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November 28 This morning John and I walked around the harbor area and watched planes take off every 90 seconds. We saw taxi boats go back and forth across the river and the camels waiting to be ridden by kids. After that we walked back to hotel and then headed for the Dubai Mall one last time. Of course we had to enjoy one more Tim Hortons coffee and timbits before we left. At night we went to the movie theater to watch Interstellar with Alejandro. I had to have some popcorn as well. At the theatre you have assigned seats, which is nice so you don't have to sit and wait in your seat an hour before the movie starts! The movie was really good, I'm happy we finally got the chance to watch a movie in English at a theater! The last metro back left around midnight and the movie ended at 11:45 pm. So we said a quick goodbye and walked very fast through the mall (stores were still open at midnight!) and down the long corridor to the metro. We made it just in time and my calfs got a much needed workout! November 29 & 30 - Dubai to Kandy Today is our last day in Dubai. We are sad to leave, because we feel so comfortable here and it reminds us of home. But it's time to move on! We had to check out of our hotel at noon and then we hung out in the lobby using their wifi for most of the day. We took a bus to another city called Sharjah, where we will fly out of. It was about an hour ride and we had to switch buses and another 30 minute ride. Luckily we left early enough. This airport had nothing to it, very simple. We boarded our flight and took off right on time at 11:35 pm. It was a cheap airline so the seats were not comfortable, but it was only a 4.5 hour flight. We also got a bit of a meal! We tried to sleep as much as we could but not much. When we landed in Colombo, Sri Lanka it was raining, hello rainy season. We went to the immigration desks and we had bought our visas online to get in. Mine went smoothly but unfortunately when John's passport was getting scanned through, the information on the visa didn't match. Mistakenly he had put his year of birth as 1998, not 1989, darn technology! So we kindly (not freaking out) asked the guy what we should do and he said to buy a new visa. With nothing else to do at this point, John just had to pay another $35 for the visa. We both realized that these things happen and we were very proud of ourselves for handling that situation calmly. It helped that the immigration officer was super nice and even gave us free SIM phone cards, he probably felt bad for us! After that we waited for our backpacks and welcomed back the many touts. They aren't persistent here which was a relief and the officers we asked for directions to the bus station were nice and helpful, didn't make us go running around. We jumped on the bus to Kandy and sat down. The bus was old and had lots of people on it, but we both were so tired that we passed out a few times on the three hour ride. Once we arrived in Kandy, we finally had the chance to ride in a Tuk-Tuk. They are the funniest little things, but they work at getting people around. The 5 minute ride cost us more than our combined bus ticket, which was less than $3. Once we checked in, we had a quick breakfast then had a two hour nap. We both could have slept all day! We walked back to town for dinner. We tried a traditional dish called kothu. The waiter asked if we wanted it spicy and we said "no" but our mouths were still on fire! After we ate, we quickly had an ice cream cone to ease the spiciness. We took a Tuk Tuk back to the hostel, since we had some groceries and didn't want any monkeys grabbing them from us! At the hostel we went on cleaning mode, since our backpacks got really wet when they were transferred from the plane to the baggage belt. We put one large load of laundry in and cleaned all of our utensils and water bottles. Today John and I enjoyed our day in Abu Dhabi, the last big city we will visit in the U.A.E. It was a two hour bus drive from Dubai, and 45 minutes of that was just going through Dubai without traffic! Abu Dhabi is a very spread out city, every bus we took was at least 30 minutes within the city. Our first stop was the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. This large mosque can hold up to 41,000 worshippers, has 82 domes, over 1,000 columns, 24 carat gold chandeliers and the world's largest hand knitted carpet. Only cost over three billion dollars to make. To get into the mosque I had to be fully covered, legs, arms and head. Luckily I was prepared so I didn't have to rent any garments, but it was a hot day for wearing pants and long sleeves. The inside of the mosque was beautiful, definitely the nicest mosque we have seen. We walked back to the bus in the heat of the day and went to the Corniche. We walked along it until we reached the Emirates Palace, a 5 star hotel. We looked around inside and were awed by the 1002 chandeliers and the only ATM in the world that dispenses gold bars. We could have sat down for afternoon tea, costing about $75 each, but we decided to just go check out the Marina Mall instead. Abu Dhabi is a very nice city, a lot less smoggy than Dubai and people are friendly. Some stranger gave John a handshake while passing on the sidewalk and everyone says hello with a smile. The ride back took a lot longer. A long lineup formed before we could even get on the bus (and it surprisingly held, it was amazingly organized). The traffic around Dubai was terrible and it took some time to get through it. We arrived around 8.30pm, picked up some KFC and called it a successful day. Yesterday John and I decided to hang around the area we are staying in, Bur Dubai. We walked around the Al Fahidi Historical Neighborhood. Here we saw the remains of the old city wall and a coin museum showing many ancient coins. There was a young school group at the old city wall, so instead of reading the information we listened to the teacher and enjoyed hearing the much simpler form. Afterwards, we were going to go into the Dubai museum, but three tourist buses pulling up, made us rethink that decision. So we wandered the streets until it was time to check out of our hotel. We changed hotels, because we wanted to have free wifi. As we left the hotel in search of our new one, we turned the corner and there it was. Very convenient. The new hotel is much nicer, has a much bigger room and we don't have to listen to the Indian/ Pakistani nightclub underneath us. We always try to stay indoors during peak hours, so we watched a movie and had a fruit lunch. When the sun was going down, we went for a walk down some streets where we haven't been yet. There are many different street eateries here, but we can never tell which food they are actually selling, since real local food is scarce around here. As the cheapest option we go to the supermarket and buy the meals there, and they haven't disappointed us yet. Today we went to explore more of the Emirates. We took a bus to the town of Al Ain. Transportation is quite cheap here, I guess that's the bonus of having cheap gas! One cultural thing here we tend to forget about is the woman is to sit by the window and the man on the aisle. We were asked by the driver to switch seats, before another man sat down, who would have been next to me. Another one that is hard to remember is not using your left hand. John accepted change with his left hand once and you could tell the cashier was a little timid about it. We try hard to remember all these little things, but our western ways always creep back in. An hour and a half later we arrived in Al Ain. Our first mission was to see if we could get across the Oman border. There was one town opposite of the the U.A.E exit border, that we wanted to check out since it is in Oman. However, the actual Oman border station was 40 km away and we would have to take a cab or bus. After asking many border agents if it was possible and getting denied to just quickly cross the border, we decided it wasn't worth all the trouble just to get the stamp. We then hopped on a bus to the main part of Al Ain. On public buses here ladies sit in the front and men in the back. John and I started by standing even though seats were available in the ladies seats. Two men behind us told us to go sit down and that it was okay to sit together. A lot of cultural experiences today! Our first stop was an old fort. They had a very nice visitors center explaining the history and how the fort was restored. We were given tea and a date while watching the video. Then we enjoyed a picnic lunch in the park and walked to a palace museum where the former Sheikh once lived. On our way back to the bus station, we walked through an oasis. It was quite the maze but we managed to get out and arrived right by the bus station to go back to Dubai! The city was very nice, a lot bigger than we thought. It seemed to be a lot more traditional here. We even saw a truck bed full of camels going down the street. Today John and I spent the day at the Dubai mall once again. We enjoy the atmosphere a lot and our 9 hour stay went by quite fast. When the hotel doesn't offer wifi for free, its almost cheaper to take the metro to the mall. We enjoyed some Tim Hortons coffee, before we can't enjoy it anymore, until we get back home. At night we met our friend Alejandro, whom we met in Ecuador 3 years ago, he now works in Dubai. Alejandro showed us around the Grand Hyatt hotel, stopping at all the fancy restaurants including the one he works at as a chef. He then took us out for a drink by the pool ($20 per beer) at this fancy five star hotel. Alcohol is only sold in hotels here, due to an expensive license and because of the cultural aspect, of Muslims not drinking alcohol. We enjoyed a night out and caught up. We had to take a taxi back to our hotel since the metro didn't run anymore. We were surprised and relieved how cheap the taxi ride back was! It was a great day and we got to see a fancy hotel. We got up early to get the most out of our day here. We had a big buffet style breakfast, before we headed for the famous Kuwait towers. It was only a short walk, before we reached the cool looking towers. The middle one actually holds water inside the sphere and the big one has an observation deck, which is closed at this time. During the Iraqi invasion in 1990, the invaders tried to destroy the iconic symbol of the city, by using it for target practice. We walked along the corniche on a nice pathway towards the Sief Palace stopping often to admire the skyline. We sat down near the palace, but a few minutes later a couple armed guards came over to let us know, we were not allowed to sit in front of the palace. They were at least nice about it, excusing our ignorance. We kept walking for a few more kilometers passing by the National Assembly building, which was designed by the same guy who came up with the Sydney opera house. It looks like a massive Bedouin tent, very unique. We made a loop back trough the center, and checked out the souq as well. It wasn't anything we haven't seen before, so we moved on without stopping much. After three hours we had completed the big loop, saw everything we wanted to see and were back at the hotel. Unfortunately all museums, which sounded interesting to us, were closed today. Luckily we have our guidebook to provide us with some historical facts. We took the complimentary airport shuttle back to the main terminal. We arrived, but could not see our flight anywhere. We quickly realized we were at the wrong terminal. We had no idea there was a different terminal, and were forced to take a very expensive taxi to the other side, since it was too far to walk and no free transport existed. Oh well, we learn from our mistakes and will always double check from now on. The flight on the budget airline was good and we got into Dubai around 8 pm. We walked to the metro, picked up dinner and went to our hotel. The hotel is nice and in a good location. We had a late dinner and called it a night. Since it was my birthday, I got to sleep in and relax in the morning. We had a nice breakfast and went for a walk around the area. Our flight to Kuwait was at 18.30, but we arrived at the airport around 15.00, which gave us enough time to browse through the terminal. We found an Irish pub that had $10 beers, and even though it is my birthday, we could not dish that out. Instead we went for McDonald's ice-cream, and my 25th would be a dry birthday, one I won't forget. The flight was less than an hour and we arrived in Kuwait to a rather complicated visa process. We had to pull a number, copy our passport, buy some random stamps (the machine almost ate one of our bills, a worker had to hit it a couple times to get the stamp out), get our stamp and then we were free to go. At least we didn't have to stand in the long immigration line again. A driver, holding my name sign up, picked us up and drove us to our hotel. The hotel is beautiful, a full suite with a separate living room and kitchen. It was the cheapest place we could find, but still cost a small fortune. After all it was my birthday, so we got spoiled. It was a nice relaxing day, and pretty cool celebrating my birthday in two countries. Tomorrow we will take on Kuwait City. Since public transport is not an option in this country, we decided to rent a car for the day. John drove again, since he can handle getting out of the city better than I can. As we drove out, one lane/exit was closed off for a bike race, which of course was the exit we had to take. So we followed the road and were on our way to the bridge leading into Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately there is no possible way for us to get into that country at this time, so we just did a U-turn and went back in the right direction. While driving we saw some burial mounds, big piles of dirt, on the side of the road. We stopped quickly for a picture, but they looked exactly as they sound. On the road again, we drove by the Bahrain International Circuit. We didn't get the chance to go in since it is a Friday, and a lot of things are closed or have very limited opening hours. Next we drove to an animal reserve that was nearby and also closed until the afternoon. There were some birds on the outside cages, so we quickly glanced in. To get to the next attraction we had to drive through a large area of oil fields, in the middle of the desert. The tree of life exists right in the middle. One large tree standing alone has somehow tapped into a water source, which allows it to stand so nicely today. Some think that it was actually a miracle and the tree is a remain of the Garden of Eden. Many tourists were here, so it was hard to enjoy it, but it was really interesting to see. On the edge of the oil field was a small oil museum that showed the timeline from when Bahrain discovered the oil until today. It's amazing how a country could go from having pearls as there only export to oil. We put 12 liters of gas in today and it cost $2.99 so it's $0.25 a liter here! We sat outside the museum to have lunch and by this time we had pretty much seen most of the country. We made one last stop at the Bahrain fort, which was built by the Portuguese. We walked around and peaked inside as well to enjoy the views of the city skyline and the Persian Gulf. We technically had the car rented for 24 hours, but since we didn't want to have to pay for parking in the city, we returned it five hours later. Once back in downtown, we walked into Gold City where tons of gold is sold as well as a lot of fake jewelry. We went back to our hotel and ended up having another 2 hour nap. Apparently we are really tired these days! For dinner we went to Papa Johns and ordered a pizza, cheese stick and Pop. Not the healthiest meal, but it was a good price and we were very full after! The rest of the night we relaxed. Not much to do here at night and the roads get quite busy. We woke up early and left for the airport around 6am to catch our flight to Bahrain. Since the "hostel" doesn't allow for luggage to be stored (even though the website says otherwise) we had to lug all our stuff with us and will not return to the hostel again. We were on a mostly empty plane, which had arrived from Hong Kong and was now connecting to Bahrain. We got our breakfast and before we could get into our movie, we landed. The visa process took some time, first our passport were given to an immigration office who was performing a "secondary check", then we had to pay the visa fee (which had increased by 1000% as of October, to our surprise) and then we were finally stamped in. I had arranged for a pick up from our hotel, but nobody was waiting for us. So I double checked the email request and realized I had asked for an 8pm pick up instead of 8am. Since nobody would show up for another 12 hours we had no choice but to take an expensive taxi ride into town. Our hotel is located in the center of Manama, the capital of Bahrain and is quite nice. We checked in, and went for a walk around the area. We stopped at the gate to Bahrain, a famous landmark and wandered the souq a bit. We also walked to the World Trade Center, a unique building of Manama which has three wind turbines installed between the two sides of the tower. The turbines can provide about 10-15% of the buildings total power consumption, a good start in the right direction. We sat down at the Moda mall, which only has fancy stores. After a quick power nap (2 hours), we went for lunch and another walk around. We found a big supermarket, where we could stock up and then went back to the hotel. We had some shawarma for dinner and relaxed the rest of the night. Today we decided to check out the Dubai marina. We took the metro and walked through the nice area towards the beach. Most fancy hotels dot the coastline and the beach is really nice, full of western tourists. We tested the waters of the gulf, but did not go for a swim. We walked along the beach for a while and tried finding a way back to the metro, but got lost in a fancy hotel. We walked around the hotel grounds for some time, unnoticed, but we couldn't get out, so we had to go back to the beach. We asked a fancy resort if we could cross through their grounds, to get to the Main Street. The security guard let us through and we finally got out. We walked back to the metro and continued to the mall of the emirates. The mall isn't quite as big as the Dubai mall, but it was a lot busier. We found the famous ski hill inside the mall, a small bunny hill, cool nonetheless. Everyone on the hill has to wear the same outfit, pretty funny. The free wifi required a working phone number (for the code), so we couldn't get it to work. Also there isn't a Tim Hortons here and the bookstore is pretty small. That gave us enough reasons to go back to the Dubai mall. We returned to our favorite mall, went to Tim's again for a big coffee and hung out for a few hours browsing the Internet. Afterwards we found some books in the massive book shop and spend a few more hours reading. We had pizza for dinner, but could have had anything else (there is everything here from Japanese to Indian). We headed back to the hostel once we had enough of this amazing mall and called it a night. Today John and I went to the 124th floor (442 meters high) of the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa (828 meters at the very top). We pre booked our tickets since it gets sold out very fast. We went up at 9 am and the elevator went smoothly up three floors a second. The views from the top are amazing. Everywhere we looked, we saw much smaller buildings (but not that small from ground level) and the large desert that surrounds the city. In the water off the coast they built up sandbanks to make them look like the world from space. We could kind of see the design but we needed to be a little higher to see it all. After about an hour at the top and after learning lots about the building, as well as the construction, we headed back down to walk around the Dubai mall, which is connected to the tower. The mall has 1200 stores and many are expensive ones so we didn't buy much! We wandered around the mall more and found the skating rink, aquarium, theme park and the 4 story high waterfall. It took us a while to figure out how to navigate the mall, since we somehow kept getting stuck in the fashion avenue section. Clearly we can't afford stores like Jimmy Choo, Armani and Louis Vuitton. Finally we made it to another part and saw more stores that we would actually like. For lunch we finally found the Tim Hortons that we knew existed here! We satisfied our craving for Timmie's coffee. It tasted just like home, we were not disappointed. After our lunch we stepped outside to view the fountain show that is at the bottom of the Burj Khalifa. The show was really short. We wandered inside a modern souq area and checked out souvenir shops and high class restaurants. On our way out, another fountain show played and it was much better. After a while we were getting tired (not recovered yet from no sleep on our way here) we hopped back on the metro to go back to the hostel. We picked up groceries on our way back to the hostel before asking if they really have a kitchen (sometimes a kitchen is classified as a restaurant on their website and not where guests can cook). We asked reception where it was and he said "nope", no kitchen here. So we headed back to the grocery store to return all of our dinner groceries. Thankfully they were nice enough to give us store credit and they had a section of pre made food like chicken, rice and lasagne. I was happy we were able to at least have that for dinner, because I didn't really want to live off fast food here for the next few days, even though they have everything such as Papa Johns, Wendy's, Cheesecake Factory and IHOP. After we ate, we just hung out by ourselves since the guests in the hostel aren't really like us. They seem to be more like business people, that at too cheap to stay in a hotel and move into a dorm room. |
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