Dubai (from Dan's perspective)

So I've kind of been in the dog house for taking so long to post about my jaunt to Dubai. I've been really busy at work, so that's my excuse!

In short, Dubai was amazing and a neat place to see in person. The quantity and ostentatious-ness of construction was remarkable to witness and the obviously high vacancy rate makes me wonder how sustainable all of it really is.

In any case, the travel from San Diego was quite long (24 hours of travel time each way)! One cool note is that I got to fly on the Airbus A380 with Emirates Air from London to Dubai, which is the world's largest commercial plane!

Flying on it was a real pleasure and the service on Emirates is second to none. The plane was quiet (and I was right over the engine) and the in-seat entertainment system offered more than a Best Buy (perhaps a slight exaggeration, but you get my point).

The first 2.5 days were on my own. If you know me well, you know I hate to travel by myself, so I was a little apprehensive. I had two activities pre-planned: going to a tailor and doing a desert excursion.

With the tailor, I received a recommendation from Jamie, a friend of ours, who knew the name of a tailor she used in Dubai but couldn't remember exactly where it was located. I consider the task of finding it like a challenge on the Amazing Race (my favorite show). Armed with google and concierge service (just like on the AR) I was able to find the shop. On day 1 I picked out fabric and was fitted and the clothes would be ready for me to pick up on the last day.

In the end, I got 3 dress shirts and a pair of dress pants and am pleased with everything!

From there, I meandered around old Dubai where I was generally the only westerner to be seen. It felt much like the old arab markets I had seen while in Israel (although fortunately sewage was not flowing down the middle of the street). Everyone in this part of town was dressed in traditional garb and felt like could be almost anywhere in the Middle East with Mosques and their accompanying minarets everywhere.

All in all, I was pretty comfortable, but I did make a point not to take any pictures of people just to be sure I didn't offend anyone.

Day 2 was saved for my desert excursion. I was going to go dune bashing and sand boarding. I'll keep the description light since Molly described it well in an earlier blog. The one anecdote I'll share is that I was hoping there would be other young westerners for me to hang out with on this (since you go in a caravan). Well the rest of my car was an Indian family (grandparents and 7-year old kids included) who mostly spoke Hindi and the rest of the caravan was ~75% Indian and no english speaking westerners. Not quite the experience I had in mind.

Finally day 3 - I meet up with Molly. We had a pre-determined meeting place in the Mall of the Emirates and fortunately everything was smooth for both of us and we met up ahead of schedule! We immediately went for lunch at a nice Lebanese restaurant overlooking Ski Dubai (indoor ski mountain in the middle of the desert)!

We noticed everyone at Ski Dubai was wearing the same thing, which looked kind of funny. Of course, everyone had to rent their ski gear since no one packs for it in the middle of the desert but it was pretty comical to see everyone so uniform looking.

That night we had to meet up with the rest of the Desron staff for Hail and Farewell. It was a great opportunity for me to get to meet everyone and put some faces to the names I'd been hearing. I did a double take when Molly was introduced as "LTJG Laufer"... for some reason "Molly Laufer" sounds normal to me but "LTJG Laufer" hasn't sunken in yet. And being a new spouse to the squadron I was hailed as well and made an honorary "little beaver". Perhaps most importantly, some of the chiefs declared that I was the best spouse in the Navy! Although the Deputy (#2 to the Commodore) said his wife might take some offense at that comment :)

Day 4 was focused on our afternoon tea at the Burj Al-Arab, the beautiful "7 star" hotel that's shaped like a sail. We toured around the beach area which was beautiful and everything still very much under construction.







The burj (seen above right) was stunning from the outside and just as much so on the inside. You have to have some reservation to even walk in the door and room rates (its all suites) starts at $2,000/night and runs as high as $30,000/night!! The white pad jutting out in the front of the building is a helipad/tennis court and tennis great Andre Agassi has played up there before.

The hotel lobby was stunning complete with a beautiful water fountain (seen here on the left) and impressive golden columns. Like many other hotels there were retail and souveneir shops in the lobby. The souveneirs here however were well out of our price range! This included a "bargain" of a cell phone that was $4,000 and made only with precious metals. As Molly said, that's not a phone you want to drop!

We finally made it to the Skyview bar on the top floor for our afternoon tea. Our view was stunning and all the food and drink we had was simply amazing. We had tea sandwiches of all kinds, cakes, elegant pastries, salmon, champagne, wine, coffee, and oh yeah, tea. They would refill anything you want except for the champagne, which is a shame because it was really good champagne!

When making the reservation, I had mentioned that we were celebrating a special occasion. At the end of the tea service our waiter gave Molly a rose and another waiter came by and asked what the occasion was, which was a little hard to explain. I had wanted to say I was celebrating "the best spouse in the Navy" award, but fortunately Molly answered more diplomatically.

By Day 5 I got sick... probably some combination of jet lag, drinking the local water and eating the local food caught up to me. I was sluggish all day, but we still managed to make the best of it by touring some more of Old Dubai and the souks and hitting up some of Dubai's newer malls (where Molly got another hair cut).

It was a great adventure that I am so happy I took. I can't imagine when Molly and I will ever be in Dubai together again! And now we're over the halfway point of the deployment with (hopefully) less than three months to go (I think I can, I think I can...).

Hope everyone had a happy New Year!

Dan