Flying home, review of the Dubai trip.

So I am sitting on the plane flying home, finally. Natalie and I left the United States on October 3rd, it is now the 19th/20th (depending on what time-zone you are in. I am currently sitting in row 36, seat G, having moved from the window (J) to the isle thanks to the young guy sitting in the isle seat agreeing to the swap. I figured it would be easier as I figure I might be up for a while working, and if the other two in my row go to sleep I don’t have to wake them to get up and get/put-away my laptop.

So right now I am somewhere over Northern Iran, we’ll be leaving Iran here shortly I think, at some point crossing over into Turkey, though we might hit another country in between, I need to double check the map when it cycles back through with the English text. I did just realize the downfall to the isle seat, it’s about a million miles to reach over to adjust the vent for my air, luckily most of it is pointed at me. It looks like from the map we’ll hit Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Ukraine followed by some other countries I’ve yet to locate on the map.

So let’s see if I can’t get some of the happenings from the past few days documented. I gave you an updated to Friday in my post the other night, including pics. So here’s what happened Saturday.

Saturday morning we met at Derek’s room at 11am so Rajat and I could drop our luggage there. That would allow us to check out of the hotel early, without having to check our bags at the counter, this would prove useful later in the day. From the hotel we headed north towards the older parts of Dubai to try to find the Gold Souks (sp?), the jewelry merchants that you could supposedly bargain with. We got the general location of this from a few people at the hotel. We finally made it somewhere near the souks around noon, we hit a lot of traffic once we got into the old part of town that was rather frustrating for Derek as he was driving, Rajat and I enjoyed harassing him and watching the chaos that is the Middle East.

It is amazing to see all the people moving about, the motor cycles weaving in between the cars, and people seeming to just jump out in front of anything that moves. The only incident we witnessed was a guy on a motorcycle riding by and removing the driver’s side mirror from a box truck with his right shoulder. If he was smart he would have just kept on riding, but he stopped and tried to make things right, though we left the area before we were able to witness what came of that mess.

When we finally arrived in the general area near the souks we found a parking spot and ventured out into the market. We ended up in the spice market first, which was probably a good warm up for what was to come. We stopped in a couple of shops to look around but didn’t find anything of interest until we located a more souvenir type store, we loaded up on items there and then made our way into the gold market. The gold market was far nicer than the rest of the shops, which I guess makes sense as they are selling higher priced and quality (hopefully) items. We ended up not purchasing any gold, but we did have another adventure here.

Walking around the shops we kept getting pestered by young men trying to interest us in some knockoff watches. At first we just blew them off, until finally I said to D and R that we should say yes to the next guy who asks us and see what happens. Thus begins the tale. Immediately after I said this someone walked up to us and asked, so we said sure. From there we were handed off to other guys at least twice, possibly a third time, on our way to the place we would be shown the merchandise. We went down a side street from the gold souks, went into a building and up a flight of stairs.

We gave each other the “are we really doing this” look, all the while I was thinking, geez I hope we don’t end up walking up our last flight of stairs today. We are taken to a door that has quite a few locks on it, some on the outside, some on the inside, all this setup visible from the outside of the wooden door. Derek makes a comment about not locking us in, we go through the door and find a room that can’t be bigger than 8’x4’, with a desk, some mirrors and shelves, the shelves had boxes of watches, all sorted by brand. He of course breaks out the Rolex box so I tell him we want to look at some Tag Hauer watches so he grabs that box and starts removing quite a few items.

We looked over these watches and he moved on to the Breitling box, these being much larger than the Tags he pulled out. Derek starts looking through the TH and I look at some of the larger Breitlings on the table. I had actually grabbed a Tag and asked him how much it was, he said you wait and put it the “I might buy this” box. I forgot to mention, when we made it into the room there was only the guy who took us in, not long after though another guy showed up, then another, making it six guys in this small room.

I ask him how much the Tag and a Breitling I pulled out are, he comes up with a number of 1350AED or something there abouts, which worked out to around $390. I told him that was way too much, I wanted only the Breitling, he told me that one was 750AED, and I could have both for 1250AED. I told him I didn’t want both and only wanted the B. At 750AED this worked out to be around $216, I knew I had $113 in my pocket, so I told him I didn’t have that much cash on me, which he replied that I could use a credit card/atm. I wasn’t too fond of this idea so I pretty much decided at this point I was out. They wouldn’t have it, so they started coming down in price. $180 US, $150 US, $130 US. All of which I replied, I only have $113. After a few minutes of back and forth, and the guy telling us we were the first customer today and he doesn’t like to battle with the first customer he came down to my price of $113, I gave him $114 as I found an extra dollar in my pocket.

Derek found a Tag he liked and ended up purchasing it, I think the starting price was around $150 US, and he got them down to $130. The first lesson in bargaining, only have $X in your wallet, then they have no option but to take it or leave it! So I now have a Breitling Bentley watch, I’m curious to look up the original online to see how accurate this replica is, and hopefully find a user manual to see if it actually works like it is supposed to, so far I’m finding the buttons and crank hard to figure out :)

From the souks we walked around a bit more, checking out other shops and items, but not purchasing anything else before heading back to the car. We were half paranoid about the guys who we purchased the watches from tracking us and trying to get us for something else, so we didn’t spend too much time in the area after that whole adventure. After making our way back to the car we headed off to find the beach. We had been planning on hitting the beach, so we had our suits with us and headed towards the marina area to find a nice beach to plant on for a while. We ate lunch at Fuddrucker’s not far from the Ritz Carlton near the Marina, we hadn’t eaten any breakfast and were getting ready to eat our hands with hunger so Fudds would have to do.

We ended up on a nice beach with a good view of the new hotel/resort the Atlantis that had opened up a week or two before. The water in the gulf was rather warm, though it was definitely cooler than the outside air so it was a nice relief. It seemed extra salty, but perhaps that was because I haven’t been in the ocean since our honeymoon back in December 2006. We didn’t stay at the beach long as it was nearly 3:30pm and we wanted to try to leave the hotel around 5pm. We ran back to the hotel, showered and cleaned up for the flights, Rajat left tonight to return to India. Derek actually returns to the US Sunday night, so he was tasked with driving us to the airport.

Before the airport though we headed to Gitex, the consumer electronics expo that was starting up this weekend. My assumption is that it is like CES in the states, though I haven’t been there to see. The part of Gitex we went to was the shopper portion, lots of vendors were selling all sorts of tech gear, from cell phones to laptops, to game systems. Had we found any good deals we probably would have purchased something, but all we found were prices that might have been good in the UAE, but were bad compared to the US prices for the same products.

While we were there we came across a setup from Intel Germany where they had 6 racing simulators hooked up running head to head racing. We waited in line for nearly 45 minutes before finally getting our shot at the game. It was fun, though a tight fit for my big ass in the seat, it felt somewhat authentic laying down in a mocked up formula race car. I think I started 5th in the pack, and after figuring out the controls on the car moved quickly into the lead, a few turns later I managed to put the car into a wall then make a wrong turn trying to get back on course. I was down in third, but the two cars that had passed me also missed the turn, I got out of there before they were able to get their controls squared away.

The race was 3 laps, ~3 minutes per lap, at least for me :) I managed to lap the entire field prior to finishing my third lap, so by the time I was done there was no other car on the final lap. I think before they ended it only one car had even made it onto the final lap. I’ll chock the win up to my racing experience, the key to this sim was smooth small inputs, once you figure that out, and how to quickly work the reset button, it was easy to clean up.

From there we pretty much left Gitex and headed to the airport. I’m going to take some time away from the laptop and perhaps catch some shuteye, this damn PC is hot, and those of you who know me know how much I hate the heat. I’ll be back later on to write, it looks like we are over the Caspian sea right now, we flew over part of Azerbaijan, but now it looks like we’ll miss Georgia completely, at least I think.

So we’re now about 2 hours from landing, at least that’s what the flight info screen says. We’re just crossing from Quebec into Ontario Canada. I missed most of the countries between now and the last time I was writing, though I do know we spent a good amount of time over Russia and then Greenland as well.

I managed to get a little sleep throughout the flight, though it wasn’t comfortable sleep so I am not sure it counts. I’m so ready to be home, but don’t feel like trying to sleep again, so I will probably do some development work for the rest of this flight. I was just about to type that I was glad I had a power outlet for this flight so I could do some work without fear of draining the battery on my laptop. At that moment I realized that the power wasn’t on, so I just spent the last 5 minutes getting it working, though I honestly don’t know what I did to make it work, I at least i have power now.