Dubai: A Dangerous Place to be a Chicken

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I am frankly glad to get some distance between myself and Turkey.  I enjoyed our visit, and the children thoroughly enjoyed feeding the thousands of stray cats, but I don't think I can stand listening to the theme song from Flashdance (which seemed to play in every restaurant and business) one more time.  When I got into the taxi at the Dubai airport the radio was playing "Bad to the Bone."  YES!  I knew four days wouldn't be enough time here.

Our flight to Dubai took much of the night, and we reached our hostel just before 2:00 a.m.  We asked what the hours for breakfast were, and the receptionist casually replied that breakfast was from 2:00 to 4:00, and that we were just in time!  The full gravity of what was being relayed to us didn't quite make it past the throbbing temples that come from sitting on a plane for several hours.

Dubai is an enjoyable place to spend a few days, once you learn how to get food during Ramadan.

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"Breakfast is until 4:00?  That's nice, we can sleep in a bit then and still get breakfast?"

"Oh no, sir.  Breakfast starts right about now, and continues for only two hours.  If you want to sleep in, I suggest you get your breakfast now..."

I stood rooted to the spot, swaying slightly, trying to process this information.  Ah, yes.  Humor.  He is making a joke.  That's OK, I can do humor, even with a 20-lb. headache.

"...breakfast hours have been moved up to accommodate the Ramadan fast.  You are aware that Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset during the holy month of Ramadan.  In two more weeks the breakfast hours will return to normal."

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It would seem he wasn't joking.  We were given our meal tickets and escorted to the cafeteria, where, at 2:00 a.m., we found many people dressed in white robes eating and reading the newspaper.

Oddly enough, at 2:00 a.m. none of us felt much like eating.  We collected our breakfast and took it to our room so we could enjoy it cold and stale after we woke up.  Hopefully, this would be close to noon.

But we found that Mr. Mosque Singy-Person has a loudspeaker-infested minaret right next to our hostel, so were were greeted with both a high-volume call to begin the daily fast and the morning call to prayer, both of which occur before the crack of dawn.

We had been introduced to Mr. Singy-Person in Turkey where the 5x/day call to prayer was, to us, novel and rather atmospheric.  In Dubai, we now find that Mr. Singy-Person is virtually inside our heads.  We hear Mr. Singy-Person blaring on the radio, in the supermarket, at the swimming pool, and in every other corner of our lives.  We are learning to have a strong distaste for Mr. Singy-Person.

We have learned that the call to begin the daily Ramadan fast is about 45 minutes before the call for the first prayer of the day.  And each justifies its own 15 or 20 minute "song."  The times for these calls are based on sunrise and sunset, so the times are different for every place in the world.

I contemplated this factoid while lying in bed in the pre-dawn hours after our 2:00 a.m. breakfast run.  I wondered what Muslims do above the Arctic Circle.  Since the 5x/day call to prayer is based on sunrise, high-noon, and sunset, what does a Muslim do during the Arctic summer?  Or winter?  Do they get off scott-free and don't have to pray for weeks at a time, since the "day" or "night" lasts for weeks?  And what about the transition times when, for example, the day is only an hour long?

This took me all of a few milliseconds to work through as I lay in the pre-dawn darkness, cursing Mr. Singy-Person, By the time I had all this worked out, my conscious faculties were wide awake.  Racing, even.  Even though I was tired to the bone, the loudspeakers ensured that there would be no more sleep.

We have found that Ramadan rules our existence in Dubai.  Businesses have very weird hours, for example.  We found that the local mall is open from 2:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m.  Plus, to my great disappointment, during Ramadan there is no belly dancing.

We weren't thinking of Ramadan when we were in Mountain View, nigh unto 5 months ago, scheming about chocolate cake in Dubai.  Oh no.  We naively assumed we could go to Dubai and order chocolate cake anytime.  But nothing is ever so simple.

You must understand that Molten Chocolate Cake from Chilis is an essential dietary component.  It is truly one of the things we miss most on our trip.  (Actually I miss burritos more, but that was before I realized that true burritos are only available in California and Mexico.  And maybe Texas, but I don't own a cowboy hat.  I digress.)

In the weeks prior to departing for our trip we compared our itinerary with the Chilis locations worldwide and found a match at the Deira City Center Mall in Dubai.  Molten Chocolate Cake would be ours on or about October 15th.

We went to the mall and noted that the clientele was mostly Indian, Filipino, African, or European.  Dubai is a city peopled by imports and the Arabs make up less than a majority.  But in spite of this, we noted with alarm that the restaurants would be closed until 6:00 p.m. to accommodate Ramadan.  After our 2:00 a.m. breakfast encounter, there was no way even the promise of a burrito from Chilis would make me wait until 6:00 p.m. to eat.  The cake could wait, but lunch couldn't.

We made our way to the food court, on the other side of the mall from the restaurants.  Surely the Golden Arches wouldn't let me down.  I mean, half the people in the mall were obviously Hindus from India who were surely hungry at lunchtime...

Once inside the food court, we found every major fast-food chain on the planet represented, but the place was dark and totally deserted.  We wound our way past Cinn-a-bun, Baskin-Robbins, Starbucks, McDonald's, KFC.  All shuttered for Ramadan.  We were nearing a crisis.

I could hear faint voices coming from the rear of the food court, and we made our way back into the darkened corners to find that Subway Sandwiches was open, but only for take-out.  The tables in the center of the food court were all roped off and there was a guard posted to be sure they stayed that way.

I noticed that my favorite item on the menu, Turkey, Ham and Bacon, was noticeably absent.  Nor was there any sign of a standard ham sandwich or a BLT.  Instead were roast chicken sandwiches, teriyaki chicken sandwiches, chicken salad sandwiches...  In a place where the Muslim locals don't eat pigs and the imported Hindus don't eat cows, Dubai is clearly a VERY dangerous place to be a chicken.

We ordered our take-out food and then tried to find a place we could eat without being busted by Mall Security.  I briefly considered eating in the restroom stalls.

It turns out that behind the darkened food court is also a darkened video arcade, also presumably off-limits during Ramadan.  We reasoned that the further we went from the main traffic area of the mall the better chance we would have to find a place to eat.

As we ventured to the back of the arcade we started to hear voices.  At the very rear of the arcade was an area that was like a dark box canyon.  Anyone in there could see someone coming so that if they were doing anything forbidden, say, like eating their takeout Subway sandwiches, they could quickly hide the evidence.

This is where we found some British teenagers eating their chicken-burgers in the dark, sitting on the horses of a tiny merry-go-round.  We also found several grown Arab men sitting in the almost pitch-black cockpits of the fighter jet arcade games eating their Subway take-outs.

Feeling somewhat like a junkie getting a fix we dined with the rest of the outcasts, taking our seats next to the motorcycle racer game.

We returned to the mall's food court at 6:00 p.m. to find the place completely transformed.  It was absolutely packed with men in robes and women in head-scarves anxiously checking their watches, each of them sitting in front of an untouched plate of food.  It seemed that everyone had ordered and received food, but nobody was eating.  Suddenly, Mr. Singy-Person crackled to life over the mall P.A. system, and there was a whoosh and blur of bending elbows as great quantities of chicken burgers, tandoori chicken, chicken stir-fry and KFC extra-crispy were enthusiastically consumed.  I made a mental note that if I am ever reincarnated as a chicken in Dubai, I will immediately emigrate to Oregon, where I hear people eat exclusively granola.

One of the things that we were concerned about as we left Turkey was that the weather was turning cooler. Our primary motivation for a stopover in Dubai was to go to Wild Wadi, the (justifiably) intergalactically acclaimed waterpark.  But we worried that it might be too cold to enjoy it.

We needn't have worried.  Even in relatively cool mid-October, Dubai is not enough to melt the hide off of a camel, reaching 105 degrees Fahrenheit before noon.  I made a mental note not to book any future visits in August.

I have never been to a place like Wild Wadi Waterpark.  Over the last few years we have made a serious study of water parks.  This is IT.  This e-mail has grown too long for a adequate description, so here is the Reader's Digest version.  Wild Wadi is a theme park, with no expense spared in the presentation of the theme, which is an Arabian desert adventure.  Canyon walls were intelligently placed to block the afternoon sun.  And there was essentially no waiting in line as all rides started at the "the bottom" in the lazy river.  To get to the "the top" required floating on a inner-tube into what I call the launch pad area where you ride a series of water jets up the hill.  Having never been shot out of a cannon before I can't say with certainty if the sensation is the same, but the acceleration whisking you up hill is quite a thrill.  You just need to keep you sphincter closed tight to avoid an unwanted enema.

One activity we found enjoyable in Dubai we hadn't considered until we actually arrived was to go on a desert safari.  The concept is simple enough; you are driven out to the middle of the desert and left there to spend the night hoping that in the morning your driver remembers where he left you.

Dubai is an enjoyable place to spend a few days, once you learn how to get food during Ramadan.  And for the children, Chocolate Molten Cake, Wild Wadi Waterpark, and our night on the sand dunes nearly made up for the lack of stray cats to feed.  I have heard several people describe Dubai as Las Vegas, minus the casinos, on the Arabian peninsula.  This seems to be accurate.  The buildings are tall and shiny glass and chrome.  There are endless ways to keep yourself entertained, including indoor skiing and an auto-park where you can drive a world-class F1 race car on a world-class race track.

Unfortunately, we only have four days in Dubai, and our budget can't accommodate my delusion of being the next budding driver for Team Ferrari.

Our next destination is Tanzania.  We hear that the cats there are really, really big.