I am not going to write much about our day on the 7th. We went to Sharjah the culture capital of the UAE. It was ok but nothing worth writing about. Had an open forum discussion about the future of the Emirate. They shared with us some of their Grand plans about the future and it was impressive, but having been to Dubai in Abu Dhabi it just doesn’t compare. Afterward we had a cultural tour where we learned about the Emirati culture. Finally, we went to Kasbah, which is a waterfront type area with a Ferris Wheel and a number of restaurants.
Jan. 8th represented our first “Day Off” the entire time we had been there. They had a city tour planned for us which was optional. Despite this however, 15 of the 19 students wound up going. I wasn’t going to pass up any opportunity while I was here because who knows when/if I will have a chance to return. The first stop took us to the palace of Sheikh Mohammed, the ruler of Dubai. We just drove by and weren’t permitted to enter the grounds of the palace. It was nice to see the palace. The people of Dubai LOVE this man. Every business and government building has a picture of him up at their reception desk. He was at the opening of the Burj Khalifa and received a monumental cheer and no boos. He is known to drive around the city without the need of guards and is never hassled. That wouldn’t happen with the leadership in the United States.
Our next stop brought us to the Burj Khalifa again. I just can’t get passed the magnitude of this building and just how unreal it looks even in person. Just wait for some of the pictures. It looks like the pictures have been photoshoped. Our next destination was the Jumeirah Mosque in the Jumeirah Beach neighborhood, the most exclusive neighborhood in Dubai. This mosque serves two functions; first, it is a Islamic mosque but more importantly, they hold workshops for ex-patriots to demystify the Muslim religion. It was interesting but nowhere near as impressive as the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi.
Staying in the area, we went to Jumeirah Beach for a couple of minutes. This beach is like every other beach you have ever seen. It is important to mention that women in the UAE are free to do whatever they want and are not forced to cover their bodies. It is part of the Muslim religion that women must remain covered in the company of men outside of their family, but to what degree they do so is up to them. I saw women that were fully covered, including their eyes. I saw women that had their eyes exposed. Some women choose to just cover their hair but their entire face is exposed. Some women who chose to wear normal everyday clothes. It is totally up to the individual women and their beliefs. So the beach looked like every other beach in the world with bikinis and what not. There are some areas of the beach that are only open to women on certain days so the extremely religious woman may be free to go without fear of being “seen” by men. IT IS TOTALLY UP TO THE INDIVIDUAL WOMAN AS TO WHAT SHE WANTS TO DO AND WHAT FITS WITH HER BELIEF.
The next part of tour took us to the Palm Islands. These man-made islands were created to develop properties on and are very impressive in person. There are roads, hotels, condos, and shops all along the road. It is mostly developed with only a few of the “leaves” remaining unfinished. We visited the Atlantis Hotel which is located at the very top of the palm island. This place was awesome. They have a huge aquarium in the middle of the hotel with tons of fish. I think they said that it holds 10 million gallons of water. The ground floor of the hotel has numerous extremely high-end shops that none of us were able to afford except of Bateel, a UAE date shop. They have tons of premium dates; fruit and nut filled, chocolate covered, and other examples of tasty dates. We bought up almost the entire store.
Finishing up, we took a water taxi across the creek to visit the Souks. A souk is the traditional market of the UAE and they sell spices, textiles, kick-knacks, and gold. We visited the gold souk which has over 300 different retailers of jewelry. As of 2007, the value of the gold traded in the souks was over US$7 Billion. Someone said that Dubai is the biggest trader of gold in the world. We had a number of people who bought stuff and we had a great negotiator in one of our group members, Hani. He saved us over $100 Dirham in total in the purchases we made.
That night we went to Dinner at Mina a’Salam with the entire Dubai group and a few of our clients. Part of the classes includes a consulting project with a company in Dubai. My group chose Schneider Electric as our company. They are a global clean/energy saving technology company. Our contact there is Dusan Jujanic, who is in charge of business development. He accompanied us to dinner and took a few of us out afterward. We visited a bar called Jambase, which had a decently good cover band playing. There was nothing though that differentiated itself from a bar in the United States. It was a lot of fun, despite this however.
Stay tuned for my picture post.
No comments:
Post a Comment