Since im spending 6 months here in the desert kingdom , thought of jotting down some of the experiences ...
If you look at Dubai city during daytime the first thing you will notice is zillions and zillions of cranes and buildings under construction , wherever you go and wherever you look you see more and more buildings springing up over the entire desert landscape ...
Another thing which is starkingly different cities back home is that in dubai its dificult to spot human beings/animals or birds outside during the day. But when sun goes down it all changes ... the Dubai skyline by night looks amazing the whole place (incl highways ) is always lit.
Though its a muslim country , unlike its neighbours or for that matter other emirates in the country , Dubai is not a conservative place. It is very comsopolitan mainly due to the huge number of outsiders and huge number of Europeans. So nightlife is pretty rocking here.
The malls are also amazing and you do get good bargains during the shopping festivals and summer sales. currently Dubai Summer Surprises is on .. it runs till end of this month and a huge number of Malls and shops are part of this , we had heard that they offer really amzing discounts , so thot of chking it out.
A few of us went to Mall of Emirates last week , the trip was pretty costly , we went by the offical cab and not the 'lift service' (which is unofficial cab , run by mallu drivers , more bout that later in nother blog) ... the cabbie was incidentally a Punjabi . Taxi drivers here are either Indians or Pakistanis or Bangladeshis ... interestingly when the cabbie heard that we were MBA students said he was an MBA student before , me n my friend Aswin were shell-shocked !
It seems he dropped out of some college bacck home and regrets it hugely and advised us to concentrate hard on our studies ! In midst of all this friendly chatter , the guy took us through roads with Salik toll' and when we finally reached the destination - Mall of emirates , our eye-balls popped out when we saw the meter ...
The attractions in the mall begins right at the parking lot , which is flocked by visitors with cameras :) ... u get to see the best n most flashy cars in the world there , people just wait for the owners/valet to park the car and then click their own pictures with the car !
The mall itself is huge , with many shops being part of Dubai Summer surprises , there were a lot of places where you could get good discounts. You really need a store map to get anywhere in the mall. For all Bangaloreans this mall is like 10-15 times the size of Forum .
The mall also houses a few movie screens and carrefour supermarket inside , this time as DSS was going on there were lot shows on makeshift stages in various parts of the mall , where Asian culture and diversity was on display.
Unfortunately like malls back home in India , on weekdays in this mall also most shops close by 10 , we went too late and by the time we had checked out most of the shops and had kind of identified the shops with best deals , they all started closing !
Finally lots n lots of options for food with starbucks , dunkin and donuts etc and lots coffee shops n fancy restaurants with cuisines across the world. Food court also has variety of options , but good veg food is not so easily available.
PS:
Plannin to drop another visit to the place when a good movie comes along and will add more details
Monday, July 16, 2007
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Dubai Slices - meena bazaar
Like the name suggests its a place in Dubai dominated by Indian shops ...
Today we had a somewhat free day @ college , had a quiz in the morning and couple of lectures and a simple group assignment and by 2 in the noon we were free ! They say its difficult to get free time in this course and wanted to get most out of it , so hit the sack immediately to make up for lost sleep ... woke up @ 6 and then suddenly had an idea of going to city . friend of mine wanted to buy watches .. he has a small collection now .. anyways he also jumped at the proposal and got a third aimless, bored soul also and then booked an unofficial (and illegal ! ) 'Mallu' cab (which is an interesting concept and i will dedicate a separate post for that ) to go to Bur Dubai ...
Roads in Dubai are amazing , you can easily run up 100kmph + speeds ... i believe 120 is the limit , but ppl drive around /above that usually ... once u reach the city proper , many areas have nasty traffic snarls and u never miss good ol Bangalore or for that matter any big city in India :)
Went to this place called 'Al-Ain Centre' which is a mall full of electronic goods shops ... was hunting for a pen drive , found the prices dropping as we moved from store to store. After grabbing some food from a Mexican fast food joint there , stepped out into a hot n sweltering Dubai evening...
It was close to 8 pm still it was extremely humid, but by the time we walked a couple blocks all of us were drenched !
Checked out a few watch shops on the way and reached 'Meena Bazaar'. If you are blind folded and dropped suddenly into this place you would think you are in some city in India. for ppl from, B'lore the place resembles Commerical street ! all the streets in that area had Indian shops ... all the people we saw on the streets were Indians / South Asians ...
after futile attempts at watch shopping , we moved around aimlessly (apparently we had missed the street where u get the best deals !)...
This is the place where the average Indian , the ones who come to Dubai to earn a living and tranfers bulk of the money back home , shops - u find shops of all sizes n shapes selling virtually evrything ...
there were a few Indian restaurants / fast food places too ...
Then there was a supermarket where u get all ur 'desi' packaged food stuff , replenished our depleting stocks and jumped back into business of exploring the place , there is a 'temple' also somewhere there , didnt find it when we went around ... there was a lot more to explore , but since there was hungry guy n knowledge thirsty guy (wanted to prepare for nxt day's quiz at college) ... i was forced to return back and again got a 'mallu' cab and was back in the hostel by 10 ...
Today we had a somewhat free day @ college , had a quiz in the morning and couple of lectures and a simple group assignment and by 2 in the noon we were free ! They say its difficult to get free time in this course and wanted to get most out of it , so hit the sack immediately to make up for lost sleep ... woke up @ 6 and then suddenly had an idea of going to city . friend of mine wanted to buy watches .. he has a small collection now .. anyways he also jumped at the proposal and got a third aimless, bored soul also and then booked an unofficial (and illegal ! ) 'Mallu' cab (which is an interesting concept and i will dedicate a separate post for that ) to go to Bur Dubai ...
Roads in Dubai are amazing , you can easily run up 100kmph + speeds ... i believe 120 is the limit , but ppl drive around /above that usually ... once u reach the city proper , many areas have nasty traffic snarls and u never miss good ol Bangalore or for that matter any big city in India :)
Went to this place called 'Al-Ain Centre' which is a mall full of electronic goods shops ... was hunting for a pen drive , found the prices dropping as we moved from store to store. After grabbing some food from a Mexican fast food joint there , stepped out into a hot n sweltering Dubai evening...
It was close to 8 pm still it was extremely humid, but by the time we walked a couple blocks all of us were drenched !
Checked out a few watch shops on the way and reached 'Meena Bazaar'. If you are blind folded and dropped suddenly into this place you would think you are in some city in India. for ppl from, B'lore the place resembles Commerical street ! all the streets in that area had Indian shops ... all the people we saw on the streets were Indians / South Asians ...
after futile attempts at watch shopping , we moved around aimlessly (apparently we had missed the street where u get the best deals !)...
This is the place where the average Indian , the ones who come to Dubai to earn a living and tranfers bulk of the money back home , shops - u find shops of all sizes n shapes selling virtually evrything ...
there were a few Indian restaurants / fast food places too ...
Then there was a supermarket where u get all ur 'desi' packaged food stuff , replenished our depleting stocks and jumped back into business of exploring the place , there is a 'temple' also somewhere there , didnt find it when we went around ... there was a lot more to explore , but since there was hungry guy n knowledge thirsty guy (wanted to prepare for nxt day's quiz at college) ... i was forced to return back and again got a 'mallu' cab and was back in the hostel by 10 ...
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