Adventures in Dubai continued..

With Kristy working, we were on our own and planned to go skiing in the morning and the to a desert safari in the evening.
We thought we were so clever getting a taxi the way she had told us, everything was going really well until the windscreen on the taxi we were in started cracking right down the middle.
The driver's solution was to drop us on the side of the highway in peak hour with no shade (at that point I think it was about 40 degrees)..

After about half an hour of walking along the side of the road we found another taxi. And man, did the driver love coconuts, lovely guy but seriously twenty minutes of coconut talk is not right.
N.B (if you are coconut mad and want to truly enjoy the magic of delicious coconuts, best you head to Bangladesh according to our new friend) 

After we learnt all the delicious facts about coconuts we went to the Mall of the Emarites... To go skiing. In Dubai. In a Mall.
 It was so much fun.
I hadn’t been skiing in a long time so on the advice of one of the instructors I had a bit of a practice in the area where children are taught to ski.
That was embarrassing.
I finally decided that I should ski with the adults and that was much more fun.

The ticket price included all of the gear, but for some reason gloves are optional and we didn’t get them.
Which meant that when we had finished skiing our hands were bright red and frozen, even as we headed towards the desert.

Our safari driver was an hour late picking us up. And he was a bit weird, en route to th desert he actually said  "if it happens in the desert, nobody knows" we thought we were going to die..
Then he said we had to get other guests and drove us to a supermarket which is supposedly a meeting point. When the “guests” didn’t show up we decided to go in for some water and came out with traditional male head dresses – both of us.

The safari itself was great, although I did start feeling a little queasy half way through, but Sam was loving it so much I didn’t have the heart to tell him didn’t have the stomach for it.

We got some great photos out in the desert and then we returned to the desert camp for dinner which was an amazing set up, there were all sorts of traditional activities to do before dinner began.

Sam and I parked ourselves with the Sheesha and had a great time.

Not only did we have our safari car to ourselves we also had a table at dinner to ourselves.. Right near the stage. There were three entertainment acts, man with dress (it doesn’t sound impressive but it was, I just don’t know why he was wearing a dress), man with bird (who was significantly less popular than man with dress) and belly dancing woman (who was exactly that).

When we were back at Kristy’s I even had a go at the traditional dress.

Our last full day in Dubai was spent in an Irish pub watching the AFL, watching the mighty tiges who had a win.

we went to a beach party later that night and went swimming, until a security guard told me to put my clothes back on.. hoping that was something to do with me being a woman in the middle east rather than his reaction to what I've got going on.

So much love to Kristy for putting us up (and putting up with us)