Getting out of Dubai

On day 4, we decided to do something a bit different: my cousin had mentioned that you could get to the neighbouring Emirate, Sharjah, by taxi. But first, I had a little bit of business I wanted to take care of. So, we headed out shopping again! First stop was the Wafi Mall. This is a smallish (by Dubai standards, huge anywhere else) boutique shopping center. The translation of "boutique"? Bloody expensive! Imagine a shopping center with an Egytpian motif (i.e. shaped like a pyramid with fake-egyptian heiroglyphs and statues all around the outside), where the cheapest shop there would be along the lines of Chanel or DKNY. I've been on some of the most expensive shopping streets in the world, Rodeo Drive in LA and Via Condotti in Rome, but this was like someone decided to take these streets and turn them into a 200-outlet shopping mall. The easiest way to gauge how upmarket it was is that there were no price tags on anything - the old "if you had to ask, you couldn't afford it" syndrome! Another way to gauge it was the parking: when we pulled up in our taxi, the valet parking area beside us had porsches, bentleys, rolls royces and propping up the bottom of the price pile, a BMW jeep (must have been the janitor...). As Michelle put it, it was "a whole shopping centre that makes brown Thomas look like Penneys" (Irish ppl will get this analogy) :-)

After browsing in Wafi for a bit (because we ain't going to do anything else there, like actually shopping!), we headed back to the Dubai Mall. As we had a fairly decent idea of the layout this time, we split up again and went off to do out own thing. I really only had on target in mind tho: the Sony centre, where I decided to pick up that camera I'd seen on my last trip, a Sony Alpha 230 DSLR. It's not the biggest and fanciest and most feature-rich of the entry-level digital SLRs, but it's one of the cheapest, the lightest and, as I was getting it with a second lens, 4Gb memory card and a carry case, it was about €100 cheaper than I'd get it at home!

After meeting back up with Michelle (who also had a pretty productive shopping experience), we headed back to the hotel. After plugging my camera in to charge, we went outside and hopped in a taxi to Sharjah. herein came the first little glitch, that no-one had mentioned: as the taxi would be going outside Dubai into a different emirate, there would be an automatic Dh30 added to the fare. Well, isn't too much we figured, so why not? So, we headed off!

Now, the impression I got from Enda and from our guidebook was sort of a small, rustic little hamlet of a place, the sort of small middle-eastern town like you'd see in the movies. Wrong! If anything, it was more built-up than Dubai, but with all cheaper, slightly run-down looking apartment blocks. The only way we knew we were actually outside of Dubai was when the taxi meter clicked up an extra Dh30 and we passed a sign saying "Welcome to Sharjah"! We were thinking that the taxi driver was taking us a bit of a scenic route, as it seemed a few times like we were doign big loops to end up a bit further down a road wed already seen before. then, to make it even better, we passed the bus station and he idly informed us that if we wanted we could get the bus back for about Dh5! This at the end of a Dh150 taxi ride! :-(

We'd asked the taxi driver to take us to the heritage museum, as from the map that pretty much looked like the center of all the touristy things, so he dropped us at the side of what he called "the historical area", which apparently had a load of museums etc in there. We deiced forst tho to head to the Al Hisn fort, which was a few streets over to see that first. When we got there, it was obvious that all of the pictures we'd seen of it had either been extremely well-positioned or just out-and-out photoshopped - the fort was in the center of a traffic roundabout and surrounded by 10-or-more-story apartment blocks! Well, we were there, so we might as well go in, eh? Oops, big sign on the door: "Closed for renovation from July 2008" - agh! So, we went back to the historical area, which we soon found out was about as interesting and as full of stuff to do as the heritage village in Dubai! There were hardly any signs up on any buildings as to what they were, and the few things we did find were closed (and not for lunch, this was about 4pm). About all we found was the covered souk, where we soon discovered that (a) the stalls had nothing but the usual tourist tat and (b) we were the only ppl there that didn't look like they worked there! No pressure to buy anything there, like! After beating a hasty retreat, we eventually found the heritage museum - it seems that while we'd asked our taxi driver to drop us off at the museum, he had dropped us off at the far end of the "historic complex" to it, and we were coming at it from the back! After going in, we again discovered we were the only tourists again - and looking at the visitors book, we were the first visitors in a few weeks! No wonder the receptionist dude looked so happy to see us!

After that, we decided to find our way to the bus stop rather than sending another taxi driver's kids to school, so we started walking. Thing was, we had a vague idea where the bus station was, but not how far it was, and there weren't a huge amount of taxis around to get us there. So, I had to ask some old dude sitting outside a shop for directions. The conversation went something like:

"Sorry, can you tell me is this the way to the bus station?"
"Bus station, yes"
"How far is it from here?"
"far?"
"How long to walk there, 5 mins?"
"5 mins, yes"

So, that could either be them agreeing that yes we were going the right way and that we were fairly close, or them not actually understanding English and just repeating the last few words of whatever I said (which is a trick I've done myself when abroad). Luckily for us, it was the former :-)

So, we got on the bus and headed back, and yes it was a lot cheaper than the taxi, and yes we realised pretty much straight away that the taxi driver had indeed taken us the scenic route.......

As soon as we got back to the hotel, we pretty much had to jump straight in the shower and head out to Enda's place, where we were supposed to have dinner with them before heading on to a table quiz in their local pub. As we were running a tad late due to the bus, dinner was a slightly less than leisurely affair if we wanted to get in in time for the quiz! The pub itself was your typical english pub abroad, complete with wood panelling, fake london bus/tube signs, shite music and an obnoxious DJ. The beer at least was genuine though - not a bad feat for a country where you're supposed to have a license to drink alcohol, and where the police can and do raid pubs and nab anyone drinking without a license! We managed, all beer aside, to come a fairly respectable joint 3rd (which would have been just 3rd if we'd won the argument with the DJ about one of our answers), and wandered back to the hotel around 2am - not a bad night out for a dry country!