Happy New Year! I may be completely exhausted, but I've had an incredible two days to celebrate the arrival of the new year in the UAE. Every day we experience some crazy and unexpected twists, and these two days are no exception.Yesterday morning, we woke up early to prepare for the trip to Dubai. We knew we'd be walking around with all of our bags, so we tried to pack as lightly as possible. Our first stop after the ninety minute drive to Dubai was the Palm Jumeirah. One of the biggest construction projects in Dubai in recent years has been the creation and development of massive artificial islands in the shape of palms. The first one constructed and actually developed on was the Palm Jumeirah, between the district of Jebel Ali and Downtown Dubai. Currently, it is one of the world's largest completely artificial islands.
The island itself was practically its own little city, filled with many very nice villas and apartments (pictured above). There was even a monorail system to eliminate the need for driving cars on the island. On the outer crescent island, shielding the palm island from the waves of the Persian Gulf, there are a variety of resorts and hotels being built. The most prominent of these is the Atlantis Hotel, an exact replica of the one in the Bahamas. We also had a spectacular view of the beautiful Burj Al Arab hotel.
After our "tour" of the Palm Jumeirah Island, one of the nicer parts of Dubai, we started driving towards the Dubai Mall. Rather than taking the main highway, we took a side road to get a close-up view of the Burj Al Arab. Once we made it to the mall, the friend who was driving us around dropped us off so he could escape the New Year's Eve traffic in Dubai.
The moment we walked into the shopping area of the mall, I saw clearly why it was the world's largest. We spent about twenty minutes walking around the mall just to find the food court. There were so many options, but I eventually settled on an Iranian kebab vendor. After lunch, we decided to a bit of shopping and exploration of the massive mall, but an hour was barely enough to even scratch the surface of what the mall had to offer.
It was now time to check in to our hotel, so we had to find the mall's metro station. Nobody in the mall was of any help, because they each pointed us in different directions. We eventually decided that we would walk outside the mall to simply find a taxi to take us. Inside the parking garage, we found a taxi waiting to leave. When we told the driver that we wanted to go to the metro, he said "I don't know where that is." As a taxi driver, he shouldn't use that excuse, but there was nothing we could do about it. The next taxi driver didn't want to take us either, but decided to after we pleaded for him to take us. After a fifteen minute drive in the already bad New Year's Eve traffic, we arrived at the metro station.
Once we bought four two-day tickets to cover my family's stay in Dubai, we took the incredibly new and clean trains to the metro station by our hotel. I must say that the Emirati people don't spare one cent when constructing something. All of the stations were ornately decorated and well maintained. If it stays that way as the years go by, Dubai will have one of the world's leading metro systems. Exiting the Al Ras station in the Deira district of Dubai completely changed the mood of the journey. Rather than being in the fancy and ultra-modern part of Dubai, we were in an old, and relatively dirty part of the city. As we walked toward our hotel, we could smell all of the spices being sold at the nearby souks. Our hotel was actually within one of these real, traditional outdoor souks, so we were harassed by clothes dealers and fake watch vendors as we walked through the market and alleys. Before we knew it, we were at the Al Uruba Hotel.
As soon as I walked into the hotel, I realized what it really means to stay in a one-star hotel. The receptionists could barely speak English, the walls in the lobby were falling apart, and the elevator was overly cramped. In our room, we could hear everything going on through the paper-thin walls, and the beds were as hard as wood. We knew it would only be a place to sleep and nothing else, so we left without much complaint.
As we walked back toward the metro station, we noticed a sign pointing to a "heritage house". When we walked inside, we saw that it was just like Abu Dhabi's heritage village, but about how traditional Arabs lived in their actual homes. After spending some time in the informative museum, we walked to the metro about one hundred meters away. Taking a train to the next station on the line brought us to a nice spot along the famous Dubai creek (pictured on the left).Our ultimate destination was the Bastakiya, a city built along the creek to emulate the feel of a traditional Arab city. We could see many dhows and water taxis as we walked along the recently renovated creek, but none of them went directly to the Bastakiya. On our way, we passed by an impressive government building and heard the call to prayer from the Bastikaya's impressively loud mosque.
When we finally arrived, the "city" was completely empty. People were already in other parts of the city preparing for New Year's Eve. Once we took a few pictures of the ancient city, we sat down to eat at a nearby restaurant. Unbeknownst to us, the only offer available was an incredibly expensive set menu for New Year's Eve. We had to leave to find a more reasonable meal before going downtown for the celebrations.
Eventually, we decided that we would walk to the closest metro station and look for food there. While we were looking at maps to navigate to the station, a group of friendly Arabs sitting at some nearby center for cultural development offered to give us help. After we learned our way, they offered us tea. We accepted this great, typical Arab hospitality, but it did not end there. By the end of our fifteen minute conversation, we were left with a bagful of candy, a stomachful of dates and fresh fruit, two UAE national day shirts, and a framed glass case containing sands from the seven emirates.
The walk to the metro station we were going to led us along the creek, deeper into the city. The creek was especially busy, because all of the restaurant boats that were usually docked there were preparing to set off on cruises around Dubai for New Year's Eve. The prices on most of them were reasonably at $70 per person, but we had already planned for our night downtown at the Burj Khalifa.
Just as we predicted, the plaza above the metro station was home to numerous restaurants. The one we settled on was an Indian/Middle-Eastern restaurant that had an excellent meal for four deal that satisfied our entire family. Now, the New Year's Eve experience could finally begin. When we entered the metro station, which was many stations away from the Burj Khalifa, we already saw crowds of people being fed into trains by police and military officers. The actual train we took to the Burj Khalifa was so packed that I couldn't move an inch.
The crowds at the actual station were so intimidatingly large that we almost considered calling off the plans for the night. Reluctantly, we decided to see what was going on by the Burj with the assumption that we could always just go back to the hotel before the show. As we moved with the crowds, they gradually became less dense, so we decided we'd stay. The views from almost any position looking at the tower were seemingly good, but I was determined to find the perfect spot. We walked all the way around the downtown area for two hours, skipping potentially great spots with benches and food nearby, but I persisted. Eventually, we found a wonderful spot by the pools surrounding the Burj Khalifa, so we decided to settle there. While we started to wait, we also discovered that we had perfect views of the fountain shows that increased in frequency for New Year's Eve. Once we were completely settled, we had another two hours to wait before midnight.
Those two hours went by pretty quickly since we conversed with some of the people in the crowds, listened to the loud music, and watched the pretty fountain shows. At exactly midnight, after an intense countdown, the fireworks show began. Words cannot describe the incredible scale and beauty of the show, but all I can say is that those first eight minutes of 2012 went by fast. At 12:08, the fireworks were over and people began to form a mass exodus from the Burj Khalifa.
We needed to somehow get to the metro, so we had a few options. Our first attempt to reach the metro was at the Burj Khalifa station. When we saw the insane crowds trying to reach the station from hundreds of meters away, we walked away. We needed to get to the next metro station. We figured that once we got on the metro, it wouldn't matter what station we were at because it was unaffected by the traffic on the streets. Th next station towards Jebel Ali, Business Bay, was about a one kilometer walk on the sand under the metro line viaduct. As we approached the station, the line to the station door slowly became a crowd surrounding the building. We waited for about a minute until we started to hear cheering and people banging on the metro doors. We were worried that some type of riot would break out, so we quickly moved away, moving further down the line.
As we moved on, we saw on a map that the next station could be very far away, so we thought it might've been a good idea to just wait out the crowds at Business Bay station. As we started to walk back, sirens were blazing and blue lights were flashing from the stations. People coming from the station told us not to go back, because there was apparently a riot getting pretty violent. Our prediction was right, so leaving the growing crowd saved us a lot of trouble.
The walk to the next metro station wasn't exactly dangerous, but it was absolutely exhausting. The 7km journey that took two hours brought us onto the freeway, through empty commercial districts, and over highway interchanges. Despite these seemingly desperate measures, we were still travelling faster than the cars on the highway that were in a complete gridlock for miles. Trying to take a taxi would've been absolutely futile.
Because the station we reached was so far away, many people were discouraged and gave up. This was great for us, since the station was relatively uncrowded. During the last ride on the metro station, we could see that crowds were still surrounding the stations closest to the Burj Khalifa. By 3AM, we were in the hotel ready to fall asleep.
Today, waking up was difficult. Getting out of the uncomfortable beds to find out that we missed breakfast was pretty depressing. After taking a shower and getting ready to leave, I was slightly more conscious, but still not in the best of moods. Before we went to eat breakfast, we spent some more time in the neighborhood by our hotel. This area was home to a great number of traditional souks (markets) selling all sorts of clothes, bags, watches, spices, toys, among other things. Since it was very hot outside, we tried to do this somewhat quickly. Getting into the greatly air-conditioned metro was a relief. If the weather can be unbearable in January, I simply cannot imagine how people in the UAE live during the summer.
The metro ride to the Dubai Mall was somewhat relaxing, but it didn't help to cure my exhaustion from the previous night. In the mall, I had my first meal in over fifteen hours. For whatever reason, I wasn't too hungry, so I only grabbed a hot-dog and some fries. Before we knew it, it was time to meet with our friends at the entrance to the Burj Khalifa observatory for our 3:30PM reservation.
One hour at the top was plenty of time to enjoy the view.
By 8:30PM, we were back in Abu Dhabi, so I took the time to rest and write this massive entry. I won't be able to upload more photos right now, but I'll try to upload the rest by the end of the week with the final entry. Tomorrow, this incredible journey will sadly come to an end when we go to the Abu Dhabi airport at 1PM. Most of my time will be spent working on schoolwork I need to catch up on, so I'll need to delay my final entry to sometime by the end of this week.
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