Dubai, Day Four: Playing In Sand

Wednesday, and we've passed the half-way mark of our holiday. Due to yesterday's bookings and tickets we were seriously low on money, and so we took a trip to the bank to get some more. Since we had to get back to the hotel in time for our safari pick-up at 4pm, we found ourselves in limbo and so we hung out at yet another shopping mall (Bur Juman).

We found out there that the Olympic host city was to be announced sometime that afternoon, and so we though we'd get back to the hotel sooner rather than later to catch it live. Munching on our KFC, we witnessed London winning, and although I tried to distance myself from the whole thing I did feel a bit of pride when the result was announced. Go London.

It struck four and our car arrived. On the way to the meet up point (there were six other cars on the tour) we picked up a nice retired Australian couple who turned out to be pretty pleasant company. Anyway, the safari itself started off with us driving up and down dunes. It was exciting for the first five minutes after which point the effect wore off. Like yesterday, it was still something you could only probably do in Dubai and so worth it in that sense; and the retired couple didn't seem to appreciate it much either albeit for different reasons!


After a few minutes break and then another few at a camel farm (a waste of time in my opinion), we ended up at the camp. Here there were various activities, including camel riding (fun), sandboarding (not so fun if you end up buckling and having a sand shower), mendhi tattooing and hookah (the latter two I didn't do). It was a pretty good set up, after which we all sat down for a barbecued dinner. The food was decent, but the main event (apparently) was the belly dance afterwards.

Now, you woulda thought that being in Arabia the belly dancing would have been pretty good. Well, frankly, I've seen better in Edgware road. Still this was fun, not least 'cos of the way she dragged each of us up in turn to strut our stuff. I won't say whether I went up or not, or how well I did if I did go up, but we did buy the DVD of the whole tour which I've put online here, so perhaps you can find out for yourself... Either way I did get the phone number of a pretty girl for my troubles. Ok, technically it was her older brother's but hey, I really should take what I can get.