Friday, December 8, 2006

Spewed up on the sand

The trouble with modern intercontinental travel these days is you don't have any time to get eased into a new culture. I left Salt Lake City on May first for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Up to this point in my life the most exotic place I had been was Hackney near London. Even then I only stayed the night and fled to the comparative normalcy of Kent. The strangest thing I encountered on my flight to Dubai was a weird faucet on the sink in the restroom in Amsterdam. I thought "Gee, that's different." I had no idea what I was heading towards.

I thought that I would see a mix of people at the departure lounge for my flight to Dubai, dishdasha, gutras etc. but there was nothing of the sort. Admittedly the people were a bit swarthier than the flight from Minneapolis but nothing like I expected. I was hoping to see some bedu with small wooden cages with chickens in them but I was disappointed. It looked like it was mostly European business people and holiday makers.

That all changed when I got off the plane. The customs counters were manned by stern looking women (the ones who's face you could see) in traditional Arab robes. This was the first indication that i wasn't in Kansas anymore, and it sure wasn't Utah. I got through immigration and customs with only a few suspicious glances and headed out the door to get a cab. It was like stepping onto a different planet. The first thing I remember is the heat, of course. I don't care where you've been, it's hotter here. People that have spent the summer in Kuwait and Iraq say that Dubia is worse because it's humid. Well I can attest that it is hot and humid. It was 11:00 pm and it was about 105 degrees. Immediately as you walk outside your hands become damp with the humidity in the air. Then you feel water trickle down the small of your back. Your thinking, "I've felt all of that.." Then your ears begin to sweat. I've never had sweat running off of my ears until I got here. When your ears sweat you know it's hot.

As you exit the arrivals hall at Dubai International Airport there is a greeting section just outside the doors where all the greeters from the subcontinent wait. It's like walking into a National Geographic documentary of Pakistan. There are huge crowds of guys, mostly, in the long shirts and blousey pants traditionally worn in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The airport authority had kindly installed the cooling fans that you see fanning the cattle at a football game. Unfortunately the fine mist that they spray into the fan only accomplishes increasing the humidity from 98% to 125%. It also sprays the air/water mixture over the crowd so you not only get the sights and sounds of the arrivals hall but you get a nice noseful of the teeming mass of swarthies that are waiting for their brother from Kerala.

It's at this point that you realize that you are not at home. Far, far from it. Luckily you see, across this mass of people, a large queue of nice European looking taxis. So you drag your three massive bags across the pavement to the taxi queue, hop in and are greeted by a head wobbling Indian, dot not feathers. Dubai has the best taxi system that I have experienced in my small experience of taxis. The taxis are well regulated and you don't need to worry about getting ripped off if you don't know where you are going and how to get there. The traffic in Dubai is such that people will take a cab somewhere simply out of convenience rather than drive their own car, get hit by a van on Sheihk Zayed Road, dinged by a car door in the car park and then get pulled over and thrown in jail when they've had one pint at the club. The benefit of this is the cabbies can't ever be sure the guy they got in the back doesn't know exactly where he's going and how to get there. So they usually don't take the chance. I've had to yell at one or two cabbies in the past but they had only been in Dubai for two or three months so they didn't know where they were going.

So I jump in a cab and am thrown back in my seat as my driver speeds off into the Arabian darkness, wobbling his head as he honks his horn.

Depending on the time of day you come into Dubai the trip from the airport to the Trade Center Apartments, where I spent my first month, is anywhere from twenty minutes to six days. Luckily I arrived at about 11:00 pm so it only took me about a 1/2 hour. I was put in a two bedroom apartment that was actually pretty nice. Anyone that enjoyed watching Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best would recognize the furnishings. The building was only about 25 years old though. I found out later that they are going to tear it down and build something else more modern. I think the life span for structures in Dubai at present is about 20 years. After that something bigger and better has to be built.

I had been up for about two days with only a short nap on the plane so I was a little hammered. Despite that I had to turn on the TV and see what kinds of programing we had. A nice mix of British, American, French, German, Filipino, Arabic and some comedy from the Shiny Happy Peoples Republic of the Sudan. I couldn't understand it but I'm sure the Sudanese appreciated it.

After some time researching the viewing habits of Dubai-ians I went to bed with visions of camels and dates in my head.

Peter

No comments: