Sunday, June 22, 2003 (Dubai – United Arab Emirates)
Getting out of Jordan brought it's own challenges
but we are finally here and enjoying ourselves. So who is this Harry Potter kid
anyway? And the search for somewhere to stay starts all over again. An expensive
country means expensive accommodation but we're nearing the end of the trip so
what the hell.
Day 102. Our time in Amman was all too brief
and it is one of the countries that I would one day like to return to. In the
meantime, however, we are now in the United Arab Emirates for the last few days
of this leg of the trip and we will try to make the most of it while it
lasts.
Samir, our friendly hostel
manager, woke himself up this morning especially to say goodbye to us. We will
miss him. He was one of the most sincere people in the whole of the Middle East
that we had the pleasure of meeting. The taxi driver that he arranged for us was
on time (at least for local standards) and drove us the twenty minutes to the
airport just outside of Amman.
I
don’t know what it is about airports but they always seem to bring the
worst out in me. It must be all the queuing up and waiting in line at the
various counters as you navigate through the airport terminal building. The
routine is much the same in any airport; first you find the correct check-in
desk, then check-in, then go through immigration, then have your bags x-rayed,
then find the departure gate, and so on and so on. What put me over the edge
this morning was the immigration officer that sent us back to ‘buy’
a departure tax ticket. I was under the impression that we had pre-paid all
departure taxes and there are several of them actually listed on our flight
tickets. When I questioned the myrmidon, all he would do was to mutter
‘another tax, another tax’ and gestured us towards the
‘Departure Tax’ ticket counter next to the check-in counters. I
think the main problem was that this was a situation over which I had no
control. Unless we forked out the additional $15 for the departure tax tickets,
we would not get on the plane. Fortunately, I still had a $20 bill tucked away
for a rainy day.
I picked up one of
the complimentary newspapers on the way through the tunnel to board the plane.
Ordinarily, I don’t read newspapers but since we’ve been largely
deprived of news of any kind over the past few months, I thought it would help
to pass the four an a half hours of flight time from Amman to Dubai if I
indulged in a bit of a read to catch up on events. A couple of interesting
articles piqued my attention. The first was the Harry Potter mania that is
sweeping the globe with the recent release of book number five in the JK Rowling
series. The other was the explanation to why the Dead Sea was closed when we
tried to visit yesterday. It seems that there has been a huge gathering of world
leaders and diplomats in the Middle East in connection with the most recent
Israeli/Palestinian peace process. It’s a good job that we visited Petra
when we did since Colin Power went there just a day or two after us. With the
mass shutdown of huge areas of the country due to visiting dignitaries, we might
have otherwise missed our opportunity to visit the one place that drew us to
Jordan to begin with.
For the second
country in a row, we arrived inside its borders with absolutely no idea where to
go and nothing booked. First order of business, after clearing all the awaiting
airport formalities, was to grab a bite to eat and to procure some ready cash.
We also stopped by the airport information desk to inquire about some hotels and
we were given a wide range of mid-range options to consider. Most of them were
four-star hotels and all in the $45-$90 price range. This is well over twice our
normal expectations for accommodation but since we are in our last days, we
decided to splurge – to hell with the budget. We were even seriously
contemplating spending a few nights in the world’s largest and only
seven-star hotel – the Burg Al Arab. Seeing this monumental work or art is
one of the reasons why we are here to begin with and we came oh so very close to
throwing caution to the wind and forking out the near €700 per night for
one of the suits. We decided against it in the end but I dare say we will swing
by this way for a long weekend sometime in the future to give it a
go.
We ultimately settled on a very
nice four-star hotel called the Regal Plaza and their driver picked us up soon
after we made the necessary arrangements over the phone directly with them
– completely bypassing the airport information desk and thus saving at
least a bit of commission. It’s the very first ‘real’ hotel
that we’ve stayed in since starting our travels. The room is very large
with an enormous double bed and a perfectly appointed bathroom with all the
trimmings. There are desk lamps, a phone, a desk and chairs and even a mini-bar.
There’s even a big TV with several channels that we can actually watch
without having to guess what the picture looks like through all the signal
distortion due to bad reception. At $45 per night, it’s by far the most
we’ve spent on any accommodation anywhere in Africa and the Middle East
but it’s still a fair bit cheaper than some of the lesser hotels
we’ve stayed in previously in the States. A compromise, if you
will.
We settled in, unpacked and
rested for a while before heading out into Dubai. One of the highlights of this
country (a collection of Emirates would technically be a more accurate a
description) is the various souqs where clothing, gold and electronics, amongst
other things, are reputed to be very much cheaper than anywhere else in the
world. From what we’ve seen so far, it’s been a bit of a
disappointment with several items that we looked at being more expensive that in
America. The big difference, however, is the negotiation factor. The asking
price is not fixed and bargaining is the name of the game. To be fair, though,
we’ve only really explored a relatively small area in the immediate
vicinity of our hotel. Over the next couple of days, we will venture out into
other areas of Dubai to see what the pickings are like
elsewhere.
Another must-do attraction
here is the Wild-Wadi water theme park. We will probably examine this gem in
much more detail tomorrow afternoon. With all the stress we’ve endured
with the travelling lifestyle in recent weeks and months, this will be a nice
opportunity to let our hair down and just have some plain fun.
Posted: Sun - June 22, 2003 at 12:58 PM