21 Feb

7:21 PM

We’re just hanging out at the hotel in Dubai, waiting to go and meet another relative - Anjum. We took today to see the city a little bit and explore Deira. We took the metro, which is the the world’s longest fully automated rail system. The whole metro network is brand new, and it shows. It was such a smooth ride - they must be using rubber wheels on the cars. The inside of the train was totally open concept - you can see all the way through right to the front car. And it smells like a dentist’s office. Like the powder off the latex gloves that they use to poke at your teeth.

We went with Shahram and his family to an electronics store to buy a voltage transformer. My camera battery’s dead, so I haven’t been taking pictures for the last two days-ish. But there wasn’t really anything of great interest that got missed - airport, flight, hotel. Yadda yadda.

We leave tomorrow morning bright and early to catch our 9:00 AM flight. It’s hard to believe the vacation is coming to an end already!

12:07 AM

Anjum showed us around to some other parts of Dubai that we hadn’t seen yet-the three or so days that we’ve been here certainly don’t do Dubai justice. We went out to the Palm to see the Atlantis Hotel, then went to Medina Jumeriah, a lovely covered market area that attempts to replicate the old souks. With the intricate woodwork on the ceilings, to the warm, sweet smell of shisha smoke wafting through the air, to the view of the Burj Al-Arab rising up out of the skyline, Dubai exudes opulence. This is a city with the business model of a theme park. It’s a surreal fantasy land, where any zany idea that the sheikh cooks up can become a reality.

Sam Nabi