Jan 30 – At Sea Gulf of Oman-Straits of Hormuz-Persian Gulf. Another typical day at sea. Nice to rest up a bit although I did have to do some walking to get the stiffness out of my legs from all the up and down yesterday.
We had a variety show this evening by three performers that are leaving the ship in Dubai, Frank in Person (Frank Sinatra tribute), Adam Westcott (the flamenco guitarist) and Kaitlyn Carr (The Celtic performer). They were all good again.
Jan 31 – Dubai, United Arab Emirates Dirham. Another place we've never been so here comes the boring stuff.
Dubai is the largest city and emirate by population in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), it's the 2nd largest emirate by size. The only larger emirate is Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE. Dubai is situated on the southeast coast of the Persian Gulf. The UAE is composed of 7 emirates. I don't know about you but it always confuses me when the state and the city have the same name. I guess I'm used to New York, New York but for some reason Dubai, Dubai throws me. I guess it's because the person speaking rarely identifies which of the two is the subject of his statement. The city of Dubai is located on the Emirate of Dubai's northern coastline.
Dubai is a multi-cultural city but with strong laws has not lost it's Dubain identity. Apparently they are smarter about this than the USA. Oil wasn't discovered until 1966. Oil revenue first started to flow in 1969. Today, less than 5% of the emirates' revenue comes from oil. The emirate's Western-style model of business drives its economy with the main revenues now coming from tourism, aviation, real estate, and financial services. Dubai has recently attracted world attention through many innovative large construction projects. The city has become symbolic for its skyscrapers and high-rise buildings, in particular the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. Dubai has been criticized for human rights violations concerning the city's largely South Asian workforce.
Dubai is the 22nd most expensive city in the world and the most expensive city in the Middle East. Dubai's hotel rooms were rated as the second most expensive in the world, after Geneva.
The earliest recorded mention of Dubai is in 1095 in the Book of Geography by the Andalusian-Arab geographer Abu Abdullah al-Bakri. The Venetian pearl merchant Gaspero Balbi visited the area in 1580 and mentioned Dubai (Dibei) for its pearling industry. They think Dubai was established as a fishing village in the early 18th century. It was ruled by Sheikh Tahnoon of Abu Dhabi. In 1833, following tribal feuding, members of the Al Bu Falasa tribe seceded from Abu Dhabi and established themselves in Dubai. The exodus from Abu Dhabi was led by Ubaid bin Saeed and Maktum bin Butti who became joint leaders of Dubai until Ubaid died in 1836, leaving Maktum to establish the Maktoum dynasty.
Dubai signed the treaty of 'Perpetual Maritime Truce' of 1853 giving rise to the term Trucial States, often used to refer to these countries before they consolidated into the UAE. It entered into an exclusivity agreement in which Great Britain took responsibility for the emirate's security in 1892.
Dubai's was a major port beginning in the 20th century. It was known for its pearl exports until the 1930s. The Great Depression and the innovation of cultured pearls caused the pearling industry to die out. Dubai's depression worsened and many residents moved to other parts of the Persian Gulf.
In its early days, Dubai was constantly at odds with Abu Dhabi and in 1947 a border dispute between Dubai and Abu Dhabi on the northern sector of their mutual border escalated into war. Arbitration by the British and the creation of a buffer frontier running south eastwards from the coast at Ras Hasian resulted in a temporary cessation of hostilities. Despite a lack of oil, Dubai's Ruler from 1948, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, used revenue from trading activities to build infrastructure. Electricity, telephone services, and an airport were established in Dubai in the 1950s and, in 1959, the emirate's first hotel, the Airlines Hotel, was constructed.
In 1962 the British Political Agent noted that "Many new houses and blocks of offices and flats are being built... the Ruler is determined, against advice (from the British) to continue with the construction of an airport. More and more European and Arab firms are opening up and the future looks bright."
The first oil finds in Dubian waters caused a large population boom fed by foreign workers. From 1968 and 1975 the city's population grew by over 300%.
When Great Britain announced that it was withdrawing all its troops from anywhere east of Aden, the region was thrown into political chaos. Initially a 9-state union was attempted but was never finalized. Intrusive British meddling in the process caused Qatar (properly pronounced 'Cutter'), Ras Al Khaimah and Bahrain broke from the union. This left only six emirates to agree on union on 18 July 1971. On 2 December 1971, Dubai, together with Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Qawain and Fujairah joined in the Act of Union to form the United Arab Emirates. The seventh emirate, Ras Al Khaimah, reconsidered and joined UAE on 10 February 1972 following Iran's annexation of the RAK-owned Tunbs islands. In 1973 the UAE adoped a uniform currency: the UAE dirham (right now worth about 27 US cents.
The Gulf War of 1990 had a negative financial effect on the city, as depositors withdrew their money and traders withdrew their trade, but subsequently, the city recovered in a changing political climate and thrived. Later in the 1990s, many foreign trading communities—first from Kuwait, during the Gulf War, and later from Bahrain, during the Shia unrest—moved their businesses to Dubai. Dubai provided refueling bases to allied forces at the Jebel Ali Free Zone during the Gulf War, and again during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Large increases in oil prices after the Gulf War encouraged Dubai to continue to focus on free trade and tourism. So far as I can tell the current drop in oil prices has not yet affected Dubai, probably because such a small amount of the GNP is from oil. By the way, gas here is 29 cents a liter. That's about $1.08 per gallon and, like Mexico, all the gas stations are owned by a Quasi-governmental organization.
On to the touring. We have decided to emphasize Dubai's architectural achievements.
We headed straight to the downtown district to head to the top of Burj Khalifa. At 2,716 feet tall, this is the world's tallest building and the world's tallest manmade structure. Previously two different sites had held these records; the completion of Burj Khalifa reunited the two records into one building. I have been up 'tallest' buildings but never while they still held the title. The Empire State Building in NYC and the Sear's Tower had each lost the title before I got to the top. So this is something I had to do so I will finally be up there while it's still the tallest.
Here in Dubai, like all big cities, there's a lot of construction going on. In places like NYC and San Francisco it's because things have gotten old and have to be replaced or refurbished. Here it's almost all because of new construction. Cranes are everywhere. Unfortunately there's new construction going on near Burj Khalifa so we were dropped on in the parking lot of The Dubai Mall (They claim it's the largest in the world and with over 2,000 shops they may be right.) We walked through the parking lot and into the mall. This is dangerous as shopping opportunities are difficult for some women to pass up and things can get bogged down. Fortunately that didn't prove to be a problem this time. After crossing the mall we walked through a tunnel that led to the Burj Khalifa next door.
After picking up our tickets, you have to reserve ahead because often the whole day is sold out, we entered a very Disneyworld-like maze to that wound around the corner. When we were around the corner I could see that this line was heading for a security screening. You'd think people had never been screened before. It took way longer than necessary because people kept walking through the magnetometer with their cameras, cell phones, etc. and had to go back, put the offending items on the x-ray scanners conveyor belt and re-enter the magnetometer, sometimes more than twice.
After clearing security and rounding another corner we found another Disney-like feature, a long hallway with slide shows projected on the walls. It looks like sometimes the crowds are very large and this hall becomes a waiting room, but not today. At the end of the long hall we came to another Disney maze. At this one they let people go forward to the elevator boarding area in small groups, just enough to fill one elevator. It's hard to estimate the distance from the bus to the elevator but I'd say it was a little over 1 kilometer, but less than a mile.
We boarded the high-speed elevator, which ascends to the observation deck at 32 feet per second. We were dropped off on Level 125 and had to walk down to Level 124. Level 125 is a restaurant. There are 126 floors, everything above that is technical and engineering. Spaced almost evenly all the way up the building there ae technical and engineering floors. For example, it is impossible to pump water up to the 126th floor from ground level, so every 30 floors or so they have a pumping system that collects the water pumped from below and then re-pumps it up to the next level. All the floors where these pumps are located do not have any public rooms on them.
On Level 124 there are floor-to-ceiling windows provide 360-degree views of the city, desert and ocean sprawled below. We are lucky, it's a relatively haze free day, probably due to the strong breeze sweeping towards the ocean. We had a clear view of the harbor and the MS Rotterdam and here four neighbors, 2 from Costa, 1 from MSC and 1 from Aida. All of these ships are larger than the Rotterdam. One of the Costa ships the Aida ship and the one from MSC were probably 3-4,000 passengers. The second Costa ship was just a bit bigger than we are but probably held 2-2,500 passengers as opposed to our 1,200. HAL ships usually have a very favorable passenger to public room space ratio. The Palm Island complex was just visible in the distance but the view of it was hazy and so flat that it was impossible to really make out the design. We could also see the Burj Al Arab, a hotel shaped like the sail of the triangular sail rigged boats that are traditional here, our next stop.
The Burj Al Arab Hotel is located in the Jumeirah area. This upscale waterfront neighborhood is filled with beautiful homes and modern-day palaces. We stopped at the beach near the hotel for photos of the former 'tallest building in the world.' It was built on a manmade island just off Dubai's sandy shores and is connected to the mainland by causeway.
From there we drove further east to see Palm Jumeirah, the first of three palm-shaped islands to be reclaimed off the coast of Dubai and the only one completed at this time. Another interesting plan is to create manmade islands that form an oval shaped map of the world, called The World. Each island will be independent and reached only by boat or helicopter. You purchase the whole island and develop it as you wish, within guidelines. Much of the work on these islands is done and some have been purchased but none will be built on until all the islands are completely finished. We could see them from the Burj Khalifa.
As we went along I kept seeing these glassed in small buildings that looked like a log split in half. The glass part was where the log would have been split. Turns out these are air conditioned bus stops. Now that's classy. And here, necessary! In the summer it can get to 50˚C, that's 122˚F, and higher.
The Palm Jumeirah was created so everyone has a waterfront home. From above it looks like a palm tree with a semi-circle around it (the circle stops short of the palm tree development at both ends). We drove onto the 'trunk', line with high rise hotels and condos. Coming off the trunk are palm fronds that have a street down the center and are lined with upscale villas on both sides, each on the water. At the end of the trunk we went through an underwater tunnel that put us out on the surrounding semi-circle. Here we stopped for pictures at the $1.5-billion Atlantis Hotel. The semi-circle around the palm is lined with ocean front hotels. One side of the hotel looks out on the Persian Gulf, the other side looks down on Palm Jumeirah.
From Palm Jumeirah we drove west to the Dubai Marina, the world's largest artificial harbor. It's surrounded by the sky-scraping condominiums of Jumeirah Beach Residence. Just a few years ago this was desert. We drove along Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai's new business district, for a look at some more of the attention-grabbing architectural marvels that have put Dubai firmly on the 'remarkable structures' map. We stopped at the Mall of the Emirates for another hike, shorter but still a distance to see Ski Dubai, the indoor ski dome offering fresh real snow all year round. It was very difficult to get pictures of the activity without going inside (It's in the mall but has a separate entrance where you buy the tickets to ski). I did get a shot of the large screen inside that gave the time and temperature. The temp at 13:29 was 25.8 ˚F or -4˚C.
It was an interesting time, visiting the unique and mostly very new buildings around the city. We arrived back at the ship after the Lido had closed again, but this time the burger bar, now called the Dive-In at the midship Lido Pool was open and a burger suited me just fine. They also have a small buffet right by the Dive-In that has the ingredients to make your own taco or burrito. I don't really care for the pizza on the ships but at the aft pool Slice, the pizza bar, was also open. I've only had pizza on HAL and Cunard, but to me they may be pizza-like but they're not real pizza, in the same vein as the 'sushi' really isn't sushi for the most part. I'm hoping that they serve some real nigiri again soon.
This evening's entertainment was a Dubian dance troupe. They performed some folk dances from Dubai as bookends for the show. They were very entertaining. One dance was in tribal garb and a later dance was in Royal costume. Between those two sets was where the real action was.
First, a solo dancer took his place on the stage and sat on the floor with his back to us while he made some rhythmic motions with his hands and arms. After he stood up the entire flavor of his act changed. Simply put, he started spinning. Now I've see Whirling Dervish dancers performed but I've never seen anything like this one. He continued spinning, striking different poses and changing speeds, like an ice skater's spins. Sometimes on he was even on one foot. He continued spinning for at least 10 minutes, probably a bit more. His long garment below his waist was multi-layered and as he spun all of it was out horizontally. He would pick up layers and hold them up as he spun creating a colorful display that was pretty dazzling. About 8 minutes in I thought I'd seen about all he could possible do and that's when the various layers of his skirt lit up. It had colored LEDs in patterns around two of the layers. As he spun your retina's retention time would create patterns from the spinning LEDs. At one point he must have unfastened the top layer of the skirt because suddenly it was spinning over his head enlarging the images. When he finally stopped spinning he got the largest ovation this crowd has given yet with most people standing. It was fantastic.
The next performer was a belly dancer. She performed three different styles of the dance. In one she was fairly covered up with a loose fitting robe over her costume. In another she used a feathered boa and in the last she was just in the traditional costume, sort of a bikini with strips of cloth hanging down to the floor. Just like Caroline, the girl who demonstrated some belly dance forms on the ship, her figure was very plush, no skinny-Minnies allowed in the belly dancing sorority. She also generated a good response from the audience. I think the men were a little afraid to clap too much for fear their wives would not approve.
We're losing an hour tonight so after the show it was already 23:15 and like most people we were heading directly to our cabin.
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