Dubai Adventures - Day 1
I'm posting my adventures out-of-order, apologies for any chronological confusion caused. The events in this blog post happened yesterday.

Last night I flew back to Dubai after my stint teaching Perl in Saudi Arabia. On the flight one of the Emirates stewards recognised me from my Australian flight, and we shared a few friendly words. Another seemed to take a shine to me and somehow produced the best coffee I've had all week; I suspect they have an espresso machine hidden away somewhere that they only bring out for special occasions. As such, even though my flight arrived at 2am, I was awake and happy.

Dubai airport has free wireless, which is something I am deeply grateful for. Using the amazing power of VoIP I called home (where it was a sensible time), and had a lovely chat with Jacinta. Amusingly, the call cost me much less than if I were in Australia making the same call from a mobile.

Eventually, with my e-mail updated and my social meter refilled, I caught a taxi to my hotel. It's a three-star apartment hotel in the Bur Dubai district, which I had picked because it was cheap, and looked like it was close to busses, souks, and the museum. I arrived, and pretty much collapsed into bed.

The hotel is right next to a mosque, and I had heard from a few reviews that one can expect to be woken up with the call to prayer. Sure enough, a few hours after I had gone to sleep, I could hear soft, dulcet tones calling the faithful to awake with the first light and gather for prayer. I stirred only a little and smiled; the call was very soft, and very musical, this wouldn't cause me to lose any sleep at all. Then the mosque outside my window started its call to prayer, with the volume cranked to eleven.

Looks like I'll be waking at first light tomorrow.

The hotel itself been really good. Being an apartment-hotel, I have cooking facilities, the most important for me are a kettle and microwave. It also has a washing machine, and I've taken the opportunity to wash some of my clothes. My biggest complaint is that like many hotels, it does have in-room Internet access, and it costs a fortune. There also seems to be an expectation that guests leave their keys at reception when leaving the hotel (maybe people have lost or disappeared with them?), but since nobody has taken the time to explain that to me, I've been taking my keys with me.

Today I woke reasonably late, enjoyed a long hot shower, and prepared myself some maps to help me get around. I'd figured that on my first day I'd explore the local district (old Dubai), and on the second day I'd explore further away (new Dubai). A few people had mentioned that walking in Dubai in the middle of the day is unwise, but I like walking, and I like hot weather, so how bad can it be?

About 45'C (113'F) and humid is the answer. I had packed plenty of water, and stuck to the shade, so I got a few good hours of walking in before I decided to find a bus-stop for a rest. Bus-stops in Dubai are wonderfully civilized, since they're air-conditioned. Unfortunately mine didn't have wireless access.

The main problem with trying to see Bur Dubai during the middle of the day is that everyone else is smart enough to go and do something else when it's that hot, and so with the exception of lunch venues and supermarkets, eveything was closed, even the malls! This was a bit of a disappointment as I had found the museum, but it was also closed. I hope to get in early tomorrow.

While I was in Saudi Arabia, my colleagues there told me that more foreigners live in Dubai than locals. I now believe them! Exploring Bur Dubai felt more like exploring India. I too was obviously something peculiar; I was a westerner, I had long hair, and I was walking in the middle of the day in Dubai. Any one of those attributes was out-of-the-ordinary, so at times I felt that I was positively head-turning.

To be honest, I enjoyed the attention. Most of what I was were smiles; a few people asked where I was from, and what it was like in Australia, and why I was walking in the middle of the day when everyone sensible was out of the sun and having a rest.

Walking through Bur Dubai took me to the fabric souk, but most of it was closed. I'm not much of a clothing/fabrics person, so that didn't bother me too much. It also took me to Dubai Creek, which is a fascinating and enchanting throng of activity. Water taxis dart back and forth, larger dhows and other vessels travel up and down, and somehow nobody collides with anyone else.

From here I returned to my room and had a snooze, but my evening walk took me back to the creek. I took a water taxi across for the standard fare of 1 dirham (about $0.30), and set out to explore Deira, the old parts of Dubai north of the creek.

In Bur Dubai, there were an endless number of shops. I walked along "Computer Street" and past "Bank Street" in my travels. I found streets that were filled with eateries, and filled with clothing stores. In Deira, the streets were also filled with shops, but it felt like they had been randomly generated. There's be stores selling mobile phones, car tyres, bedding, motorcycles, computers, food, movies, whitegoods, furniture, electronics, beauty products, and fish, all next to each other. Many seemed to have equally random names, my favourite of which was "Moist Flower Electronics". The streets were twisty-turvy little things, and I soon found myself lost, and not for the first (nor the last) time that day.

I don't really mind being lost in other cities. It means I get to see things I didn't plan, and in Dubai in particular, I can always hail a taxi to take me back to my hotel. So I continued onwards, hoping to find the Gold Souk that I had marked on my map, but really happy with anything.

I eventually found myself at the Hyatt hotel and its attached mall, because I wanted a break from the heat, and I had discovered my map of Dubai had lacked public toilets. Inside the mall was an ice-skating rink, and while I didn't skate, it sure was nice to be in a cool environment again. Most other things were closed, so after I had made myself more comfortable, I decided to go exploring again.

Without too much travel, I found myself at the Dubai fish market, a place which I was able to discover by its unique scent alone. In Australia, I'm used to fish markets generally being indoors, and air-conditioned. I think the market had one air-conditioned building, and that was filled with people in the process of preparing the fish for sale (sorting, gutting, filleting, etc). Most of the other stalls had generous amounts of ice to keep the fish cold.

I honestly can't do the fish market justice with words. There are people everywhere. There are fish, everywhere. The quantity of fish and people dwarfed anything I've seen in Australia.

The most striking image of the market was outside, where a huge line of sharks were lined up outside; I can only assume for transport, since nobody seemed to be buying them. While it appeared that were once on ice, the ice had since melted, so it felt like I had walked out into some strange land where dead sharks are a natural feature on the pavement. I couldn't help but snapping a few photographs, and some of the locals (who had also been photographing them) started a conversation with me. Apparently it's this busy every day, and that if I think it's hot now, I should try coming back in August!

From the fish market I wandered along the foreshore, which seems to be an extremely popular location if you're male and from south asia. I got to see the port and some large cargo vessels, but it wasn't particularly scenic. I crossed the road and visited "Gold Mart", since Dubai is renowned for its gold markets.

Gold Mart, as I was to discover, was not the Gold Souk, but a collection of jewellery stores. At this point I would discover that a great many store owners thought I might like to buy a watch, or a belt, or sunglasses, or numerous other items that I wasn't interested in.

I left the Gold Mart, and a guy by the door assured me that he had the greatest collection of pirated and counterfeit goods I could wish for. I walked down the street, and at every corner I was offered a fake rolex for sale. I eventually found the Gold Souk, which really is awesome, but I could hardly move without someone approaching me with offers of counterfeit merchandise. To the vendors' credit, they were always very up-front about the lack of authenticity.

The Gold Souk is home to the world's "heaviest gold ring", which is a glittering monstronsity that weighs about as much as I do. It also really does have a massive amount of gold on sale, in the form of ingots, chains, rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and many other forms. It was very sparkly.

From the Gold Souk, I made my way back to the creek, and discovered a stall specialising in perfumes and incenses. As my mother-in-law put in a special request to bring her back some frankincense, I took the opportunity to investigate. I could get a small amount for 5 dirhams, a reasonable amount (100g) for 15, or a huge amount (500g) for 55. I opted for huge, and haggling, and got the price down to 45 dirhams, about $15 for 500g. I actually have no idea if that's a good price, and probably should have haggled more.

With the frankincense in my inventory, and the hope that I can bring it through customs in my head, I caught another water taxi across the river, and walked back to my hotel. On the way, I discovered an Internet cafe close to my hotel that assured me I could plug in my laptop, at the rate of 10 AED/hr (about AUD $3.30/hr). While that's more expensive than downtown Bur Dubai (2 AED/hr, or 4 AED/hr if you want a seat), it's a lot less expensive than the paid hotspots (15 AED/hr), and considerably cheaper than the hotel (35 AED/hr). I suspect I'll be visiting that cafe a lot.

My day ends with blogging, coffee, and a soak in the bath. With Day 1 of Dubai over, I've walked somewhere in the realm of 15km, and spent about 100 dirhams (about $35 AUD), excluding the hotel. Tomorrow, I plan to visit the museum early, and then head south to new Dubai.

Saudi Arabian Adventures - Day 0
The events in this entry occurred on the 11th/12th June

At the start of this year, Kirrily "Skud" Robert made a remark about new year resolutions that are easy and fun to keep. As an example, she included "never turn down an adventure".

While I'm not one to make (or keep) new year resolutions, this one stuck in my mind as a particularly good one to have. While it's certainly been a fun resolution, I disagree about it being easy to keep. It's this particular resolution that had me stripping off to go swimming in waters of unknown depth, quality, and temperature when travelling around Tasmania with Peter, Donna and Jacinta after Linux.conf.au this year.

The same resolution of "never turn down an adventure" now has me in Saudi Arabia, giving a Perl course to the world's largest oil company. It would have been easy for me not to be here. As it happens, I arrived only a day before my entry visa expired. The amount of legwork required to set up a trip like this for the first time is quite considerable, and actually started back in Feburary! So far, it certainly has been an adventure.

It started with my flight from Dubai to Dammam. Emirates was kind enough to upgrade me to business class, which was nice, and meant a very comfortable flight. At the end of the flight I leisurely strolled off the plane and through the airport, looking at the scenery and taking my time. When I rounded the last corner, I immediately realised I had made a terrible mistake. Despite the flight having lasted only an hour, I had flown internationally, with hundreds of other people. There would be passport control and customs. These things are rarely quick, and one really wants to be at the front.

I found myself about three-quarters down the back of a queue, with only a small number of passport control officers. I noticed that processing each person took a long time, maybe five minutes or more, as they needed document checks, and fingerprints, and photographs, and sometimes a short interview, and (if they looked unwell) a check by doctors concerned about swine flu. It was about 10pm at night, and after counting the people in front of me, and doing some maths, I estimated I would be through passport control at approximately 2am!

As luck would have it, another passport control officer was put on duty, and I managed to get through customs after only a three-and-a-half hour wait. There was then a rather ominous moment of me realising that while there were lots of drivers waiting with signs and people's names, none of them held my name. Luckily, my driver had only gone to get a cup of tea (quite understandable after 3.5 hrs waiting!), and we met after only a few minutes of me wandering about looking lost.

After chatting a bit with the driver, I must admit that I slept most of the trip to the hotel. It seemed to involve the single longest stretch of road possible; I woke up a few times, and we were still on the same highway. It also had what I could only describe as christmas-tree lights strung along the edges (so one didn't drive off into the desert), and all the electronic signs (eg, roadwork ahead) were animated in such a way that if one ever appeared in my web-browser, I would immediately add it to my block-list.

After going through a number of security checkpoints (which I would later learn are required for all entry and exits to the Aramco campus), I finally arrived at my hotel. This felt like being in America; it had American power points, all the light-switches were the wrong way around, and the lamps have these funny knobs that I keep turning the wrong way.

At this point, most people would fall asleep, exhausted. However I'm equipped with the geek version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, so the first thing I did upon arriving was wake up the poor reception staff so I could be connected to the wireless network, and dent/tweet that I had arrived.

Dubai stopover
I'm in Dubai for a 10 hour stopover between flights, and I'm loving it already. Having come from a very cold, very wet, and very dark Melbourne, having a world that's bright and warm and humid is just fantastic. I'm itching to get to the beach, or walk across the desert, or just go exploring generally. I've already done some of that in my local area, but I can't go too far as I still need to get back in time to catch my flight.

Of course, getting into Dubai wasn't all fun and puppies. The flight was fourteen hours long, and while I had brought along sleeping tablets, they seemed to work better at dulling my thinking while awake rather than helping me sleep. I don't remember sleeping on planes being anywhere near this bad for my trips to the USA, but then again those trips were done without me sleeping the night before.

Besides trouble sleeping, my biggest oops was forgetting that I had brought two bags with me, rather than one. Luckily, the helpful Emirates staff were able to find my errant luggage, and since Dubai airport has free wifi, I was happy to wait.

Customs seemed very relaxed, and while I was selected for 'additional screening', that mostly consisted of chatting to the friendly guard about how much extra battery life my laptop can get from my external battery. The best part was after the security guard asked me to "step this way", he acknowledged that I had been on a flight for 14 hours, and so if I wanted to duck out for a smoke, that would be perfectly okay. He looked very disappointed when I said that I didn't smoke, and in hindsight he may have been looking for an excuse to go to the smoking area. ;)

Currency conversion rates at the airport are nowhere near as bad as they are in Australia, at least when converting from Aussie Dollars to Saudi Riyals and UAE Dirhams. Overall about 5% of my money went on currency conversion, whereas in Australia it was hard to find anyone who'd sell Riyals for less than 10%, plus waiting times.

The food so far has been excellent. The aircraft food was tasty (for aircraft food) and bountiful. Emirates has given me a hotel (quite spacious) at which to stay between my flights, and the hotel comes with lunch (a huge buffet), dinner (an even bigger buffet), and a "snack" (which looks like it's really "second lunch"). The food is really good, there's a fantastic vegetarian selection, and the service is excellent. I can wholeheartedly say that I like the airport hotel. ;)

My only problem with the hotel is that there are no tea or coffee making facilities. That's not a big downside, since I can always walk downstairs with my "snack" voucher and be given a half dozen cups of coffee, a pudding, a huge slice of cake, some very nice freshly made creme caramels, and assorted morsels to "fill in the edges".

Prices in touristy places seem about on-par with prices in Australia. Prices outside of touristy places vary in my short experience with them. I went to a supermarket to refresh a few supplies, and found fresh fruit and vegies at about the same prices in Australia. However the cans of coke and associated soft-drinks in the "impulse buy fridge" were only 1 AED each, which is about $0.33 AUD. Coffee at the airport is the most surprisingly expensive, at the equivalent of $7 AUD per cup!

Most ironic experience today was one of the locals pulling up in his car and asking me for directions to the hospital. Oddly enough, I could give them, as I'd walked past the hospital on the way from my hotel.

I'm now just about to hop on a flight to Saudi for my assignment teaching Perl. I may be out of Internet range for a while.

Teaching Perl in Saudi Arabia After what seems like an almost endless amount of paperwork, visa applications, immunisations, negotiations, contracts, travel agents, and administrivia, I'm about to fly to Saudi Arabia, to teach Perl to the world's biggest oil company.

Why are they learning Perl? Well, as best I can tell, they're using it for data munging of geological data. That's got a familiar ring to it, in fact I've been seeing a big growth of Perl in Geoscience recently.

On the way back I'm planning to spend a couple of days in Dubai, just because it sounds like such a bizarrely opulent part of the world. World's biggest hotel. World's biggest indoor ski slope. World's biggest shopping mall, and certainly the closest thing we have to Magrathea, with Dubai creating artificial islands in the shapes of palm trees and the world itself. I also hear the diving is pretty good.

My strange working habits
After far too long on the road, I've been in Melbourne for a whole week. In theory, I get to spend at least another 10 days here before my next flight, which (provided the last piece of paperwork gets signed) will be to Saudi Arabia.

This week, when it comes to interesting FOSS stuff, I've done absolutely nothing. What I've discovered is that when I'm on the road, I keep squeezing in bits of work around the edges. A lot of my coding gets done in departure lounges, and for my last trips to Canberra, on a bus. However when I'm home, I can relax. I can sleep in, be comfortable, and have long, drawn-out breakfasts. I have friends, real ones, that I can see and spend time with. In short, I have all the things of which I've been completely deprived while travelling.

While this is great for recharging my batteries, it's not great in terms of deliverable productivity. If you're waiting on me to complete or review a piece of code, you have my most sincere apologies. Feel free to keep nudging me, it does help.