Dubai December 24-25

For my travels from India back to Jordan, I decided to stop over in Dubai. Oddly, by traveling on December 23 I got a sharply reduced price for an airline ticket. The airline ticket with the stop over plus the hotel bill for two nights came out less than the cost of an airline ticket for a direct flight on December 22 or earlier. I had not been out of the airport in Dubai or any of the other Persian Gulf states before, so the decision to stop over was easy to make.

I stayed at a hotel near the Union metro station. On Friday December 24, I walked around and stopped at a local supermarket at the time of the Friday noon prayers, when the supermarket was overrun by house maids from the Philippines and Sri Lanka doing their shopping on their day off. The supermarket had a sizable selection of pork on offer, in a separate room.

Later in the afternoon I rode around on the metro lines. The sleek metro opened about a year ago. I got off at the Burj Dubai. About half of the people who got out at that station took a picture of the Burj Dubai, as did I. The building is too tall to fit within one shot on my iPhone camera.

The Burj Dubai

I then walked around the Dubai Mall for a couple of hours. During my two days I did not see all that many people who were obviously local Emiratis; Pakistanis seemed to be the largest expatriate group. In December the temperature was ideal.

The next day, Saturday December 25, I hung out at the hotel, before leaving for the airport for my afternoon flight to Amman. That was the most un-Christmasy Christmas Day I have ever spent. At the airport I noticed a drinks stand with a wonderful misprint selling non-carbonated sweat.

The sign for non-carbonated sweat