DO BUY IN DUBAI

“Las Vegas on steroids” is what some are calling the modern emirate of Dubai (the main economic powerhouse of the United Arab Emirates). It's also been called the "New York City of the Middle East," so a visit there has been on my “to do” list for some time.

Last weekend (April 9-11) I had the first opportunity to get there – and out of Oman for the first time since arriving last August. Killing two birds with one stone, it was also the week an old neighbor and university friend from American University Cairo was in the emirate of Sharjah (next door) for a conference. A chance to “do” Dubai and catch up with “Dr. John” (Shoup) from the US. The results were … well, mixed.

WEDNESDAY
I arrived Wednesday night on a cheapo flight on Air Arabia (not Saudi Arabia), the local equivalent of Southwestern Airlines. My Lonely Planet guidebook gave me my mid-range hotel for the weekend: Al-Hijaz Motel, actually an old mansion house in a historic district of Dubai port (Deira). Very convenient to old town attractions. Trying to stay true to the old Persian Gulf character of the building, the updated rooms still had padlocks on the outside wooden doors. Rooms three stories up were built around an open central courtyard, where they had tables out for breakfast and meals (plus an ever-going TV set). Everything had been beautifully refurbished, but rooms came out to only a little over $100 a night, cheap by Dubai standards.

THURSDAY
The day I am to meet up with John somewhere some time. Neither had been decided ahead of time (not for lack of trying via email). But I have no way to get in touch with him because I have stupidly left my cell phone in my car at Muscat airport Wednesday night and the hotel can only call within Dubai, not to Sharjah. They do have a free “internet café”, so I email John praying he’ll see the email before evening. I also call his hotel, but he’s at the University of Sharjah the final day of the conference so can’t get that message.

He did email that he’d be coming over to Dubai about 4:00 that afternoon, however, so that gives me some time to sightsee during the day. The hotel is across the “Creek” from the rest of the city, and for over a century the two sides have been connected by little open-air dhow ferries (“abras”) that leave every few minutes back and forth all day long. Must have crossed the Creek at least six times Thursday by abra. My main goal is the Dubai Museum in the original city fort – part in the fort and part underground. I first catch lunch at a Mexican restaurant across the street, where they have Corona on offer. Culturally jarring to see an Arab fort out the window while eating chili and sipping cold beer!

I then head back to the hotel to wait around the phone in case John gets in touch. 4:00, 5:00, 5:30.

Finally, the room phone rings and a flustered John is on the line. He and some conference goers will be coming by bus from Sharjah. We’ll meet up at the fort at 7:00. So, back across the Creek to the fort, where I wait for over an hour till 8:10. Still no sign of John’s bus. Plan B: I go by myself to an outdoor restaurant mentioned in the guide book – Bastakiyah Nights. The cooler evening air is comfortable, the lighting low and the atmosphere relaxed. The mainly Lebanese food (very tasty!) is designed for two people, not one, so I am stuffed and start rationing the platters I actually eat. But not knowing what happened to John and eating alone kind of takes the pleasure out of it. Then it’s back across the Creek to the hotel. The reception gives me a note John had dictated over the phone saying we’ll meet at 9:30 Friday morning.

FRIDAY
Back across the Creek by abra, cab to the Bur Juwan Mall (it has Saks Fifth Avenue) to wait for John. Turns out there was a taxi “slow-down” strike in Sharjah Thursday: drivers still drive but refuse to pick up passengers. Buses don’t connect, so no one can get from Sharjah to Dubai except in their own cars. John and I catch up at Paul’s Café and Boulangerie sipping coffee and waiting for an old friend of his now at the US embassy in Abu Dhabi to join us. Carla is a fun sort, a southern go-getter who’s lived in the Middle East for years.

It’s lunch time now, the morning is gone, and their plans take them to Bastakiyah, and I’ve been there, done that. We part at the mall, and it’s back to the hotel to pack and check out. My one last goal for my first time in Dubai is a quickie tour of the modern Las Vegas Dubai, so I catch a taxi to a faux Egyptian temple complex called Wafi, where the bus tour begins.

The Big Bus tours use London double-decker buses and take you all around Dubai with set stops where you can get off, visit, and get back on a later bus at no extra cost. Good in theory. But sitting up top in the open air in the blazing sun with wind tunnel-like wind as the driver speeds down the highway is not as idyllic as it sounds in the brochure. And they never slow or stop for people to take photos, so you’re leaning over total strangers apologizing for trying to grab a quick shot of the tallest building in the world (Burj Dubai, at least for now) before a tree or building obscures it. Very frustrating. The famous icon of Dubai, the Burj al-Arab (sail-shaped hotel for $6000 a night) is impressive, but we zip around it with no chance to get a good shot before tearing off to mall #379 in this city of malls. There are wild new skyscrapers going up everywhere. “Where will they find all the people who can afford to rent space in all of these?” I wonder. Oh, and Sheikh Maktoum plans to construct life-sized replicas of all the ancient wonders of the world, as well. Las Vegas, eat our dust!

My carefully planned bus trip is to end at the Ikea mall, the closest to Sharjah Airport, where I’ll grab a taxi the rest of the way by 4:30 to make my flight back to Muscat. Only I discover that the hotel didn’t return my passport when I checked out. (Hard to leave any country without one of those!) So, it’s a mad dash back to the Al-Hijaz motel instead of the airport. Next, the taxi driver inadvertently drives off with my suitcase as I run down the street after him. I do succeed in getting the passport from the friendly Somali hotel staff, but spend another 45 minutes trying to track down and report the missing suitcase to the taxi company on the hotel phone.

I manage to make my flight back to Muscat, but by the skin of my teeth. So, how was my first trip to Dubai? Well, as I said up top: “mixed”!