Dubai: Less Desert, More Damnnnnnnn

Zak and I decided to be unique and get married on February 29th, so last year, we had an official wedding anniversary. We decided to go on a well deserved vacation to Dubai... have any of ya'll ever been? It is beautiful, with just the right mixture of culture and modernism. I'm all for deserts and camels, but home girl needs a Burger King too.

Us, in our over-sized abaya
and long white thing.

Dubai was much different than any other Middle Eastern country I've been to (Qatar & Bahrain). It was so... westernized. In Qatar, there were many foreign tourists and expatriates there, myself included, but everywhere you went, you were always reminded that you were in the Middle East. Women in abayas, men in those long white outfits I don't know the name of. Hold on, let me find a picture...

They have all of that in Dubai as well, but they also have clubs, women wearing shorts, and did I mention Burger King?

Any whoooo, I'm going to share my Dubai experience with all of ya'll, cuz I love ya'll, and plus I've been looking for a way to share some of my photography on the blog.

Dubai is home to the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. It's filled with offices, apartments, etc. Everyone was super excited to see this, but for some reason, I didn't care that much. It's a tall ass building, and yes it took a lot of architectural vavoom to get it up there, which I respect, but still it's not much. Actually, I remember reading somewhere that there are plans to create a building larger than the Burj Khalifa. I'm not a major the-icebergs-are-fucking-melting-global-warming person or anything, but I do feel that trying to construct the tallest building is just some sort of pissing contest in a huge scale and involving millions of dollars.

For a place that was mostly sand a couple of years back, they have an amazing skyline constructed in such a short period of time. Only the Burj Khalifa sticks out like a sore thumb... OK, fine, I'll get over it!

And here are some more pictures of the Dubai skyline.

Are we in New York or Dubai?

Dubai has the most amazing shopping malls. I grew up in the DMV area, and we had some pretty decent shopping malls there... Columbia, Townson, Arundel Mills... all perfectly good malls... now combine all of these in to one, and then multiply that by ten. That's the type of malls you find in Dubai. Zak and I went prepared anyway; we knew that we'd be shopping our asses off and gave ourselves a decent budget. But I was seriously taken aback at the sheer size of the malls. We went to around five or six malls, and not once did we walk through a mall in its entirety. One of the malls has A TAXI SERVICE INSIDE THE MALL. Nuff said... they have these mini golf cart type vehicles that take you to the store you want! It took me 8 hours to get through one wing of a four wing mall... are you finally getting how big these mother fuckers are?

We spent a lot of time shopping, but we also did a lot of touristy things, one of them being an annual fair, Global Village. This a huge expanse of desert that is converted into huge fair grounds for half the year... and is exactly what the title says it is, a global village. Each and every single country you could possibly think of is split into separate sections, and each section includes food, clothes, products, and entertainment that particular country is known for. It's amazeballs - I loved it. On the other side are a bunch of rides and roller coasters. I could have stayed there forever.

   

The pictures above were taken in "Morocco". The photo on the left is a of a collection of antique coins, and the picture on the right is of a bunch of different lamps that were for sale.

Below is a picture I took of the grounds from atop the Ferris Wheel. In the center-bottom of the photograph, you can see Zak standing there and holding my bags. He's such a wuss, I tell you. I had to go on all of the rides with our mutual bestie. Zak doesn't even like bumper cars, and he married a woman who one day WILL bungee jump. Sigh.

That's me in the middle, straight geekin, with the bestie on my left. Poor guy, had to deal with me dragging him on all of these random rides.

And since it was our anniversary, we planned a special dinner on the Dhow Cruise, which is an awfully fun ride that shows a great view of Dubai. Deciding we were going to be super romantic and Titanicky (I make up words, if you haven't noticed by now), we went and sat at the table placed on the bow of the boat. I'm fairly certain that 'bow' is the right term for that little 'v' section at the front of a boat. BIG MISTAKE. The wind and the night chill combined to kick us both in the ass, and we spent a lot of the night shivering - having tons of fun, but still shivering.

It's us! Being cold but super cute. And fat - thank the food lords that both of us have lost weight.

And one of the best things we did on our ten day holiday was go visit the middle of the desert. It's great! You drift through sand dunes and take the chance of flipping the fuck over. Such a thrill. There's belly dancers, henna, and camels! All of the photos below are from the day in the desert

This is what we got to the middle of the desert in. Well not that particular SUV. I'm in the SUV I'm taking the picture from. The other people from our tour group were in the SUV above. I make sense in my head... most of the time.

Belly Dancer!

Zak, sandboarding.

Me, on a camel,
with another girl
from the tour bus.

Another camel picture. I have a hundred now.

  

More Belly Dancer pictures. You know she's not wearing
any underwear with an outfit as scandalous as that.

So there was this awesome man who had a stall there with a bunch of different colored sands and different-sized metal straws. And he would create beautiful bottled sand art - as featured in the picture at the very top of the post. Zak and I got one done with our names on one side and our anniversary date on the other. I still have it on my bookshelf. Its booooootiful.

This picture is of Zak and I with our "Zak & Naz" bottled sand art. Spiffy, right? 
Also, Zak looks super high in this picture.

This is of "the Sandman." He made like 50 of these personalized bottles of
sand art in two hours. I'd end up crying, probably having stabbed myself with
a metal straw, and with colored sand in all sorts of unholy places.

There was a woman who did Henna art. She did that in less than a minute. No lie. I can't even draw a stick figure in less than a minute. And it wasn't that annoying henna that sticks around for like a month and fades from black to dark brown, then more of a poop brown, and then a baby diarrhea color, and finally a piss yellow. Black henna, three days max, went from black henna to no henna - just how I like it.

And there was lots of food and sheesha - two of my most favorite things ever.

And breathtaking sunsets that made you forget all of your worries.

So that was my 2012 Dubai Wedding Anniversary trip in a nutshell, and a great excuse to share some of the photographs taken by yours truly. We went again in February of this year but that was mostly for business. Don't worry your pretty little head though; I managed to sneak in a bunch of shopping under the guise of meetings. I was meeting with clothes, and meeting with shoes - the most important kind of meetings there are. Anyone else travel anywhere fun? Put links in the comment section! I'd love to read about your travels!