalating trend to the large dowries demanded by Emirati women – as much as Dh800,000 – and to high wedding ceremony expenses that have reached Dh1 million.

Ramadan in Abu Dhabi

It's nearing the end of Ramadan and this post is kinda late, but better late than never!

This is my first Ramadan in UAE, save for my visit to Dubai 2 years ago for interviews, and it's definitely a very different experience to Malaysia. In Malaysia, nothing really changes, except offices shut 1/2 hour earlier, and there are tons of stalls open in the evenings where people buy food.

Over here, hours are dramatically shorter, most offices are only open from 9am to 3pm, including mine. Unfortunately my team doesn't follow these hours, so no good there :( All or most restaurants are shut during the day, and only open in the evening, so you can't go into a mall to have a meal. The only place to eat is in a hotel where the restaurants would be covered by a huge curtain shielding the food from public view.

You can't eat or drink or smoke in public. In the gyms they even move the water coolers to a separate room so you can only drink in the room. There isn't anything to do during the day as most shops are also closed in the afternoon and only open at 7pm but they all open late till 1am. I was at a mall one weeknight after watching a movie and eating dinner, and the mall was packed at 11pm, including little kids running everywhere. We were probably the only non Muslim person around though! I have heard that most people who are fasting just stay up all night until suhour and then they sleep at 5am and if they have to go to work they wake up again at 8am.

It's quite interesting to me, coming from Malaysia where even people who are fasting would be serving food in a restaurant while they are fasting. Here, there is no tolerance for people who are not fasting to eat, drink or smoke. What I find sad is that while this is supposed to be the Holy Month, where people help the poor etc, this is also the month where the most food is wasted. I went to an Iftar (open fast banquet) and the food buffet was incredible. And they have it at every single hotel in the city...that's kinda ironic for me. But there are tons of good charitable causes going on too, like free food boxes for the poor given out everyday at the mosque and at hotels.

All in all, its been interesting, i'm glad when it is over and when things go back to normal!