Sunday 20th January 2008
Day 2: Mall of Emirates & Ski Dubai
Location is something you cannot truly appreciate until you actually arrive in a country. Today we wanted to go to the Mall of Emirates in the Jumeirah area of Dubai. Reception had advised that this would be a 45-minute journey by taxi, costing around 50 Dirhams (£7.50). What seemed like 'just down the road' on the map turned out to be 16km in a city where traffic congestion is a known problem. The metro (overground rail) system was still being built around us – it cannot come too soon!
Instead of taking the taxi, we decided to go to the station and take a bus. This worked out to be 2.5 Dirhams (38p) each – we were the only tourists on board and got quite a few stares, initially. The seating on the bus is worth mentioning. The ladies sit in a separate compartment to the men – the first 4 rows of the bus ("Reserved for ladies" read the sign). We travelled down the Jumeirah Beach Road; at one of the stops I noticed a man literally fighting to keep his place in the long queue. Only a few boarded the already-full bus, including said fighting man - he gripped tightly on to two parts of the bus, barring others from pushing in. The rest had to wait for the next one – who knows whether they'd manage to get on that one?
The journey to the Mall of Emirates by bus would have taken 45 minutes, had we got off at the right stop! Instead we did a circuit around a dusty and in places, flooded industrial area – Al Quoz – where more and more construction workers got dropped off. By the time we arrived back at the bus stop nearest the Mall of Emirates, the bus was almost empty.
The next issue was crossing the road from the industrial estate to the shopping mall. Quite straightforward, one would imagine, but let's add in a couple of facts: no traffic lights and dual carriage with 4-lanes each way. I'm thinking of the scene in Bowfinger where Eddie Murphy's character 'Jiff Ramsey' was told to cross a busy highway for a movie scene. He was led to believe that the people driving the cars at great speed were all stunt drivers, who would be able to skillfully avoid him. In actual fact they were nothing of the sort and by pure chance Jiff makes it across unscathed, tears of fear rolling down his face as he reaches the other side.
This was the position we were faced with, except there was no Steve Martin (the director in the film) feeding us the line that these were stunt drivers. We knew the score! There were some breaks in the traffic, and thankfully we managed to cross the 8 lanes of traffic, albeit with more caution than Jiff!
The Mall of Emirates is an enormous shopping centre with designer shops and regular high street stores like Debenhams, H&M etc.
Mall of Emirates.
It looks elegant and clean but what sets this mall apart from others is Ski Dubai, an indoor ski slope housed within the complex. It is a truly bizarre concept, having what is in effect an extremely large freezer compartment in a mall in a desert! There are two main parts to Ski Dubai, the ski slopes (which we didn't try because we can’t ski or snowboard) and the snow park. The latter is a snow-covered area where you can take pictures of ice sculptures, an igloo and ice bar. You can also go bobsledding and generally bask in a winter wonderland. The temperature is kept at around -3 degrees Celsius, and you are kitted out with jacket, trousers, socks and boots. I brought along my own gloves, which are required in order to go bobsledding. I had a go on the bobsled, and screamed all the way down – it was great fun!
Me at Ski Dubai, which is at the Mall of Emirates.
Bob-sledding at Ski Dubai.
Ian in an igloo!
It does feel like you’re in a goldfish bowl at times, as there are windows for people in the shopping centre to look in. We did the same thing (i.e. watch people having fun in the snow) once on the other side, while nursing a cup of hot coffee at St Moritz café.
Going home was an interesting experience. We crossed the same 8-lane road that we braved earlier. This time it was dark outside and very busy on account of it being rush hour. We must have waited for 10 minutes to cross both lanes. On finally making it to the other side, one of the locals let out a whooping sound. When a local does that, you know that it was no mean feat! We waited for a while but the bus did not arrive on time, and having seen the amount of people waiting at the stop, we decided to catch a taxi instead, but not before crossing that busy road one more time! Once we managed to successfully hail a taxi, it took us an hour and a half to get back to the hotel. Note to self: do not travel between the hours of 6-8pm, i.e. rush hour.
Dubai financial centre at night, viewed from our hotel roof top.
We had dinner at the ‘Shisha at the Rooftop’ restaurant at the hotel. It was very dark inside and as the name suggests, people were smoking shisha (a tobacco pipe with a long flexible tube connected to a container where the smoke is cooled by passing through water) in there. So here we were, having a nice romantic meal, some businessmen were having a meeting in another area and a group of tourists were chilling out with shisha pipes on the cushions. But even though we had different reasons for being there, the one thing we now had in common was the lovely night-time views of the financial business district lit up in front of us. It was spectacular! It was a nice way to end the day, and also a nice way to celebrate our second wedding anniversary.