Dubai

The flight over here was awful. The people sitting next to me had about 7 elbows each and to make things worse they slept the entire flight while I struggled to get any sleep at all.

Things took a turn for the better when I decided to buy a case of duty free beer at the airport and thus doubled the number of items in Ben's Fridge.
While Ben was at work on the first day I went into the old area of Dubai called Bur Dubai. I went to the Dubai museum which was quite interesting and learnt about the history of Dubai. Which, as far as I can see, can be summed up in three words: pearl fishing, oil and tourism. Pearls were the main export until the discovery of oil in 1960s and that's when Dubai became really rich. Nowadays there are a lot of tourists (which is lukcy cause there is a damn lot of hotels for them to stay in) and that's where Dubai seems to make a lot of money. I also went to another museum which is in what used to be a house of one of the Sheiks of Dubai. This had a really good photo exhibition of photos taken of Dubai throughout the last 50 years or so. The aerial shots showing how much development has taken place over time were interesting.
In the afternoon I walked back to Ben's place along the shores of Dubai creek (although I think it's big enough to be called a river) and had a squiz at some of the fancy architecture that Dubai's well know for.

That night Ben and I went out to a pub called 'The Dubliners' for a few drinks, we got talking to the manager for a little while and I was telling him that I'd been staying in Ireland and he gave us some free pints of Guinness which was good!

The next day Ben had a half day at work and after he finished we went into another part of the old town to have a look at the spice souk (markets) and the gold souk. They were ok but I think I saw enough souks in Morocco and Egypt so that they've lost their appeal for me at the moment. That night we went out with some of Benji's workmates to 'The Irish Village' (I don't know why he kept taking me to Irish pubs), we ended up at a place called 'Rockbottom' which, despite it's name, wasn't too bad.

We got home at 5:00 in the morning and had to get up at 8:30 to go into the desert to do some dune bashing. This is basically just four wheel driving in the desert. It's pretty fun and a couple of times it felt like the car was going to tip over. We also tried sand boarding but it's a fair bit harder than snow boarding and there aren't any chairlifts in the desert so you have to walk up the dunes after you board down them. We also went on little 4 wheel motorbikes. They were great fun, just hooning around the sand dunes hoping that you don't run into anyone else as you go over the top of them. At the end of the morning we saw a couple of ostriches and falcons and posed for some pictures with them.
That was Ben's one day off a week and we were supposed to go out with some of his mates but once we got back from the mornings activites I cooked us some bacon for brekky and then we fell asleep on the lounge for most of the afternoon. We did go out for a few drinks at a bar in one of the more expensive hotels in Dubai. It was really nice but I didn't want to get too used to it cause after this week of crashing on Ben's couch it's back to not so glamorous youth hostels for me.

The next evening we went to Ski Dubai - an indoor ski resort. It was great fun! A very strange experience to be skiing inside, especially when there's a desert outside. There were two runs and one had a jump on it so we spent most of our time trying to go over the jump. I'm leaving tomorrow and I've got a bit of spare time so I thought I'd put a few photos up for you to have a look at. Dubai is an interesting place and it's been great to visit Ben over here. Now it's off to Germany...