Two Continents away

Wednesday 8-4
I got up early and went down to the bus station to catch the bus to Incheon airport. This is about a five hour ride. I arrived a little early so got in line to get my ticket. So, I proceeded to go through the usual airport rigeramaro. The flight to Guangzhou, China was 20 minutes late. People with connecting flights were held up. The immigration held our passports and boarding passes for 30 minutes or so. The guy didn’t explain why. I think in some cases, and in this case, in this country, it was best to not push it. A woman led us upstairs next to the xray machine. She was holding everyone’s passport and started to call our names one by one to collect them. This was not the most efficient method, but I don’t think they’re worried about it. The airport didn’t have wi-fi, much to my shagrin. Just as well I guess, because I heard that China blocks facebook. I had about three hours to kill before my next flight, so I decided to go this café. They were playing MTV China on the tv. It was a little more interesting than k-pop, but that’s not saying much. I settled on a club sandwich and can of coke. It’s times like these that I wish I had some local currency, it just didn’t cross my mind to get some before I left Korea. It cost me $15 US dollars. This reminded me of Seinfeld’s rant on how everything costs so much at the airport. “$12 for a tuna sandwich, yeah that’s fair.” The connecting wing of the airport was about the most uninteresting one hallway I’ve been to. The duty free shops were not very appealing, unless you wanted to buy jewelry, perfume, or whisky or something. Finally, my flight was ready to board and out of nowhere a buch of middle eastern people got on the plane. This flight was from Guangzhou to Dubai, thus I sure was glad to have had an isle seat. The flight wasn’t too bad, just seven hours which means you have about three meals and several drink rounds. I arrived in Dubai about midnight and the immigration people were wearing the all white garb you normally see on tv. The immigration guy was pretty jovial. I had less trouble getting through in Dubai than I did in Calgary or Manchester, who would’ve thought? As soon as I stepped outside I felt the dry heat. I never felt heat like this before, the heat just stung you. I noticed outside there was a sign that read “Ladies greeting area.” I took a taxi to my hotel. It was a nice drive through town. I checked in and asked for a wake up call early.
Thursday 8-5
I enquired at the desk about stuff, she told me stuff doesn’t open til 10, so I decided to walk to the beach. It was the strangest sight I’ve seen. Desert sand for the beach and ocean of course. It was about 8 am or so, but still steamy. I wonder how the beach operates because Muslims are all about covering up. I saw a couple of foreigners get in the water. On my way back to the hotel, there was a big mosque. Mosques have the dome looking thing on top. And this was going to be a theme, they have a tower with several speakers blasting the call to prayer. When this hits, you can’t sleep. The sound was shrilling. I stopped at the bank to exchange some money. The bank’s tag line was “Modern banking services based on Islamic values.” I saw a bookstore, so I stopped in and perused the middle eastern subject area. It turns out a guy who grew up in the region, but from England, wrote about his experiences traveling around the middle east. Also, he wrote about this travelings in Kenya. Back at the hotel I signed up for the desert safari for later that day. I got a taxi to go to Kamara Souq (market). It was like a strip mall that mostly sold Rolexes and other high end stuff. I only saw maybe two souvenir shops. As expected these shops had camel stuff there. I read that the middle east is famous for shawarmas, which is a wrap with chicken, lettuce, and veggies inside. I asked around and none of the restaurants were selling it yet, not until the evening. So, I settled on a street vendor between two buildings. I ordered a mango smoothie and the shawarma, it was quite tasty especially with the french fries. I went back to the hotel to get ready for the desert safari. A white robed guy picked me up in a two row Toyota suv. We stopped at two other hotels to pick up more people. It turns out that one couple was from Nigeria. The husband said it is the only African country not to be occupied by an outside force. We drove along and then we met up with other suvs. Then, we plunged into the sand dunes at full speed. I’ve riden an atv, but never a suv going off roading. A few times I felt like I was going to lose my lunch all the while listening to Persian music blaring out the speakers. We stopped twice for pictures. We were surrounded by nothing but sand in all directions. Off roading in the desert can be a little nauseous to say the least. As we were riding, I noticed a herd of camels wallowing in the sand. Finally, we made it to the eating area. An interesting thing about the bathroom is the water was always really warm, maybe because of the desert heat. I saw some folks riding camels which drew a crowd. I wanted to try my hand at it. So, the camel guy has the camel bend down so you can get on. The hairy beast stoops all the way on the ground then keeps raising up until you are really high up. We walk around in a circle before we dismount. They have a few snacks for us to munch on, like honey sweet balls, something that looks like pancakes. The buffet was ready and we chowed down. It was an amazing spread of good eats. We finished off the meal by smoking a sheesha pipe. These are huge pipes that fruity flavored. I ate with three high school graduates from Kuwait and the Nigerian couple. After that it’s belly dancing time. The woman could move every part of her body from the waist up. I didn’t know there were muscles all those places. Back at the hotel, I went to the corner store to get some snacks. It seemed that half the workers from the dry docks were in the store. The dry docks was across the street and their living quarters was behind the store.
Friday, 8-6
I checked out of the hotel and took a taxi to the Burj Khalifa, which is the tallest building in the world. It was a nice view from lookout spot. It was quite ironic, everything was brown except for a green golf course. Dubai mall connects to it, so I sat a spell and ran into a guy from the desert safari. So, we decided to go to the spice souq. He wanted to take the subway, but we found out it didn’t open til 2 pm. We were told you can’t pay with cash on the bus or subway, so we had to buy a metro card. So, we ventured out to the spice souq which had bustling shops and interesting spices. There were many shops selling Rolexes, but they were not for us. We took a dhow (little wooden motor boat) across the creek. We kept hearing the really lound siren for the call to prayer, but everyone just kept going about their business. One shop owner told us he has the “three wise men,” that is gold, francencise, and myrr. I thought that was funny. I got a little of francencise and myrrh for keepsake. My friend, Regent told me about a dinner buffet cruise. It sounded enticing and a nice way to end my last night in Dubai. Plus, it will probably be my last time eating Arab food, which is really good. We hung out at his motel for a bit. Meanwhile I booked my seat on the river cruise. I went to a little shop down the street to get some postcards and stamps.

A white unmarked van pulled up so we got in. We assumed that this was the tour group, and the driver confirmed as far as we could tell. He drove down to the docks which was quite picturesque at night. There were old style looking sailing vessels. We walked down into the boat. Everyone was herded to the lower level, but I wanted to check out the upper level. I’m glad I did, the scenery was so much better and a lot less people. The waiter came and took our drink orders, and after an exceedingly amount of time finally appeared. There was an amazing spread of food there and best of all it was a buffet. We cruised down the river and back again. All in all it was a pretty relaxing time, a good respite from the hawkers selling imitation Rolexes and such.

Saturday, 8-7
I took a taxi to the airport. The airport has a really nice duty free shop, the biggest selection I’ve seen. As Seinfeld says “how much is duty.” I still don’t know. They have a lot of European foods, so I got a few things and stuffed them in my bag. I decided to ship some souvenirs with DHL. That was a huge headache. It took about four weeks for my package to finally clear customs and come to my house. Back at the airport, I found out my flight was over an hour late. There was no one at the gate, only security. In the Dubai airport, there were only a few seats in the middle of terminal. You have to check in at the gate to have access to the big seating area. Kenyans had several taped up boxes of electronics and otherwise strung together stuff. It was rather cramped on the plane and it didn’t help that my seat didn’t recline at all. There were only a few white people there. The Nairobi airport was like a open warehouse. That’s when it hit me, I’m not in the West or Asia for that matter. I suppose the setup works for the people there. I called Lee to check on the Jim Cab (taxi). He said the Peace Corps has a deal with the Jim Cab folks, so I should take them. So, the guy comes and he takes me to the hostel. On my way to the hostel, people were just walking around and riding bicycles. I noticed many businesses had a huge gate around it with security guards. The hostel looks like a compound with a big gate. Lee flew in later about 5:30. We ate at the little restaurant there. It was an open air area with tables and chairs. We ate a grainy burger with Peptang (Kenyan’s version of ketchup). Peptang is basically a gloupy congealed tomato product.