Day 22-24 - Birthday, Oman, UAE
Day 22 - Marylyn's Birthday!
Well today was Marylyn's birthday - I promised to get dressed up and go down to the formal dining (first time this trip!) so we could all have dinner together. They put up baloons at Dave and Marylyn's door and had a little cake and sung happy birthday as well. A nice touch by the criuse company!
Day 23 - Muscat, Oman (Dolphin watching and Snorkelling)
The first thing that struck me when I opened my curtains this morning was the mountains. It's like the place is straight out of a postcard - stark brown mountains in the distance, behind them even larger mountains that are almost white in colour. Buildings built into the side of the mountains, flat roofs, small windows. Muscat is a very clean/neat city and there's a definite beauty to the place. A sharp contrast to India - give me Oman any day! Of course it was really hot - 38C by about 8 am. No humidity - so it's not as bad as it sounds.
Our tour today was a bit of a departure from the norm, no historical/religious type stuff - we boarded a nice boat for the trip out into the harbour - as soon as the boat took off I realised this was going to be a good day - the breeze was wonderful! It only took us about 15mins to find our first pod of bottle-nosed dolphins! The water was beautifully clear so we got a good look at them - they hung around for a while and a few other pods arrived too - there would have been between 20 and 30 dolphins swimming around - coming up close to the boat - it was great! Unfortunately we couldn't get in the water with them - that would have been awesome! I don't have a lot of pics of the dolphins - I swapped over to video for most of the time - I have some nice HD video of them, but I can't really post a half a gig movie.
Anyway - we then headed down the coast for a while till we came to an isolated inlet and had a swim in the Arabian Sea - very salty, no trouble staying afloat! The 'coral' wasn't much to speak of - we Aussies are spoiled when it comes to coral reefs, once you've seen the Great Barrier Reef, it's hard to get excited over coral in other places!
Swimming was a great way to cool off and we played around for an hour or so - a good way to spend time on a 38-40 degree Celsius day! The ride back was good too - very relaxing - we got to see some of the hotels/etc that are being built - they were great, very impressive.
On the way back to the ship we stopped in and looked at the palace.
This was probably the best tour day we've had! no rushing around, no sitting on a bus for hours - only a small group of people (around 15) were on the tour, so it wasn't cramped. We've only got a half day here - so the ship will be heading for Dubai in a little while - gonna go have lunch in the pizza place! Yum!
Day 24 - Dubai, UAE (Top of the World, Burj Khalifa)
We arrived to a very hazy morning - it was similar to what we saw in Oman, apparently any kind of wind near the desert causes a haze that looks like smog, but it's actually small sand particles. Since it was well over 30C at 6am when we sailed into port I knew we were in for a HOT day.
Dubai is an interesting place to visit - according to our guides/etc they've taken most of the money they've earned since the eighties and sunk it into moving their economy from oil to tourism. From my perspective it looks like they're trying to turn Dubai into the Disneyland or Las Vegas (without the gambling) of the Middle-East. And they're doing a good job, there's stuff here that you really have to see to believe.
The first half of our tour today wasn't particularly fun - the air conditioning broke down on the bus not long after we started the tour. Believe me - you don't want to be on a bus with no AC and no windows on a 40C day in Dubai. Essentially by the first stop everyone onboard was ready to die of heatstroke. I'm not a complainer - but I made it reasonably clear to the guide that if they couldn't fix it half the bus would be getting a taxi home and asking for our money back.
Anyway - they organised another bus after the second stop - so that solved that problem, but it really left a bad taste in my mouth for the rest of the day.
Ok - first stop was the Burj Al Arab, got some nice pics - it's a sail shaped building that is pretty cool looking - we could have had 'High Tea' there if we'd wanted to spend the US$120 it would have cost! Anyway - next stop was the Palm island - go look up Dubai on Google, it'll have lots of references to the palm island - it's basically a big reclaimed island in the shape of a palm tree. Anyway - we drove out onto it and looked at the hundreds of buildings (all looking the same) where primarily foreign workers live. Impressive in size - but damn it would have cost a lot!
After getting a new bus (yay!) we headed off to the Mall of the Emirates and stopped to look at Ski Dubai. I'd seen documentaries on this, but it's really something to see - they've basically made a massive structure attached to a mall - the scale is mind-blowing. Inside this massive concrete structure is a classic ski-field. Snow everywhere.. walking out of a 40C degree day into a mall and seeing people skiing/throwing snowballs is.. well.. amazing. We didn't have time to have a ski - but the pricing is quite reasonable (US$65 for 2 hours skiing, including ski/clothing rental!) - Anyway, you can see from the pics it's quite amazing.
The highlight of the tour was next - the Burj Khalifa (Burj apparently means tower/building) - this is the tallest man-made structure on the planet and it's really something that you have to see to get the scale. I'm talking MASSIVE. The base of the tower is a mall/swimming area - called the Mall of Dubai. We went up to the observation deck on floor 123 I believe - it's more than 200 stories tall - but only the first 168 are currently used. The elevator ride only took a minute - damn it must be a fast elevator - but you hardly notice it when you're in it. The views were incredible. If you're in Dubai - go visit the tower - it's worth the cost. The top of the tower is something like 800m - we only went up to about half-way where the observation deck is. Oh - it's also an open-air observation deck, so you get a real feel for the height.
All in all Dubai is an interesting place - I'd like to spend a few more days here and just explore, they've got a great road system and the buildings have to be seen to be believed - considering that they only had 3 big buildings back in 1985 - they're really going ahead. Our guide pointed out a road filled with 60-80 story buildings (at least a dozen) and said proudly "None of those buildings where here six years ago"
That's the first segment of the cruise finished - next stop is Egypt!!!
Well today was Marylyn's birthday - I promised to get dressed up and go down to the formal dining (first time this trip!) so we could all have dinner together. They put up baloons at Dave and Marylyn's door and had a little cake and sung happy birthday as well. A nice touch by the criuse company!Day 23 - Muscat, Oman (Dolphin watching and Snorkelling)
The first thing that struck me when I opened my curtains this morning was the mountains. It's like the place is straight out of a postcard - stark brown mountains in the distance, behind them even larger mountains that are almost white in colour. Buildings built into the side of the mountains, flat roofs, small windows. Muscat is a very clean/neat city and there's a definite beauty to the place. A sharp contrast to India - give me Oman any day! Of course it was really hot - 38C by about 8 am. No humidity - so it's not as bad as it sounds.Our tour today was a bit of a departure from the norm, no historical/religious type stuff - we boarded a nice boat for the trip out into the harbour - as soon as the boat took off I realised this was going to be a good day - the breeze was wonderful! It only took us about 15mins to find our first pod of bottle-nosed dolphins! The water was beautifully clear so we got a good look at them - they hung around for a while and a few other pods arrived too - there would have been between 20 and 30 dolphins swimming around - coming up close to the boat - it was great! Unfortunately we couldn't get in the water with them - that would have been awesome! I don't have a lot of pics of the dolphins - I swapped over to video for most of the time - I have some nice HD video of them, but I can't really post a half a gig movie.
Anyway - we then headed down the coast for a while till we came to an isolated inlet and had a swim in the Arabian Sea - very salty, no trouble staying afloat! The 'coral' wasn't much to speak of - we Aussies are spoiled when it comes to coral reefs, once you've seen the Great Barrier Reef, it's hard to get excited over coral in other places! Swimming was a great way to cool off and we played around for an hour or so - a good way to spend time on a 38-40 degree Celsius day! The ride back was good too - very relaxing - we got to see some of the hotels/etc that are being built - they were great, very impressive.On the way back to the ship we stopped in and looked at the palace.
This was probably the best tour day we've had! no rushing around, no sitting on a bus for hours - only a small group of people (around 15) were on the tour, so it wasn't cramped. We've only got a half day here - so the ship will be heading for Dubai in a little while - gonna go have lunch in the pizza place! Yum!Day 24 - Dubai, UAE (Top of the World, Burj Khalifa)
We arrived to a very hazy morning - it was similar to what we saw in Oman, apparently any kind of wind near the desert causes a haze that looks like smog, but it's actually small sand particles. Since it was well over 30C at 6am when we sailed into port I knew we were in for a HOT day.Dubai is an interesting place to visit - according to our guides/etc they've taken most of the money they've earned since the eighties and sunk it into moving their economy from oil to tourism. From my perspective it looks like they're trying to turn Dubai into the Disneyland or Las Vegas (without the gambling) of the Middle-East. And they're doing a good job, there's stuff here that you really have to see to believe.
The first half of our tour today wasn't particularly fun - the air conditioning broke down on the bus not long after we started the tour. Believe me - you don't want to be on a bus with no AC and no windows on a 40C day in Dubai. Essentially by the first stop everyone onboard was ready to die of heatstroke. I'm not a complainer - but I made it reasonably clear to the guide that if they couldn't fix it half the bus would be getting a taxi home and asking for our money back.
Anyway - they organised another bus after the second stop - so that solved that problem, but it really left a bad taste in my mouth for the rest of the day.
Ok - first stop was the Burj Al Arab, got some nice pics - it's a sail shaped building that is pretty cool looking - we could have had 'High Tea' there if we'd wanted to spend the US$120 it would have cost! Anyway - next stop was the Palm island - go look up Dubai on Google, it'll have lots of references to the palm island - it's basically a big reclaimed island in the shape of a palm tree. Anyway - we drove out onto it and looked at the hundreds of buildings (all looking the same) where primarily foreign workers live. Impressive in size - but damn it would have cost a lot!
After getting a new bus (yay!) we headed off to the Mall of the Emirates and stopped to look at Ski Dubai. I'd seen documentaries on this, but it's really something to see - they've basically made a massive structure attached to a mall - the scale is mind-blowing. Inside this massive concrete structure is a classic ski-field. Snow everywhere.. walking out of a 40C degree day into a mall and seeing people skiing/throwing snowballs is.. well.. amazing. We didn't have time to have a ski - but the pricing is quite reasonable (US$65 for 2 hours skiing, including ski/clothing rental!) - Anyway, you can see from the pics it's quite amazing.
The highlight of the tour was next - the Burj Khalifa (Burj apparently means tower/building) - this is the tallest man-made structure on the planet and it's really something that you have to see to get the scale. I'm talking MASSIVE. The base of the tower is a mall/swimming area - called the Mall of Dubai. We went up to the observation deck on floor 123 I believe - it's more than 200 stories tall - but only the first 168 are currently used. The elevator ride only took a minute - damn it must be a fast elevator - but you hardly notice it when you're in it. The views were incredible. If you're in Dubai - go visit the tower - it's worth the cost. The top of the tower is something like 800m - we only went up to about half-way where the observation deck is. Oh - it's also an open-air observation deck, so you get a real feel for the height.All in all Dubai is an interesting place - I'd like to spend a few more days here and just explore, they've got a great road system and the buildings have to be seen to be believed - considering that they only had 3 big buildings back in 1985 - they're really going ahead. Our guide pointed out a road filled with 60-80 story buildings (at least a dozen) and said proudly "None of those buildings where here six years ago"
That's the first segment of the cruise finished - next stop is Egypt!!!
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