December 31st - the last day of 2012 was also our last day in Dubai. We started the day off on a quest to locate the bus ticket office in order to secure our tickets to Muscat for early the next morning (bought for 60 dirham each). Part of this quest involved proving the local people whom we asked for directions wrong; yes, it IS in fact possible to walk to the Al Khanjry Transport office (Muscat phone: 24700600/Dubai: 04-2959390) from the closest metro station (Al Rigga). It is NOT necessary to spend money on an expensive cab when you can walk for 20 minutes. We are from Boston, okay? We walk everywhere, regardless of the pain or time lost in the process. It's a matter of pride!
After a nice walk and securing our spots on the 7am bus for a grand total of approximately $17 (compare this to over $100 + cab fare to fly), we headed off to confront my high school World History class nemesis. Well, to see the mall named after him, at least.
After being made to feel horribly financially inadequate, we decided to play up the role of paupers even further by heading to the nearby public access beach and napping and loitering like homeless women while awaiting the sunset.
The one thing we had planned the least before embarking on this trip was what we would do for NYE. We had seen several advertisements but assumed we would be able to find information easily enough to decide once we got to Dubai. In reality, we were so constantly on the move, lost, or passed out from exhaustion during our first three days that we failed to plan anything. We had stopped by an internet cafe the day before to look up options with the intention of calling the various places for more details. That turned out to be much harder than we could have imagined because 70% of the phone numbers attached to the ads were cell numbers. We learned the hard way that we couldn't use the hotel's land line to call these cell numbers and we had never bothered to buy SIM cards for our phones for such a short stay. After subjecting ourselves to the archaic activity of searching the phone book (a paper phone book!) for land line numbers to the venues and getting routed back to those same cell lines, we decided that we were too tired to get crazy anyway, since we had to be at the bus place at 6:30am the next morning.
We chose a Russian restaurant for our NYE dinner because it also offered hookah. While we thoroughly enjoyed the meal and the hookah, the notoriously poor customer service habits of the FSU evidently still hold true even in a place like Dubai. This resulted in our waiter ignoring our requests for the check long enough to ensure that we missed any opportunity to see the fireworks from the Burj Khalifa. (Curveball #4 thrown by Russians.) I wish I could say that I was upset about this but honestly, by that point, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and start the next exciting leg of our journey - OMAN!
After a nice walk and securing our spots on the 7am bus for a grand total of approximately $17 (compare this to over $100 + cab fare to fly), we headed off to confront my high school World History class nemesis. Well, to see the mall named after him, at least.
So this guy Ibn Battuta, he made a whole semester of my junior year of high school hell. I know he's not very well known in the West, so I'll just say he was a world traveler during the 14th century who covered 3 times more distance than Marco Polo and who wrote extensively about his travels. Too extensively, if you would have asked 17 year-old me. We had to do a semester-long project on this guy that took forever, stole pieces of my sanity, and garnered me merely a B grade. I still cringe when I hear him mentioned and think back to late nights dying a replica of his journal in tea to 'age' it. Grrr....
The mall is evidently the world's largest themed shopping mall, which was cool to see but definitely lacked any interesting stores to actually shop in. The architecture was impressive and there were several in-mall educational exhibits that the nerd in me really appreciated. I mean, if we are going to be slaves to mass media-induced consumerism, why not at least learn a little in the process?
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| Tunisia |
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| Learning about Arab contributions to math and science at the mall. |
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And finally, 11 years and 8,160 miles later, Mr. Battuta and I made up.
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After the mall, we opted for some outdoor sight seeing and checked out the marina. Man, is that place dripping in money. The pictures speak for themselves; no other commentary necessary.
After being made to feel horribly financially inadequate, we decided to play up the role of paupers even further by heading to the nearby public access beach and napping and loitering like homeless women while awaiting the sunset.
We chose a Russian restaurant for our NYE dinner because it also offered hookah. While we thoroughly enjoyed the meal and the hookah, the notoriously poor customer service habits of the FSU evidently still hold true even in a place like Dubai. This resulted in our waiter ignoring our requests for the check long enough to ensure that we missed any opportunity to see the fireworks from the Burj Khalifa. (Curveball #4 thrown by Russians.) I wish I could say that I was upset about this but honestly, by that point, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and start the next exciting leg of our journey - OMAN!
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