Dubai (near) disasters

There are few streetlights on the roads of Addis Ababa, and often the power is out anyway. Businesses tend to be far from the street and sometimes behind walls, and the businesses aren’t brightly lit anyway, except for small fruit stands and meat kiosks with their huge sides of beef hanging inside. What I’m getting to is, the streets at night are dark and somewhat foreboding.

On my second to last night in Addis Ababa, as I was walking the dark streets near my house, through the gauntlet of whores, to reach a restaurant that serves Ethiopian honey wine, called tej, I was thinking of Lethal Weapon 3, where Danny Glover is in his last week on the police force before retirement when all hell breaks loose in Los Angeles. I thought, my last days in Addis, wouldn’t it suck if something bad happened now. But nothing bad did happen. The worst thing that happened was drinking the tej. It’s not very delicious.

And all the way from Ethiopia to Singapore was a series of minor disasters, yet, as always seems to be the case with lucky me, none actually caused me any lasting damage. I spent 27 hours in Dubai, and I arrived in Singapore, having paid no excess baggage fees despite the USD 500 fee some Emirates staff dickhead told me to pay, not having to throw away any luggage upon refusing to pay this fee, having copped a shower in Dubai at the house of a Tunisian couple of limited English-speaking-ability, after sweating to my core in the souks of old Dubai and the Arabian desert hinterlands, having spent one night in the Dubai airport sleeping along with about 100 Pakistani/Indian men and one night sleeping on a plane flying over the Indian subcontinent, getting a “body search” (that thankfully involved no cavity searching) by a border guard in a private room at Dubai International, going on a “desert safari,” dancing really bad on stage with an Arab belly dancer, and sweating to my core in dirty clothes in the furnace that is Dubai in August (that’s why my shower before boarding my plane to Singapore was key), walking through the narrow alleys of the souks at 8am as they were opening for the day and then the air conditioned mega malls that might as well be in St. Louis, Missouri.

I didn’t do an efficient job packing to come to the Eastern Hemisphere. In the US, my heavy bags garnered only a $25 overweight fee. I learned in Bole International Airport (Addis Ababa) that flights originating and ending in non-US destinations are subject to much stricter overweight fees. In Addis Ababa I was told I would have to pay nearly $500 for my overweight bags. I rearranged my baggage (jammed as much heavy stuff as possible into my carry-ons), and the nice Ethiopian attendant said that was good enough. She charged me no fee even though my bags were 10kg (24.2 lbs) overweight.

My brilliant plan was to check my bags all the way to Singapore from Addis, then I would be free to enjoy my 27 hours in Dubai without the hassle of storing my large suitcases. The nice Ethiopian Emirates attendant said she couldn’t do that. Emirates won’t hold bags for over 24 hours. I said I was going to be there for 27 hours and to set the cutoff at 24 was so arbitrary. There was nothing she could do. After checking-in at Bole, I had a new goal in addition: to avoid paying any overweight fees. I pleaded with Emirates staff on the airplane and at Dubai airport, and every person I talked to who works for Emirates is unsympathetic, hostile, and robotic. I will forever avoid this airline, not least because their in-flight movie selections are not on-demand like they are on Qatar and KLM. Movies start at a scheduled time, and you’re not free to pause them at your pleasure.

Pleading with some Emirates jerks in Dubai after passport control is where a border guard heard me say I’d come from Ethiopia. “Strange for a young white man to be flying from Ethiopia to Dubai,” he said. I said, “Really, Addis is full of foreigners working on development projects just like me. It’s not so strange.” He said I smelled of alcohol. I had wine on the plane, but he was a liar; he smelled nothing. He was shocked that I had no cigarettes. I’m sure he thought I was trying to smuggle drugs (drug people smoke cigarettes), and he checked my whole body except for my cavities, and he found no drugs.

The Dubai Debacle/Adventure

OK, so I put my bags in the Dubai airport left luggage room, and I slept in a chair at the airport. Around 8 am I started walking through the narrow streets and souks of old Dubai. Souk means market in Arabic, I think. This part of Dubai has a more “Arabian” feel than the well-known, modern Dubai of ostentation. I saw the gold souks, and I might as well have been in India. Dubai is full of South Asian workers. I think they outnumber Arabs, and the old part of Dubai is seedier and less glitzy, and even in the morning, I was soaking wet with sweat. The temperature was 42C (100F) and hu-mid.

The shopping malls opened at 10am, and around then, I took a cab to the Mall of the Emirates, “the world’s largest mall outside of North America.” Bo-ring. I changed my clothes in the bathroom, walked around, and killed time until my desert safari. I also saw the inside ski slope. I didn’t ski. It’s USD 60 for a day and equipment. There’re too many malls in Dubai, and they all have the same stores, which are basically the same we have in the US. Zara was full of ugly clothes and made me think that the reject merchandise from the US and Europe are sent to the UAE.

I had a taxi drive me by the Burj al Arab, the self-billed “7 star” hotel and the tallest dedicated-hotel building in the world. I also rode out onto the artificial peninsula that is in the shape of a palm tree. Once you get on the peninsula, it might as well be any other modern condominium development in the world. There are at least three groupings of skyscrapers in Dubai, and everything everywhere is under construction, if it’s not just recently built. My taxi driver had been in Dubai for 25 years and said that nearly everything has been built in just the last 3 years.

So, if you build it, they will come, but what if you build so much there just aren’t enough people and businesses to come and stay? This is where supply will outstrip demand, the bubble bursts, and Dubai property investments crash. The city will probably live on as an important financial center, but there are going to be some market corrections before it finds a perpetuating equilibrium.

Cab rides are fairly inexpensive in Dubai, and there are long distances between “tourist sites.” Other than the old quarter and the souks, Dubai is spread out and requires air-conditioned transport (in August, at least). My cab ride ended at the safari tour operator. Along with a couple from Tunisia, now living and working in Dubai, a couple from Brazil, visiting, and my “authentic Bedouin” Filipino driver, I boarded a new Toyota Land Cruiser for some dune bashing. We drove 40 miles into the desert, and drove up and slid down the soft sand dunes. It was fun. The afternoon ended with a short camel ride and a party in a desert fort erected just for our tour operator.

I ate some Arab flatbread cooked on the walls of a brick oven, and it was delicious. I also had some donner kebab sandwiches, aka gyros, and aka other names. Pretty delicious as well. And with a full belly, the Arab belly dancer lady forced me onto the stage, forced me to lift my shirt up, exposing my bloated belly, and tried to get me to move my hips like her. I thought it was inappropriate for a man to dance like that, and I did poorly anyway and got off stage.

The stern, young Tunisian man, Altaf, despite his limited English, took a real shine to me. We spent the hours at the “Bedouin camp” talking, stumbling through conversation, and smoking sheesha. He said Tunisia has no terrorists, and Tunisians are fond of Americans. He’s working in marketing in Dubai but hopes to get a job in Quebec. He dislikes the Arabs of the UAE (he thinks they’re jerks and lazy and possess no intelligence or skill, just money) and the Indians of the UAE.

I was filthy with sand being blown on me, sweating all day, and having not showered for 24 hours. I asked if I could go to Altaf’s home and use his shower, and I did, and then he drove me to the airport. He and his wife, Alim, live in a tiny studio apartment near the Burj al Arab and sleep on a small mattress on the floor.

May Emirates, as an Airline, Disintegrate

At the Dubai airport I bought a new piece of hand baggage so I could stuff as much possible into my carry-on so that I wouldn’t have to pay any extortionate over-weight fees. Stuff I did, and my checked bags were 40kg exactly: no charges. (in non-US countries, you don’t weigh each bag separate, you weigh the sum of all your luggage) I sailed straight to the security checkpoint where the guard told me my carry-ons were too large. (two small duffel bags, each weighing 45 lbs., full mainly of hardback books and dress shoes)

My brilliant plan quashed, I went to check one, where I did business with the inhuman Arab. He told me in a cold voice that my fee to check one of these bags would be $500. I told him I’m a student, I can’t pay that, I couldn’t buy a student ticket that would allow me extra weight, give me a break. No emotion from him. No apology. No bargaining. I told him my flight number, and he said it was too late to check the bag anyway. So coldly, he said, “Remove the important things from one of your bags, and set the bag by a rubbish bin.” Throw it away? “Yes, of course. You have no choice.” I went to the security checkpoint with my bags, told the guard I was unable to check my bags because my flight was too soon to depart. With disgust, he waved me through. On the plane, a flight attendant freaked out my the extreme weight of my handbag in the overhead compartment. Getting it up there, trying to make it look not heavy, was a chore. The attendant’s consternation came to nothing, and I, with my clean underwear and clean skin, departed from Dubai at 3am and slept until I got to Singapore.

The next day, I felt like I had gone to the gym, my upper body was so sore from those bags. But I paid no overweight fees and threw nothing away. Now I’m in the study room of the Law Faculty at the National University of Singapore, and this clean place is so far from Ethiopia.