More things to do in the UAE:

There was so much to talk about in the last post, that I felt I must complete the list in this one. It’s also based on ideas from some amazing twitter followers (@Audiomonkee) and I hope they are helpful

Horseriding

There are lots of places in the UAE to go Horse-riding, its part of the culture.

Two places I have tried personally are riding centres in Dubai at Al Mamzar and Arabian Ranches. The one in Al Mamzar is quite reasonably priced, but the horses aren’t as well kept as at Arabian Ranches. Hacking at Arabian Ranches is more expensive but there never seems to be a spot open despite the amount of time you book ahead.

Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and Ajman have Equestrian clubs you can get in touch with for riding lessons or hacking. And out of interest, Al Ain’s Intercontinental Hotel has riding facilities.

For people who have their own horses or who just love horses, there is also an online equestrian community at www.qudraland.ae

Moving on…there’s a marine club in Um Al Quwain that seems quite interesting, and might be good if you’re schoolteacher looking to take your class somewhere educational and safe for either a day or overnight trip. This is the website www.uaqmarineclub.com

Joining a Gym

There are Fitness First gyms across the country and it costs around 4000 dirhams a year to join. Other than their premium facilities, you can use your fitness first card at any of their branches in the UAE. If you go away for a while, you can suspend your membership for up to two months. Fitness First also offers ladies only gyms, the one in Oasis Centre in Dubai is one of them.

Mina Salam on Jumeirah Beach Road has a gym with personal trainer and tennis court access-that costs around 10,000 dirhams a year.

In Abu Dhabi there are numerous health facilities, the biggest is Al Wahda located at the Grand Millenium hotel, which costs around fifteen thousand dirhams a year. A more economic option is the Armed Officers Club, which costs around six thousand dirhams a year. There are others as well with varying prices.

In Sharjah there are a few health clubs and hotels with gym facilities. Grand Millenium and Sharjah Wanderers club are two I can think of off the top of my head, but I’m not sure of the prices.

However most apartment buildings will have a free gym, they’re usually smaller than the ones at Fitness First, but unless you’re a fanatic and fussy about the type of equipment you need, they should be more than adequate.

Miscellaneous

If you live in the UAE, one of the things people never get around to doing is visiting the Burj Khalifa, and it’s a real shame. If you book ahead of time on the website www.atthetop.ae it costs around 100 dirhams per person, but you will have to go at exactly time you booked. There isn’t much to see except a panoramic view of the city, and some guests of mine were disappointed with the fact that there was no commentary once you got to the viewing deck (so I provided one) but it is the tallest building in the world for now, so you really should go up and have a look.

If you go around 5pm, you will be done by around 6.30 and then can get an outside seat at one of the restaurants at the Dubai Mall-More Café is my favourite-the butterfly prawns are amazing-but too large a portion for one person, so maybe order it as a starter to share.  The Anna Marie Se Kiep’ is a good chicken dish from my home country of South Africa and it also does really good ice-cream made on the premises- the chocolate ginger is amazing. While you eat, you could watch the dancing fountain, which starts at 7pm. I haven’t done it in a while, but the last time I remember getting increasingly annoyed that the same song played every 15 minutes, because it was sponsored by an international company. Another two restaurants I would recommend in that line are California Kitchen (Californian salad) and PF Changs (dynamite shrimp and stir-fried egg plant). The Italian restaurant Vapiano’s does good and simple food, but the service is so awful that its really not worth it; you could wait up to 45 minutes for service, and they are guaranteed to get your order wrong-I’ve been there three times just to give them a chance and really can’t be bothered with doing that anymore. You won’t have a good view of the fountain from PF Changs or California Kitchen but the service is usually good and the food is amazing, so you probably won’t care. I don’t.

Most people will tell you the highest point of the UAE is Jebel Hafeet a mountain in Al Ain. The highest point is actually Jebel Yabir-I have no idea where it is and most people haven’t heard of it. Jebel Hafeet however is a popular destination, and is worth a look. There’s a hotel towards the middle of the drive up, which I suppose you could stop at for a bite to eat-but where’s the fun in that? It’s quite rocky at the top so if you take a picnic with suitable cushions, you can say that you’ve eaten on the UAE’s highest point…sort of. Admittedly, it isn’t that high when you compare it to other high points of the world, but it does make your ears pop on the way up, so its high enough.

Since you’ll be in Al Ain already, you may as well visit its Wildlife Park. It costs around 10 dirhams to enter and is home to a number of buck that are extinct in the wild (see images) The park also has an animal rescue programme that rescues and cares for wild animals like tigers and lions that have been domestic pets and whose owners can no longer take care of them. It is illegal to have wild animals as pets in the UAE, but unfortunately many are able to escape the law. His Highness Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who regarded the animals as his guests, established the park. It’s also linked up with sanctuaries in other parts of the world to breed and reintroduce extinct animals into the wild.

                                               

There are also springs you could visit in Al Ain (which is presumably where it gets its name from-in Arabic Al Ain means ‘eyes’ or ‘springs’) One thing you need to know about the city is its very much like Milton Keyes in England-there are roundabouts everywhere, and every roundabout has a name-its not clear what the names are, sometimes they’re on them, sometimes they’re not. If you have a gps-navigation system, however, you should be fine.

If you’re looking for something quiet to do with the kids, Café Ceramique may be a good place to visit. There are a couple in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It’s just a little café where you can buy or create your own little piece of pottery and paint it with your children. This gets put into a burner, and you can pick up your masterpiece when you’re done.

If you want a little bit of Emirati culture, there are camel races that go on daily in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The jockeys are computerised dummies, and the races start at 3.30 pm. The number for the racecourse in Nad Al Shiba (04 4 322 277) I’ve tried calling numerous times but haven’t been able to get any information from the dude on the other side. As a result, I’ve not actually been to a camel race myself, so cannot comment on it. If you do go, I would love to know your thoughts.

The Fruit and Vegetable Market is amazing. I’ve only been a few times and not recently, but it doesn’t change so I believe I can comment quite confidently. Every fresh food you could possibly need is available at this market, which is on the way to Al Aweer. I love cooking with fresh fenugreek, coriander and parsley- these and dozens of other indian vegetables are available at this market. It’s all well priced and regularly checked by the government to make sure the prices stay stable.

Dragon Mart is an enormous warehouse type place in Dubai’s Al Aweer (International City) area. It has hundreds of stores with everything from lawnmowers to curtains and blinds to jewellery to home and office furniture. Everything is made in China and is much cheaper than anywhere else in Dubai. Using a store in Dragon Mart, we had blinds made and fitted for our three-bedroom apartment for a total cost of 1700 dirhams. I must warn you however, it is very busy, there’s hardly ever parking, even if you valet and it’s   very confusing, you will need a whole day here whatever you’re going for.

Outlet Mall houses designer stores with factory prices. Of course this comes with its problems, because you only get what is on the shop floor, if its not there in your size then its unlikely that it will be available at all. Every single brand you can think of is available here from Juicy Couture to Chanel to Adidas. If you’re not a shopper like me, it can be a nightmare, but if you do like shopping, like all the guests I’ve ever hosted in Dubai, this place is a haven. I must warn you though not to go to Outlet Mall expecting Karama prices. Here you will get original designer ware for a fraction of the price but certainly not at the prices of fake goods. Also, I am opposed to Karama and object to taking any guests to support fake goods. This is especially since the people who bring these counterfeit goods to the UAE illegally are also part of human trafficking syndicates, and I refuse to support that. Every time you wear your fake Louis Vuitton bag, just remember, you may have helped the kidnap of a 15 year old girl from somewhere in the world, who has subsequently been forced into prostitution. I hope it’s worth it. Please read the following literature to help you give up fake goods forever.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-2049015/Holidaymakers-warned-fake-goods-fuel-organised-crime.html

http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/tocta/8.Counterfeit_products.pdf

http://www.kent.gov.uk/community_and_living/consumer_advice/report_a_rogue_trader/counterfeit_goods.aspx

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2011/December/blue-for-good_-fashion-with-a-conscience-for-victims-of-human-trafficking.html?ref=fs1

A place I love visiting is the Antique Warehouse. This is in the depths of Al Quoz, which is a bit like Aladdin’s cave. It’s bursting with little gems that you could take back home as gifts for everyone- Arabic-style lamps, carpets, wooden Arabic furniture (once saw a beautifully carved indoor swing in there) and they also offer framing services. They are the cheapest framers I’ve come across in the UAE, and extremely high quality. Their service is always impeccable, and it’s a very interesting place to visit with its many doors, and passages filled with all kinds of interesting treasures.

This is my attempt at directions: Get off at the Times Square exit off Sheikh Zayed Road (exit 43), turn left at the lights, first right and then second right and you should see about 3 sandy parking bays for people visiting the Antique Warehouse. Their number is 04 347 9935. The receptionist is lovely and friendly and speaks English, and is used to people asking for directions because they’re very lost.

Over the last 6 months I’ve travelled so much that I’m taking (@JamesWorldNews) advice for my blog next week. I’ll be talking about how to use the UAE as a hub to travel around the world and will also do an airline review. Be sure to check in for that!

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.