The Trip begins... Stage One- The Middle East

G’day all,
Well the big 7 month trip has begun and my first stop is the United Arab Emirates. I left Galway on Wednesday and spent Wednesday night in London with my cousin Dave before Flying to Dubai Thursday morning. I decided to give this couchsurfing.com thing a go and I had an Aussie guy called Rob meeting me once I arrived in Dubai and I have been staying on his couch for the past few nights. He met me at this massive mall in Dubai where we sat down and had dinner together overlooking skiers sliding down an indoor ski slope in one of the many hi-tech super shopping malls they have in Dubai. Rob actually lives in the city of Abu Dhabi about 2 hours away from Dubai. I was pretty excited to finally be in the Gulf and driving through Dubai at night on the way to Abu Dhabi was a sight to see in itself with the crazy sea of futuristic skyscrapers surrounding these huge 10 lane highways weaving throughout the city. After arriving in Abu Dhabi we decided to go for a couple of cheeky beers at one of the big five star hotels in town. Abu Dhabi itself is a large skyscraper filled city which also has just been built over the past 30 years and just seems like a smaller version of Dubai. It was a weird feeling being warm again and wearing a t-shirt after being in Ireland for the past 9 months freezing but that joy wore off on Friday when we visited the desert. Rob is an Aussie lad working here as an engineer and I was lucky enough to get him at a time where he has 2 days off work and a company car with free petrol. We decided to head to Liwa on Friday, which is the largest sand dune oasis in the world where some dunes are 300m in height. The drive was long, straight, sandy and very hot as we headed almost to the Saudi Arabian border. We couldn’t believe it when we got there as it just looked like something out of a movie with beautiful white untouched sand dunes reaching out to a bright blue sky. After driving around the dunes for a while and passing some camel farms we arrived at the end of the road and without much luck tried sliding down the dunes in a cardboard box. Next thing some bloke in a 4WD comes cruising up to us and offers us a drive through the dunes which was great fun. At times it almost felt like we were going to roll over and at the end of our ride we went down this massive hill which was a good adrenalin rush. The man then offered us to rent his sand board which we jumped at the opportunity although it wasn’t as fun as it seemed. After 20 minutes we gave his board back to him as we were so hot and tired we couldn’t walk up the dunes anymore. I slept the whole way back to Abu Dhabi before sleeping some more then having some more cheeky beers with Rob and another couch surfing buddy from Sweden called Kristofa. We ended up going into this weird Arabic club afterwards where we all felt so out of place as a room full or Arabs stared us up and down as they smoked their pipes. As we tried to sit down a man ran over and told us it’s reserved so we sat in the back room and sucked back one more cheeky beer before heading home. Yesterday Rob took me to one of the most amazing thing’s I’ve ever seen before, the ‘Grand Mosque’. It’s a brand new mosque which is just being completed now and I honestly found it more impressive than the Taj Mahal. It blows your mind just the size and the design of the thing but even better is when you get inside. As you walk inside there sitting in front of you is the largest carpet and the largest chandelier in the world. The carpet took 600 women 1 year to make by hand and the chandelier stands 6 meters long. It was definitely a must see and will be a big tourist attraction in years to come. The other major attraction in Abu Dhabi is the Palace which was closed to tourists yesterday. I found out today reading the paper that they had a huge auction in the Palace yesterday where a car number plate with the number 1 on it was sold for nearly 20 million Aussie bucks. They seem to have more money than sense over here and as you look around I don’t think you could see anything more materialistic apart from perhaps Hollywood or Beverley Hills. The shopping malls here are amazing and are so spotlessly clean and are seen as old if they are over 5 years in age. It’s a weird combination of the world here and it’s quite odd seeing a queue of Muslims with all the gear on lining up to order their Mc Arabia meals at McDonalds. There are also some nice beaches on the cities edge where it was a surprise to see men wearing speedos and women wearing bikinis after being told not to wear shorts around as people look at you like your naked. Apart from that and all the modern buildings there is not much else to see and do in Abu Dhabi but it’s a nice experience all the same. So far couch surfing was a huge success for me and Rob was brilliant in showing me around and having me stay with him for the past 3 nights and we got on great. Next stop….DUBAI!!!

Keep it real,

Woodsy