Notes Home from Oman: Dubai, Dubai, Do!

The Dubai skyline from our car as we approached the city (yes, that haze is sand in the air!)

Don finally took me to Dubai this past weekend. Wow, what a change from Muscat! I just could not fully appreciate it without having been to Oman first. The shopping and the restaurants were much more westernized, as was the architecture of the buildings. But first, we had to get there.

There are two main checkpoints on the border between Oman and United Arab Emirates. Then there are at least three or four more checkpoints to go through to get across the border. Don thought it would be fun to go through the first passport stamp window without stopping at all. Of course, that was easy to do since there was NO sign indicating it was the place to stop and take care of that! We got to the next checkpoint a few kilometers down the road and had to go back. Then when we got back there, we were told to go inside the building. Once inside the building, we were told to go outside the building to the window (the one with NO sign indicating what it was!). I had to go to the restroom by this point, so while I was taking care of that, Don decided to go through the window without me. He got his passport stamped and the required receipt for the rental car. I came out of the building and we headed down the road. We made it past the first checkpoint just fine this time.

Arriving at the UAE side of the border, we had to park and stand in line for a passport check by the UAE authorities. When I handed my passport over, there was no exit stamp. (Remember? Don went through while I was in the bathroom and didn't get my passport stamped!) So, we had to go back not only to the first checkpoint, but the initial building to get my passport stamped! Did I tell you the traffic was horrendous? Did you catch that this was the THIRD time we had to go through the same building/windows in Oman? You can only laugh about such things if you don't want it to get the better of you! When we showed our paper slip at the window for the 3rd time as we drove through to go to the UAE post, the man wanted to laugh at us, but did not want to offend. When I laughed out loud and nodded, he did too!

After finally making it through all of the checkpoints and arriving in UAE with all the paperwork and the passports all stamped, we saw this herd of camels on the side of the road. We have laughed with some of our Texas friends over here about how we stop to take pictures of camels the way Omanians would stop and take pictures of longhorn cattle were the situations reversed. Just as we would think, "hey, it's only a cow," they are probably thinking about us, "hey, it's only a camel!" But still, not being used to seeing camels by the side of the road, we naturally had to stop and take pictures. Don encouraged me to get out of the car and do it. You can see from the first picture how far from the road they were.

Unbeknownst to me as I was snapping away, I had attracted the attention of a couple of loners out away from the rest of the herd. Since they have no reason to fear humans, they were curious about me.

Don hopped out of the car to pose with them, and they decided to get a little friendlier.....

The camel on the left is checking out Don's arm behind him. I wasn't so sure about that!

This mama camel decided to pose prettily for me!

We got back in the car to head on down the road, and I couldn't resist this last picture of a baby camel standing with its herd:

As we continued on, the landscape suddenly changed--to LOTS of sand. I am used to the sand in Muscat, and the mountains, but it was nothing like this sand: