UAE Mall Culture: There are other things to do:

There are a number of malls across the United Arab Emirates, and a great deal of them are mostly full almost all of the time. This is partly because there are so many tourists in the country, partly because its too hot to breathe outside and partly because everything you could ever need is in the mall. At the end of this post, I’ll put a list of malls and my opinions of them (not everyone agrees with my opinion, but you’re reading this blog, and really have nothing else to go on.)

Before that, however, I just want to let you know there is so much more to the UAE than malls, and I’ll try to put some of that in here. As always feel free to question, criticise and get in touch.

How about we start with the beach? There are so many places to go to the beach in the emirates, some private ones with facilities that are attached to in hotels that you have to pay for, free government ones which are always busy, and some public ones that you pay to enter, but have facilities. My favourite type of beach, is the open beach that’s hidden behind a bush or road, that nobody goes to and feels like it belongs just to you, if you look around, you’ll find a lot of these.

Beaches

I’ll go through a couple in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Fujairah just to give you an idea of what’s available. Please note in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah, there are some restrictions on how you dress on the beach. The rules do apply in other emirates but in Dubai and Fujairah, its quite lax.

The Abu Dhabi Municipality has recently renovated the entire corniche area, complete with little swimming areas dotted around (see image). They’re clean and quite nice. These beaches have also recently got Blue Flag status from the UN; a massive achievement for the emirate and something Dubai has been trying to do for quite a while. There are lots of walking areas, restaurants and other points of interest on the corniche. It can be a pain to get to at the weekend, because of traffic.

Sharjah has some lovely beaches, I haven’t been in a while, but many are free and the water is a lovely colour with shallow, lapping waves. Al Khan Beach covers a long stretch of land, with lots of facilities and the Hamriya Lagoon beach is excellent for jet skis and windsurfers. The beaches in Sharjah do tend to have more litter than elsewhere but the water is generally clean.

Al Mamzar beach is a family spot with picnic tables and lots of parking. It’s close to both Sharjah and Dubai and quite popular on public holidays.

In Dubai, practically all of Jumeirah Beach Road has a beach, hence the name! The most popular is Jumeirah Open Beach, which is situated next to the Dubai Marine Hotel, its free to enter, enough parking, walking/ rollerblading/ running space with a little cafeteria.

There’s also Jumeirah Beach Park, which costs around 10 dirhams per car to enter with a beach, play park for kids, picnic area, cafeteria and reasonable bathrooms. It also has a day just for ladies on Monday. (While on that note, Wild Wadi, my favourite Dubai Waterpark has a ladies-only evening every Thursday during the summer. However if you want a ladies’ evening because you want to avoid unwanted attention, this is not the place to be and I do prefer to go during the week with visiting family)

Fujairah is a beach town, and you can relax at a free beach with looming mountains as a backdrop. There is good parking and a beach park in Fujairah But unless you have a massive picnic, not fussy about bathrooms or live in Fujairah, I would suggest checking into one of the hotels in the emirate at least for part of the day, because coming across a bathroom that is amenable may be difficult. It costs around 150 dirhams for an adult for using the beach and swimming facilities at hotels.

Camping

During the summer, its far too hot but weekends during winter are amazing for camping. Because the UAE has a Bedouin culture, you’re more or less free to camp wherever you like in the desert. There are a number of sites that are better than others and the Hatta pools areas or near the Fujairah mountains have some excellent secluded spots. You are also always likely to come across friendly goat or camel herders who smile or wave but cant speak English, so don’t ask for directions! Tents and other camping gear are very reasonably priced in grocery stores like Carrefour or Geant. Along the way to your camp site, you are more than likely to come across a number of little stores that sell weird plastic inflatable toys but also amazing firewood. If you’re not sure about the terrain or where to go, I would suggest buying an Explorer book or Lonely Planet which is likely to have a number of excellent ideas for camping spots and how to get to them.

Go Karting, Jet Skiing…and other stuff

In Dubai’s Jebel Ali area and Motor City areas there are facilities for go-karting. It’s quite a fun way to spend a few hours, especially if you have kids. The one at Jebel Ali is around half the price (60 aed for 30 mins) of motor city (120 aed for 30 mins) and a karting-expert has told me its got better karts. I don’t know the difference, so can’t really say. The one at motor-city also has an indoor karting area and is attached to a laser-drome place. It’s fun to go here if you’re a big group of people, get into teams of two and work out military strategies using laser guns against the other team. It’s also a good place for team-building exercises.

Jet Skis can be hired and used at most beaches in the UAE. In Dubai there are restrictions, and I believe Um Suqeim beach is the only legal jet-ski designated area. You will also need a license and a registered jet ski. It’s not the case in other emirates, but should be since many swimmers have died at the hands of careless jet-ski riders.

Sky-Diving

Um Al Quwain has a sky-diving school attached to its Aeroclub, there have been some good reviews, even though it is out of the way for some people.

There is also Sky Dive Dubai, of which His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum is a patron of; he also recently got his sky dive license from there.

And of course, you could always go to the indoor skydive area at Mirdiff City Centre Mall, which apparently gives you the same thrill. It is, obviously, a very different thing to jumping out of a plane at 10, 000 metres on the back of someone you don’t know.

Swimming with the Dolphins

This can be done at the Dubai Dolphinarium and at Atlantis, the Palm. It costs just over 900 dirhams at Atlantis, but not sure of prices at the Dolphinarium

I have to admit that I wont do this again because I did feel sorry for these creatures that they were made to perform for me. They really should be out in the wild.

Sea Diving

There are a host of places to dive in Dubai and Fujairah and also a large number of places that can train you for a PADI license. The ones I know of that are PADI Accredited are Al Boom Diving, Divers Down ,Scuba Dubai 7 Seas Divers, the sandy beach diving centre and Scuba 2000

Souqs

There are a few good souqs in Dubai. For shopping the ones to visit are Naif Souq  (pronounced Knife and is in Deira) and Mina Bazaar.

Mina Bazar is in Bur Dubai and has an array of both western and easten clothes, lots of salwar kamis for men and women (Pakistani-style dress), saris, shoes, jewellery stores, perfume stores with brands at discounted prices and great Indian food restaurants. The Dubai museum is close by, as is the Arabian Courtyard hotel.

Naif Souq has lots of ethnic gear, jewellery, harem-style trousers, abayas, headscarves, neck-scarves, bakhoor (incense). There are some great abaya tailors in the area and if you like to sew there are haberdasheries dotted along most of it.

The spice and gold souqs are very close to Naif, about a 15 minute walk-on a few winding and extremely busy roads along the way you’ll pass oud perfume stores, roadside shawarma cafes (4 dirhams and delicious- and if you’re vegetarian like me, they are happy to make a chip wrap with pickles and mayo, even if you do get odd looks!), haberdashers, tailors, mobile phone stores, gadget stores, clothes and shoe stores and a host of others I cant remember. A lot of the shawarma stores do fresh juices, and a sweet-melon (Sham-maam) juice is the perfect thing to accompany you down the road.

A day-plan can be spent walking around the bustling streets of Mina Bazaar, taking a short food break in one of the lovely little restaurants with authentic Indian food, having a look around the museum. After this you could walk to the creek and crossing on an Abra (boat) for 1 dirham. When you get to the other side, go through the pedestrian bridge and you end up at the spice souq where you can get things like the usually ridiculous expensive saffron for half the price of conventional stores, chat to the amicable stall owners, buy incense- even frankincense and myrrh (there’s also a tiny museum here) and a short walk later you’re at the gold souq, which has so many stores, you just don’t know where to look…at the other end of the gold souq, walk all the way down the road to Naif Road which is about 20 minutes. The souq is next to the police station and on two floors. You can get all types of bargains and tat and its just interesting to see everything.

After all of this, around 10 hours later is my average calculation, take a taxi back, as you will be to shattered to walk the way back. Well I usually am anyway.

Malls

I really couldn’t list every mall in the UAE but here are some below with a one-sentence review.

Dubai Mall- enormous and with musical fountain from 7pm onwards, next to the Burj Khalifa. It’s very easy to lose your bearings in this mall.

Dubai Marina Mall- perfect size with everything you could need.

Dubai Mercato Mall-Good size, good location, play area for kids like most malls. Not an amazing selection of stores.

Mall of the Emirates- big but manageable when you know it. Tends to be a hangout for snotty teenagers at the weekend. Indoor Ski Slope.

Ibn Battuta Mall-This mall has the best cinema- and the only IMAX-and people don’t talk on their mobiles like elsewhere in the UAE and good store selection.

Mirdiff City Centre- good selection of restaurants, easy to get to and has an indoor Sky Diving area.

Deira City Centre- always madly full, I tend to stay away unless absolutely necessary, which is never.

Abu Dhabi Marina Mall- really nice mall next to the corniche, lots of traffic at the weekends

Abu Dhabi Mall- large range of stores, lots of coffee shops and easy to get to.

Sharjah City Centre- Very similar to the other city centre malls, nothing much to report.

Sharjah Taawun Mall-reasonably sized, not much to report. I wouldn’t go here to specifically see it but useful to know it exists if you plan to live in Sharjah.

Now that I’ve written all this, I realise there are at least 20 more things that I haven’t mentioned for people who live here or are visiting to do but am leaving for another post. This is me, signing off.