Monday 25 September 2023

On arriving into Dubai late yesterday, we checked into the Fairmount Palms, where Sylvia is attending a conference.

This morning I took the shuttle into the Dubai Mall, about 20kms from here. There I had booked a VIP visit to the tower; at 825 meters tall it is still the tallest building in the world. There are apparently 167 floors with a penthouse,  pool and mosque at the top. The tour takes one up to the 126th floor with a counter for canapies and drinks. At around 450m it’s nowhere near the top, “bugger”! From there you wander down to the 124th floor, which has an outside deck. Unfortunately visibility is not too good as the desert dust hangs in the air. Apparently in the winter, after the very odd bit of rain, is the only time the dust leaves the sky. That must be when they make all the clear sky videos.

Looking down over the balcony really gives one an appreciation of why Base Jumpers like to leap from such places (bugger! I no longer own a parachute)

After the tower I headed through the huge mall to the aquarium, which takes up a small part of three floors, the top one being a tropical jungle walk. The lower ones are underwater tunnels with a variety of fish. There is also a large ice skating rink in the mall along with a massive collection of branded shops. It was late afternoon when I caught the shuttle back to the hotel.

Tuesday 26 September 2023

Catching the shuttle back to the Dubai mall, I hopped aboard the big red bus for a hop-on-hop-off tour of Dubai. Part of the tour took us around the downtown and old part of town, passing the financial district, the downtown palace and lots of tall buildings before reaching the old town along the creek.

Entrance to the Dubai main palace

One of the many tourist boats (dhows), tied up at the old town (new buildings made to look old)

A restored fort from the days when the area was mainly surrounded by sand.

In spite if the magnificent infrastructure around this city most of these boats are unloaded by hand; boxes carried down gangway on shoulders of immigrants.

The Dubai Frame is the largest in the world with an enclosed walkway on the top side.

Wednesday 27 September 2023

I spent a relaxing morning with a trip to the gym and exploring the grounds of the Fairmont Palm. These mainly consisted of two swimming pools, one for adults, the other for families, both surrounded by beach chairs where people just lay around in the 37 degree heat. Not my idea of a holiday!

At 1530 a driver picked me up for the drive to Abu Dhabi to catch up with my friend Stuart, who looks after this region for an Australian company that makes robotic targets for the military. The traffic was light and soon we were on the 6-lane highway heading south, passing oil refineries, power plants and a huge water park with its greenery. The driver pulled into the last exit at a service area made of old car parts. There was a big cement works in the distance across the desert. We crossed the city boundary from Dubai to Abu Dhabi, continuing on the now four-lane, smooth highway, which runs all the way to Saudi. Soon the road sides were fenced, with green trees and shrubs growing in abundance. The driver told me this land belongs to one of the sheiks and contains date, camel and other farms. Every shrub and tree is irrigated with desalinated water from the sea at 2.80 USD per 1000 litres.

An aluminium Plant – sorry about the lack of clarity; it’s hard to get good photos with the dust particles hanging in the air.

Arriving at Abu Dhabi we did a drive-by of the Louvre art museum, which is alongside another massive religious museum under construction. We then drove to Stuart’s apartment block on the coast, where we enjoyed a good catch up over a few drinks and dinner. Stuart’s wife is in the US just now about to complete a 42km marathon swim from  Carolina Island to San Francisco. She has already swum the English Chanel and around Manhattan Island among others.

Abu Dhabi version of the Louvre

This structure is part of a religious museum being build near the Louvre.

The view from Stuart’s apartment

After a good catch up the driver picked me up and we headed back to Dubai. The driver, from India, has been working here for seventeen years; he has a wife and three children back home, who he gets to see for his two months return home every year. He shares a room with five others in Dubai as rent is expensive. All the hotel staff were either from India or the Phillipines.

Thursday 28 September 2023

I grabbed the shuttle. First stop was supposed to be the Mall of the Emirates but the driver skipped that and took us straight to the Dubai mall. He very kindly took me back to the Mall of the Emirates on his return journey. My good mate, Dave, had once told me he’d sat in a bar there and watched people skiing so I went to check it out. Chairlifts and all it was a fully fledged ski field, with toboggan area and various other snow sports going on.

From there I wandered through the mall, past hundreds of shops, found the metro and headed back in the direction of the hotel. Departing the metro I got in the last car to look at the view until a lady said something to me which I did not understand at first; she then said again “this car is for woman only”. Looking around, I realised I was the only bloke in the car so rapidly apologised and retreated to the next car. I then caught a tram and then a monorail, which took me out to the end of the Palm Jumeirah, to the large Atlantis the Palm hotel and water sports area.

After a brief look there I got back on the monorail, dismounting at the Palm Tower. I purchased a ticket for the journey to the top. This involved sitting through a couple of movies on how the place was constructed, with a few million tons of rocks put down as a foundation and then a few more million tons of sand poured on top. An outer wall was created to protect the whole establishment. There are now several thousand bungalows, thousands of apartments and hundreds of hotels situated on this, the first of the Palms, completed in 2008. The lift then took us up 54-floors onto a deck surrounded by sloping glass windows, where we had a good view across the Palm but not much further because of the dust. Interestingly the videos we had just watched must have been filmed after one of the unusual rainy days here as the skies were crystal clear. From there several flights of stairs led to the roof top where there was an uninterrupted view with just a low glass barrier on the edge that you could see over giving a much better view of the surroundings.

Dubai is quite an impressive place with its modern infrastructure and numerous tall buildings, many they have tried to build in the Arabian style. It reminds me in some ways of a version of Vegas. Apologies for the poor quality of the pictures unfortunately the ever present dust and maybe some smog hangs in the sky most of the year.

From there I wandered back to the hotel. That evening we headed out to dinner with Sylvia’s team to an excellent Moroccan restaurant, which had been organised by Selma, the wife of Abdel, who is part of Sylvia’s team and lives in Dubai. Abdel also runs desert ultra marathons, the longest being some 250kms over 5-days. We enjoyed a sumptuous meal with the team from all over the world.

Friday 29 September 2023 – Oman (Country 100 for Roger)

At 10am we were picked up in a GMC Suburban, heading east out of Dubai and then northeast through miles and miles of endless desert, dotted with an amazing number of buildings, including a large hospital and numerous cement plants. Greenery was planted along parts of the motorway and camels roamed, seemingly quite freely although the very smooth multi-lane highway was well fenced. There were many large cement and, I presume, power plants along the way, and of course many Mosques.

The road meandered east across the southern part of the Musandam Peninsula and then north to Dibba al-baya, where we crossed the border into the northern part of Oman. Soon the road went from its luxury state in the UAE to a shingle track running alongside a wadi (dry river bed). Eventually we turned off and arrived at a guard house. A big sign at the guard house stated 4WD drive vehicles only.  We then headed up a steep cobbled road, that snaked its way to the top of a ridge, passing a number of overground power cables that would provide power to the resort we were heading to. As we started heading down the other side of the pass we stopped at a look out for our first glimpse of the Six Senses Ziggy Bay, which with all its trees and beautiful seaside looked a real oasis in the barren countryside. 

As we pulled in to the gate a man sounded a large gong to announce our arrival. After being welcomed, Julius, originally from the Philippines, drove us on a buggy to our villa, number 15, which was clearly marked on the outside with what looked like the number 10, apparently 15 in Arabic. It is one of 85 villas in the resort, all made of stone. Looking at the hills around here they wouldn’t have had to go too far to get the stone for building.

Inside the villa the air conditioning was pumping away and we settled in, enjoying the beautiful view across the private plunge pool to the beach, before heading to the bar for a late light lunch. Later in the afternoon we enjoyed a massage and then went down to the beach for an incredible ‘around the world’ dinner. They had set up tables and chairs surrounded by buffet stands with a wide variety of cuisines from all around the world. The setting was made even more stunning by the full moon, which glowed orange and reflected beautifully in the calm sea. We were quite surprised by the number of guests at dinner as during the afternoon we had hardly seen anybody.

Each villa has its own pool for those that don’t like the salt water there are several other pools around the resort

A bar by the beach later transformed into a restaurant

The round the world restaurant with a selection of food from around the world

Saturday 30 September 2023

At 8am we headed to the Spice Market, which is one of a number of restaurants around the resort, where we enjoyed a relaxing breakfast before being picked up and driven to the other end of the bay, incidentally by a local. Like the hotel in Dubai, the majority of the staff here are from the Philippines or India with some of the local men employed as drivers or security staff and some of the local women as cleaners. At the other end of the bay is a small village that has been built by the resort to accommodate the locals, many of whom are fishermen.

The village built by the resort to house the locals.

The tower is part of the desalination plant for the resort.

Arriving at the wharf a dhow awaited us, somewhat larger than I had expected for just the two of us. We boarded and were guided to a cushioned area on the upper aft deck, behind the wheelhouse. The Philippino guide, Alex, gave us a run down on where we were headed, while the Indian skipper and 2IC skilfully manoeuvred the boat away from the wharf and out to sea. As we looked back on the village Alex pointed out the desalination plant on the hill behind the village and told us that  ship calls in here on a regular basis to collect fresh water to distribute to tanks in the bays along the peninsula.

On the hill is the desalination plant to supply water for the village and collected by a ship to fill the water tanks up the coast.

There is another restaurant on the hill above the power cables we did not have time to visit.

The Indian Skipper, who skilfully guided the boat out of the harbour and on our voyage.

We headed north alongside the barren, rocky peninsula, where bits of green vegetation clung to rock faces, where it seems impossible that anything would grow. A bit over an hour later, we anchored at Santa Bay, home to about ten small cottages, which Alex explained are owned by fishermen, some of whom own several such dwellings along the peninsula. They generally have a Pakistani caretaker who lives there and cares for the animals while they are away.

This fisherman has 4 x 400 horsepower outboard on the back of his boat – good thing fuel is cheap here.

A double kayak was lowered over the back of the dhow, which we climbed into and paddled to the shore. Sylvia was a little apprehensive about landing on the beach when she saw a couple of people watching us. I clambered out and wandered up the beach. They both shook my hand, one in white with the traditional head-dress, being the fisherman, the other thickset chap wearing a hat his Pakistani helper. They headed off to their boat, boarded and sped off, I assume to go fishing. We left the debris-strewn, white sandy beach and paddled back to the dhow where we donned some snorkelling gear and swam over the nearby coral reef, observing several different types of fish and the odd sea urchin.

Back on the dhow we enjoyed  a light lunch before weighing anchor and heading out to sea for a spot of fishing. With no luck at the first spot, in about 40m of water, we moved to another spot, where we observed a sea snake surfacing near the boat. One of the crew was quite excited when he caught what he called a hammer jack, which he said was a very expensive fish.

We then motored back to the port, with clear visibility down to about 500m as the dust gathered in the skies around us. Apparently, on a clear day, you can see the hills in Iran across the gulf of Oman. At night the waters here are heavily patrolled by police boats to stop the refugees coming across.

Late afternoon we headed back to the spa for another massage and then enjoyed a cocktail in the moonlight at the bar on the beach.

Sunday 1 October 2023

We enjoyed another delicious breakfast at the Spice Market restaurant before being picked up at 9:30, back in the GMC Suburban for our journey to Dubai airport for our flight to Almaty in Kazakhstan.