The Land of Men in Dresses...

I finally got the photos from the other camera and figured it was time to post them and a few thoughts on our trip to Dubai. Dubai was a pretty amazing trip. We certainly did not expect things to be the way we found them. It seems that the crazy Arabs, having more money than they know what to do with, created the "best of USA" and "best of Europe" in the middle of freaking no where. The new part of Dubai is one monsterous highrise building after another. The old part of Dubai is scary old crap. It was pretty funny to see Arabs in dresses driving porche suvs with sunglasses on, white head scarfs, and no shoes. All that cash, and the biggest mall in the area and you would think they would figure out that shoes are a good thing. Seriously, if you want a pair of man sandels, Dubai is the place to purchase them. They had an incredibly HUGE selection of sandels. We visited several of the shopping malls and all were pretty amazing. Every bathroom in Dubai has a long hose that most westerners use to wash dishes in the sink. Well, the hose is located in the toilet stall, so that relegious Arabs can wash themselves prior to praying (which they are suppose to do 5 times a day). In the mall there were seperate prayer areas for men and women and we heard the Mosque's call for prayers being broadcast on the street. Overall it was a pretty surreal adventure. On the plane going to Dubai the president and his wife of Nagorno Karabakh was on the plane. (I guess his wife needed to do some shopping) and coming back, Gagik Tsarukian was on board (I guess he needed to buy a pair of sandels). The photo in the nice courtyard is the bus stop at the mall. The shiny camel is outside of an office building (that also has a mall inside). The desert shots are on a desert safari that we took for half a day. They put us in a Toyota SUV, drove us out into the desert, and did some 4 wheeling for about an hour, then we rode camels, drove atvs, and had an Arab feast. It was pretty funny. The shot of Houry and I smoking the water pipe is in front of a picture of the Arab Sheik who essentially owns Dubia, and is the foreign minister of the UAE. All in all a fun trip!