Dubai Cruise - On the Cruise (Jan 26th - Feb 2nd)

The main purpose of this trip was a to attend a cruise to visit various cities around the Arabian Sea. Dubai was of course a huge interests and that's why we came a few days earlier to check it out. This cruise is my fourth cruise with Royal Carribean and this was one of the smaller ships that I've been on with them. The routing was to leave from Dubai (UAE), head over to Fujairah (UAE), Muscat (Oman), Abu Dhabi (UAE) and then back to Dubai. I wasn't overly thrilled with the routing but I thought a cruise was a good way for my first explorations of the middle east. The convenience of cruising is a great appeal to me, that's probably why I've been on so many. My sister Julie said it best that "on a cruise, the hotel and sights follow you, where as in traditional traveling, you go to the hotels and sights".

Mom and Julie on the ships first Formal Night

Janey looking pretty

Acrobatic show on the ship

Acrobatic performers

On this trip, I brought Kirsten along, my youngest daughter so a cruise was even more convenient. A great service that Royal Carribean has are kids camp where we are able to drop off the kids and they can participate in their age appropriate events while the adults do their things. Everyday, we gave Kirsten a choice to come with us or go to camp, and most of the time, she would pick the camp. Of course, we can pick her up anytime. If it's a sea day, we would spend time with her in the kid's pool. Her favourite thing was the waterslide. On her first ride, she was timid and she wanted to sit on my lap going down. Now, you have to understand that this is a kid's waterslide and the angle on this slide was super shallow. Her sitting on my lap only created a "point load" weight in one small area, mainly the circumference of my bum. So I was not really sliding, but mostly doing the "worm" all the way down the slide while pushing against the curved side walls. On the 3rd ride, she had built up more confidence and I was able to get her to ride in front of me while holding onto my leg. It wasn't long though that she was racing down and I can't even catch up to her. She had so much fun going down and even tumbled around a few times. After every ride, I would hear her sweet little voice exclaiming "Again! Again!".

Kirsten having fun on the ship

Janey & Kirsten

Jack and the Bean Stalk Show

Amazing peformance...

...and all this on a ship!

The ports of call weren't that interesting. Our first one was Fujairah, a small industrial town of the UAE. We were so uninterested that all we did was take the free shuttle to the local mall and walked around for half a day and then went back to the ship to chill.

Bustling streets

Shops at a local market

Kirsten in a local market

Kirsten on the move

Muscat was next and this was in Oman, a bordering country to UAE. This city was more attractive. I found the city to be better maintained than Dubai and was more attractive to me. I'm not saying that Dubai was dirty or anything, but in Muscat, there were carefully manicured flower beds along the streets compared to the 8-lanes each way of nothing but highway pavement in Dubai. The buildings are more of aboriginal character compared to the international glass towers of Dubai. I think this gave me a very good impression. We had a two day stay here so we decided to hire a driver with a van since there were 10 of us. There are benefits to volume because after the artful bargaining skills of Julie, our 2 hour private guided city tour came out to only $7USD per person. It was good way to get a quick overview of the city and there really wasn't much to be honest. They had a beautiful Grand Mosque which was closed to visitors because due to the time of the day. I made a mental bookmark of it though so I can come back tomorrow. Other than that, we went to the beach front for some photos and also stopped by the Sultan's palace, which was also closed.

The Grand Mosque, backlit

Rear entry of Mosque

beautiful archways

Looking up at a pendant

Janey on the beach front

Picking some shells for the girls

The next day, I wanted to get out there early because I really wanted to see the Grand Mosque which was only open to visitors until 11:00am. The routine negotiations had to ensue before we hired a driver. This time, my mom was able to secure a good bargain. In the middle east, it is common, no mandatory to negotiate so for those of you thinking of coming, it is advisable to brush up on your skills. This taxi driver was quite nice although his english was more limited than yesterday's driver. We learnt that his name was Mohammed and that he had one wife and 5 kids. I was thinking to myself, don't the middle east people all have Mohammed somewhere in their name? He drove us to the Grand Mosque and even had some spare sarees for my sister and my mom. In Islamist mosques, your elbows and knees had to be covered. For women, they had to have their entire head covered. I suspected that this was out of respect for Allah but did not press for the answer like I normally would. Women even had to be in their own prayer room, separate from the men. I really didn't understand why the segregation both in the mosque and in society itself.

from the courtyards of the Mosque

Carved limestone archways

Ornamental ceiling details

When I first landed in Dubai, I was reading up on the local customs and culture. One thing that I learnt was that it was not accepted to show affection towards the opposite sex in public. The woman traditionally was completely covered in black, even their face and hair. My first guess was that it was some sort of protectionist movement of the men so that other men do not see their wife or wives, but I never really got to the bottom of that. What really baffled me though was that the first day I was on the streets of Dubai, I noticed two men holding hands. My first thought, being from the westcoast was that this was a gay couple. Thinking that, I was very surprised how open the middle east was about homosexuality. I later then saw another man (on a few occasions) hold another man's pinky. It didn't take me long to reconsider my assumption that they were gay. I later learnt that it was very common for men to hold each other's hand or pinky to show that they are very close friends. I guess it was their version of "Bromance". The part that I really couldn't make any sense of was why it was ok to show affection towards your homeboy but not your wife in public. If any readers have an answer to that, please save me the sleepless nights and enlighten me. Normally, I would've asked our driver, but after a few failed attempts with other questions, I thought it was best not to try such a complex question. The previous attempts were quite comical actually because we were asking him A and he would respond B. There was good intent though, just no beneficial results. There was one time, we had asked him to take a picture for us. He misunderstood and thought we wanted a picture with him so at least now, we have a picture of what a local taxi driver looks like.

The main prayer room

Looking up at the Swarovski chandelier

The mosque itself was beautiful and very majestic in a subdued way. Not quite like the grandeur of the european cathedrals and not so simple as an Asian temple. It had a very large plan but was relatively humble in height. It consisted of separate single story buildings interconnected by corridors and courtyards. The exterior was limestone and the ones which formed the entry archways had arabian scriptures of the Qoran carved into it. The interior of the main prayer room was one large room with tall ceilings and a large main domed ceiling. The walls and columns were white marble with carved scripture accents. Certain walls (important, I presume) had colorful arabian artwork on them. Their doors were also finely detailed with ornate carvings on them. I loved the space and being in it reminded me how much I appreciate cultural architecture.

Looking up at book niches spread along the mosque

Door knob detail

Beautiful carved wood doors

When we got back to the ship, I realized that I didn't have my cell phone. I went back out to look for it and concluded that it must have dropped in the taxi. By that time, Mohammed had already left. So I asked the other taxi drivers if they knew him and can they call him? They were all really helpful and everyone gathered around to help me figure it out. I told them that he was driving a new model Toyota Camry and his name was Mohammed. This didn't really help because all the taxi drivers were named Mohammed so after a little chuckle to myself, I continued explaining that he had 1 wife and 5 kids. I tried explaining to them what he looked like and what he was wearing. It really wasn't much help, because they were all wearing the same single sheet white robe with their local headgear. The only difference that I was able to point out was that Mohammed had a green/blue pattern versus the tan/brown pattern that some of the others had. I must have tried for 15 minutes and nothing rang a bell until one of the driver's asked "do you have a picture of him"? That was when I remembered the accidental photo with him and sure enough, everyone went "Oh!" when I showed them the photo. It was ironic that an accidental photo from a misunderstanding had saved my bacon! For those who don't know me, I am prone to loosing things like cell phone and sunglasses, especially on trips. This was the 2nd time I had nearly lost my phone on this trip.

Janey, Kirsten, & mom

Lisa and Cadence looking pretty

The man behind the woman

Lisa, Dave, & Cadence

The family portrait

Everyone looking pretty

...especially little Kirsten.

Daddy's little girl.

Mom looking good.

Our third port of call was Abu Dhabi, the capital of UAE. Unlike Dubai, with the many glass towers to facilitate commerce, Abu Dhabi is more of an industrial city with the main resource being oil. The two big highlights that got my attention was the Grand Mosque and the Ferrari World theme park. It wasn't possible to see both so the speed demon in me chose to go check out Ferrari World, claimed to be the largest indoor theme park. The building itself was amazing with a sleek curvaceous design clad in Ferrari red of course. Besides the Ferrari store and museum of cars, there were also many rides for all ages. The most anticipated one is the world's fastest roller coaster which accelerates you from 0-240 km/hr in 5 seconds! I just knew I had to experience that! While waiting in the line up, we can see the coaster before us accelerate and was literally slung like a sling shot forward. The roller coaster took off like a rocket and I was left with my jaws hanging while I watched! It was scary as hell already being a spectator. When it was our turn, the acceleration was like nothing I've experienced, and the fastest car I've accelerated in was a Lamborghini. This roller was a whole other level. My heart was pushed way and all I can hear were people yelling while I hung on for dear life. After what seemed to be a lifetime, we were done and our legs were still shaking. Next, we checked out the other rides and Ferrari displays. All in all, it was a great theme park, especially for the speed inclined. Word of warning though, some of the rides do make you nauseous.

Ferrari World rendering

We made it inside

Sensual lines by Ferrari

Fastest coaster in the world!

Formula 1 in front of the main vortex structure

Ferrari FF 

Unmistakable!

Overall, I would say the Cruise was mediocre compared to the other ones that I've been on. I can't pinpoint why, but in comparison to the other cruises; the food wasn't as good, the planned events weren't great, and the routing as mentioned was so-so. The one good thing was that I won 2nd place in the Poker tournament. I noticed that this cruise was not full and the average age were seniors; so I'm sure all this affected my experience. However, it was still a convenient way to take in the sights of the middle east, especially because it's my first time here. It's like taking a sampling of the buffet table. Next time, when I go back in, I will probably zoom in on specific areas I liked.