My so-called Night on the Town

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Friday, June 1, 2007

Goodnight, moon

I told you that I made a friend that once when I went and crossed the Omani border, right?  Well, last night, he and his friend/neighbor came up to Dubai!

Ostensibly, this was to do shopping...we went to this mall in the middle of the souqs which I had never seen before (is it possible?!)...we went up to the top floor and drank juice, then my friends proceeded to buy a lot of perfumes (this is an Arabian thing.  Two men couldn't get away with that in the states.  But here, it's OK).  Then, we kind of...left.  Yay shopping!

The moon seen through a satellite dish

Then we stayed up till 3 am watching weepy movies, and eating restaurant food (which I'm STILL paranoid about).  We climbed through this window out onto the roof, and when you looked down, you could see the souqs winding below.  And when you looked up, you could only see stars and banking jets.  And when you looked ahead, you saw sattelite dishes and the tops of minarets.  And when you spat off the edge, you didn't hear it hit for several seconds.  I guess this makes it kinda DANGEROUS...but if you haven't figured it out by now, I like sitting on the roof!

Getting back to the University was another matter altogether...I told them the right way to go, but somehow, we wound up arching all the way around the East side of Dubai, and driving for miles down a bypass road to the south.  All this was just us trying to get on to Sheikh Zayed Road...and when we crossed Sheikh Zayed, they missed the turnoff--so we took an alternate route (this time, under my direction), and I got back an hour and a half later than I really ought to have.  But we all had such fun together none of that really mattered anyway. 

Here are mugshots of my goofy Omani friends...the guy in blue is the one from the border.  Yes, they're bad pictures.  But then, it's a bad camera.

Muhammad

Theyr

I guess you might call this whole thing a "cultural experience".  Only question is...whose culture? 

We were all sober at the time, by the way.