A guy that works for me did try to snowboard and he unfortunately paid for it. Heck there is even a sledding thing off to one side that looks like a mini-luge course.
Skiing? In the Desert? You ask, yes my friend they manufactured an artificial hill and create their own snow. The biggest draw to this is something called “Ski Dubaiâ€. It is called the Mall of the Emirates and it is something like two or three city blocks long. Once past that we arrive at this huge mall. Not anything that I could even hope to be able to afford. Trust me it looks expensive and it is, talking to a local at a restaurant bar we were having lunch at, we were told that even the ground floor looking at the high rise across the street is something like 300,000 dollars. Just before you hit the city of Dubai you see the turn off from the interstate and then from that side you see the huge condos, multi-story high-rise apartment complexes, etc that make up the buildings on this artificial island. As I mentioned in an earlier post the UAE government spent money on building themselves their own island call “Palm Dubaiâ€. The town has changed a bunch since I was last here in 2005. It was something close to an hour just to head from the port of Dubai into town itself. As you can sort of see from this picture there is nothing but miles of sand dunes and huge either factories or warehouses. I took a picture of what it looks like on the highway before we got on the UAE version of the Interstate. I took my MP3 player and fell asleep against the window, listening to some classic soul along with R&B greats. Then that is what our trip from the sandbox to town was like.
So if you can imagine being on a bus with your best friend next to you and your knees up to your chest. That was using the optional middle seat of each row as well. Inside though they are not as comfortable, I think we fit about twenty-four people in a bus. They look like and can carry about the same number of people one of those small airport shuttle buses that some major hotels use around the US to pick up people. As you can see these are pretty small buses. I have included some shots of the buses they used to shuttle us all over from our pier side location. This time unlike last time we were allowed into town. Well it has now been about four days since we pulled out yet again from Dubai.