Today we
only had half a day in Dubai so we briefly went ashore to see what was going on
in the cruise terminal and came back.
There wasn’t enough time to really do any exploration of the city and
still guarantee coming back to the ship on time. The shuttle only takes you to the mall and we
had already seen that.
Today I’ll
talk about Old Dubai. We spent about half
the tour yesterday in the old section of the city. The map below shows you where we were in
Dubai and its proximity to many of the famous sites of ‘new’ Dubai.
Dubai was a reasonably
successful trading post for many years.
In the mid 1800’s it got a boost when the Persian Empire (Iran) imposed
a tax on merchants and trading. This
caused many traders to cross the sea to Dubai and set up shop here. Another boost came with the discovery of vast
pearl beds offshore. This was a thriving
business for many decades, until the early 20th century when Japan
perfected the cultured pearl and the bottom fell out of the natural pearl
market. As I noted yesterday, oil was on
the horizon so they didn’t suffer too long.
The Dubai
Creek is a major feature of the city. It
really isn’t a creek anymore; it’s been dredged and widened over the years to
its present size. We took a traditional
water taxi from one side to the other.
This is a very cheap commuter boat for locals, about 30 cents one way,
and a fun thing for tourists to do. The
boats are very stable and we felt perfectly safe on it. It was certainly an interesting way to get
around.
The larger
ships on the creek are trading boats still in use today. They come from Iran
and other nearby locations like Qatar and Bahrain. The UAE does trade with Iran although you are
not allowed to transfer money to Iran’s banks.
They (UAE) pretty much get along with everyone in the area. They don’t fear terrorism and as I mentioned
yesterday there is very little crime.
Once across
the creek we were able to explore the many Souks (markets) located here
including the spice and textile markets.
Saffron is a spice that supposedly is more expensive per ounce then
gold. We couldn’t test that yesterday
but in one window a shop had quite a display of the spice.
The Gold
Souk is a major attraction here. Lucky
for us, I’m more of a silver person myself.
The more elaborate
items are traditionally worn at weddings including the full breast plate ones. Tags on the gold indicate its weight in troy
ounces. Inside each shop they list the current
price for gold. You do the multiplication and that’s the starting point for the
price. Then the merchant adds on the cost
of the workmanship. This is where you
can haggle and negotiate a lower price.
I wouldn’t think this is a good business model for most western buyers
since we’re not used to haggling and we like to be able to pick up a piece and
know the full price. There were dozens
of shops so business must be good. The
quality of the gold is supposed to be very good here as are the prices because
of the competition. We didn’t test that
out.
Throughout
the old area of the city you will see towers like the one below. These are for natural air conditioning. The breeze is forced down through the tower
and into the home to keep it cool. Our guide
told us it works but since electricity is so cheap, most people just use mechanical
air conditioners. Electricity is cheap
because of the presence of natural gas, abundance of solar power and nuclear power
(we were surprised by that). Also, if
you wondered where all the fresh water comes from…it’s from desalination plants
in the area.
As we went
around the city we were once again reminded how lucky we are to natively speak
the default language of the world.
English is everywhere. All the
signs in Dubai were in Arabic and English and both languages are taught in school. This comes in handy when you’re looking for gelato…
Tomorrow we
are in Muscat, Oman. We’ve been there
before so we will be on our own to explore the city.
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