I just got back from visiting Dubai for the first time. Mom and Dad have some friends there and enough Qatar Airways points for free tickets, so who was I to refuse? We went swimming on Friday, then to church, and then visited another family that mom and dad are friends with. Friday evening, our host arranged for us to get comp tickets to the closing night of the Dubai Jazz Festival. Apparently friends of friends work for Phillips, who is the main sponsor.
The Jazz Festival was a quintessential middle east experience. In a really nice park by a large fountain and pond in Dubai's Media Village, across from the CNN building was the Jazz Festival grounds. We got there just in time for the break before the headliner. When the main act finally came out, it was Roger Hudson, former lead singer for Supertramp. Yeah, I said jazz festival. He played a bunch of his old hits on guitar and piano, with just a sax player backing him up. I guess that was the jazz angle. Anyway, it was interesting just for the experience.
On Saturday we went out for Brunch, then drove by the Jamiareh beach and the Burj Al Arab (the famous 7-star hotel). Then on to Mall of the Emirates, where I went skiing. Yep, downhill skiing on snow, indoors, in the desert. I'll update this post with some pictures tomorrow. It was surprisingly good considering it was indoors in the desert.
To follow that up we went to downtown Dubai and saw just some of the Suq areas. Like Doha, Dubai has large areas of tradiitonal markets where you can get all kinds of beautiful or tacky things at very negotiable prices.
Anyway, it was a whirlwind tour, but Dubai is definitely interesting. What everybody says about traffic is true - it is truly madness. I guess it's a combination of the fast growth, lack of mass transit like rail or subway, and the culture that emphasizes status, and your car is big status symbol.
For now, back to the grind in Doha. Hopefully I'll get to go back to Dubai in a month for an education conference between the end of classes and exams.
